[Foundation-l] Wikikids

[Robert Horning]

Mathias Damour wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Robert Horning a écrit :
>   
>> There is a certain bureaucratic process that goes into
>> establishing a sister project, and I'm beginning to see a bit of wisdom
>> to that process as well.  I should note that 95% (I think it is actually
>> worse than this) of all new project ideas are shot down or left in a
>> sort of "development hell" (to borrow a term from the motion picture
>> industry) where a couple of ideas keep recurring, but don't seem to take
>> off for some reason or another.  A children's oriented encyclopedia
>> happens to be one of those recurring ideas, I should point out, and you
>> nor those you are working with are the first to come up with this idea.
>> I don't think you will be the last to bring it up in this forum either.
>>     
>
>   
>> (...) I'm still not entirely sure what it is that you
>> would like to see happen ultimately with this project proposal of yours
>> if everything went exactly as you would like it to happen.
>>     
>
> Well I wonder what *you* would like to happen for this idea and if you would really like to develop further. I hope you don't want this project to be left in a "sort of development hell" for years ! Anyway we are not in a "development hell" right now.
> Let's anserw to this question "In the best of the cases" I would like that this to happen:
> - The WMF would approve the project
> - the main features of Vikidia which are very closed, not to say the same, as those of WikiKids.nl would be kept,
> - I would give the fr.vikidia wiki and the domain name if needed,
> - I would be "paid", let's say, a scholarship for Wikimania,
> - children encyclopedia could be launched in other languages.
>
> If the anserw is no, we would continue like now, and propably nevertheless try to simulate or help other Vikidia-type encyclopedia in other languages, and let them be coordinated, but we won't use this mailing-list for that.
>
>   

So I guess you would like sister project status for at least the French 
version of this project.  BTW, in regards to "development hell", see 
this Wikipedia article on the topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_hell

This was my intention.  And as a Wikimedia sister project, this proposal 
certainly is in this state at the moment, even though you have an active 
"demo project" at the moment.  If you don't want "approval" from the 
WMF, but are here to merely advertise your project, this term simply 
doesn't apply, although by your own admission you have gone through some 
of the same growth stages that nearly all Wiki projects go through at 
one point or another.  One of the significant advantages of becoming a 
Wikimedia sister project is that you have some people who can help out 
to deal with some of these growing pains and help with both 
administrative overhead and establishing basic policies that seem to 
work.  Mainly some considerable experience with leadership of massive 
volunteer collaborative writing groups.

Also, if this is to become a sister project, some sort of effort must 
happen to work with those who are currently producing Wikijunior 
content.  And the two "communities" must simply have a much higher level 
of cooperation than seems to currently exist.  I'm also strongly 
suggesting that this cooperation still happen even if Wikikids stays as 
a completely independent group apart from being associated with the 
Wikimedia Foundation.