[Foundation-l] Fate of "Simple English"

[Delirium]

Brion Vibber wrote:

>In the four years or so I've been here, nobody's *ever* had a clear picture of
>what the "Simple English" Wikipedia was meant for: who it's targetted at, what
>kind of "simple" is meant, what's appropriate or not appropriate.
>  
>
I can see the point of the Simple English Wikipedia, but IMO it's not 
likely to attract enough attention to be useful.

The argument is that since so much of the world turns to English as a 
second language for information, it would be useful to have an English 
Wikipedia written in simple, easy-to-understand English, but at the same 
time we don't want to banish the use of "big words" from the normal 
English Wikipedia and require it to be written in some sort of 
lowest-common-denominator English, so instead create a separate 
Wikipedia explicitly for that purpose.

A good idea in theory, but the problem is that very few people seem to 
want to work on such a thing.  Even people who speak English relatively 
poorly as a second language seem (based on current evidence) to prefer 
to struggle through editing the "real English Wikipedia" than to 
contribute to the simple-English one.

-Mark