It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main
page really stand
out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour
blindness to read. Has it been tested for that?
The current colours on the main page were made by a 15 years old user of
(mainly) Vikidia in French, we just make it in a wiki way you know !
(Would you believe it can work ? ;-) )
On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour
<mathias.damour(a)laposte.net
<mailto:mathias.damour@laposte.net>> wrote:
Hi,
Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to
make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal :
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_…
we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English
on the 28th of February.
It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors
mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl.
Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's
member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France
does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a
great impact for our goals.
If you want to have a look, it's
http://en.vikidia.org and the
codes are "vikidia" and "aidikiv"
We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them
before launching the wiki.
Here they are :
http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8
Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message :
May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ?
*****************************************************
A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in
English !
Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online
encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to
contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in
French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims
both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to
let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in
building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and
functioning, except the age range.
Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and
success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French
and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000
articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month.
Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial
content and the well known convenient way it is to find material
on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes
them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some
subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource.
There is some television programs for children, some books, some
movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It
would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use
of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and
appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for
them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the
main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to
find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not
designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple
explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be
suitable for 8–13 years old children, based on the general
perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for
this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously
in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource.
To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a
resource and to be active in the building process is also
obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add
something may also change one child's motivation for the content
as a reader.
Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions.
There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the
users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and
enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in
building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved
within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain
some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a
resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia,
although the goal is still to create content an the "knowledge
resource" benefit of such a project: school projects are welcomed
provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives.
- Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of
quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch
and ensure a certain stability in the functioning of the wiki,
- children's involvement, even when they don't produce very long
articles, let appear works on subjects that interest their peers,
it responds to their aspirations and their desire to participate
and they definitely take their share in growing the content and in
maintenance tasks,
- older children, teenagers that don't (yet) edit Wikipedia can
have the chance to do it here, and to make a good work. The
advantage is both the amount of work they can bring, and what this
work can bring to them, like for the younger ones and like any
Wikipedia editor.
http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:For_children_or_by_children%3F
Vikidia representatives used to work on a proposal to be adopted
within a multilingual Wikikids project. They no longer ask for it
and decided to remain it independent from the Wikimedia Foundation
and now to open a Vikidia in English.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids/Vikidia%27s_withdrawal_of_the_adop…
Vikidia is handled by the Association Vikidia, located in France,
a non-profit-organization. The servers are hosted by Tuxfamily, a
non-profit-organization that host free softwares and free content
projects.
Vikidia is free according to the principle of Free Knowledge. The
general license used is CC-BY-SA.
Vikidia especially implements and complies with the articles 12,
13 and 17 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Relation_to_the_Rights_of_the_Child
--
Mathias Damour
49 rue Carnot
F-74000 Annecy
00 33 (0)4 57 09 10 56
00 33 (0)6 27 13 65 51
mathias.damour(a)laposte.net <mailto:mathias.damour@laposte.net>
http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Astirmays
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Mathias Damour
49 rue Carnot
74000 Annecy
04 57 09 10 56
06 27 13 65 51
mathias.damour(a)laposte.net