Hi, May I give you some news about 2 encyclopedic wikis intended for children (as readers so as editors), whose proposal was made first on meta : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids and on this list two years ago: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-January/015108.html
Such a wiki has been launched in french (in which I am involved) see an english explanation about it: http://fr.vikidia.org/index.php/Vikidia:About and in Dutch (see http://kennisnet.wikia.com/wikikids/wiki/Wikikids:English_explanation None of them are Wikimedia project.) Both have a quite active community and have reached 1000 articles.
I would be glad to know what you think about them and about the original idea that was for it to be an international Wikimedia project.
Mathias Damour
For your information,
Kennisnet has launched already quite a while ago a Wikikids in Dutch, and it is over 2000 articles :) See http://kennisnet.wikia.com/wikikids/wiki/Hoofdpagina . See http://kennisnet.wikia.com/wikikids/wiki/Wikikids:English_explanation for an english explanation.
Best Regards, Lodewijk
2007/5/27, Mathias mathias.damour@laposte.net:
Hi, May I give you some news about 2 encyclopedic wikis intended for children (as readers so as editors), whose proposal was made first on meta : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids and on this list two years ago: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-January/015108.html
Such a wiki has been launched in french (in which I am involved) see an english explanation about it: http://fr.vikidia.org/index.php/Vikidia:About and in Dutch (see http://kennisnet.wikia.com/wikikids/wiki/Wikikids:English_explanation None of them are Wikimedia project.) Both have a quite active community and have reached 1000 articles.
I would be glad to know what you think about them and about the original idea that was for it to be an international Wikimedia project.
Mathias Damour
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effe iets anders schreef op 27-5-2007 14:56:
Kennisnet has launched already quite a while ago a Wikikids in Dutch
To set the record straight, it was *not* Kennisnet that launched WikiKids, but a group of voluntary individuals (see http://kennisnet.wikia.com/wikikids/wiki/Wikikids:Projectgroep).
This group is supported by Kennisnet, through hosting (with Wikia) and specialist advice, among other things.
Galwaygirl
Mathias wrote:
Hi, May I give you some news about 2 encyclopedic wikis intended for children (as readers so as editors), whose proposal was made first on meta : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids and on this list two years ago: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-January/015108.html
Such a wiki has been launched in french (in which I am involved) see an english explanation about it: http://fr.vikidia.org/index.php/Vikidia:About and in Dutch (see http://kennisnet.wikia.com/wikikids/wiki/Wikikids:English_explanation None of them are Wikimedia project.) Both have a quite active community and have reached 1000 articles.
I would be glad to know what you think about them and about the original idea that was for it to be an international Wikimedia project.
Mathias Damour
Something I find interesting is that "Wikikids" was one of the proposed names for Wikijunior.... and dismissed out of hand nearly right after it was proposed. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior/Project_name/Candidate_nominations
I am curious about why this concept hasn't been incorporated into the Wikijunior pages, at least as a test. I know, I have railed against using Wikibooks in the past as a sort of incubator for new sister project ideas, but Wikijunior is fairly well established, and nearly every Wikijunior module I've read reads like a Wikipedia article anyway. And Wikijunior is also quite multilingual, with some sort of Wikijunior project on nearly every language edition of Wikibooks, including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and English. In many cases these "articles" or "modules" have been translated or rewritten in multiple languages as well, especially the original Wikijunior books of the Solar System and the Big Cats.
And Wikijunior is clearly a Wikimedia project in its own right, other than it is hosted concurrently with Wikibooks. Try http://en.wikijunior.org/ to see where the wikijunior domain goes.
This isn't to say that some effort shouldn't happen to perhaps expand the range of this proposal, but it seems like the largest problem it has faced is an ever fragmenting community and leaders who havn't had the desire to keep the project moving. Writing literary content for children is not an easy task, and it takes a focused community to keep the project growing.
As for the health of Wikijunior books, many of them have reached "featured book" status as some of the "best of..." Wikibooks, and on en.wikbooks I would say that you could easily get much more than 1000 modules that could easily seed an en.wikikids project. Many of these modules could on their own reach featured article status on en.wikipedia, but for the fact they are not on Wikipedia. Rather than try to dissect what went wrong with the previous attempt at an English language version of this project, I would suggest that you try and see what has been done "right" by Wikijunior and its development community. And certainly try to pool the efforts of this "Wikikids" group and those who are writing "Wikijunior" content. I have not seen any effort to recruit those involved with Wikijunior to help with this proposal in any meaningful way.
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