New subject: Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !

19 Feb 2014

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
http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Astirmays