[Foundation-l] Wikijunior

[Andrew Whitworth]

>And there is good material from other projects that is suitable for kids, 
>just not packaged in the wikijunior format; some of the better-edited 
>series on simple-en, some of the media collections on commons and flickr, 
>some of the early work on wikiversity and wikieducator.

This is a good point. A dedicated wikijunior.org site could be used to host all sorts of child-related materials from all projects that produce them. 

>Better yet, you could make it read-and-tunnelled-write : a 'static' site, 
>but with edit links that take you to the page on the feeder site that lets 
>you edit the latest non-static version.

This idea wasn't explicitly stated, but I think it's been in the back of everybody's mind. I do worry about giving children a direct link back the the working version, because the working version could still contain vandalism which children shouldnt be exposed to. A link to a "Toolbox" or something which in turn contained links to the working version would likely be a better solution. We can probably deal with these kinds of specifics later.
 
>There are some ideas for a pared-down mediawiki interface that could 
>probably be implemented as a skin...

I've heard many of these ideas, but finding people to implement them is always the problem. Our devs are busy so I dare not bother them with this. I would be willing to work on the project from a software standpoint, but i'm no interface artist.
 
>For physical publication, I hear Bob Young @ Lulu is a fan of wikipedia; 
>perhaps Lulu could host a section for print-on-demand wikijunior books and 
>help draw a bit more attention to them.

A wikijunior book was posted to Lulu a while back, and was pulled down by the foundation. Some heated discussion from both sides resulted in the subject being dropped entirely. I would like to hear something from the foundation about how such a thing would be possible before we go through that kind of hassle again. This might be the perfect occasion for the board to make such a statement...
 
>On the OLPC side of things, I am working on collections to ship with the 
>machines; we can include a 'wikijunior' section, say a selection of html + 
>edit/contribute links as above, once that exists.  English and Spanish
>and Portuguese collections would get immediate use; and feedback, if the
>mechanism for that is simple enough.

Getting PDF versions would be a simple matter, we have lots of experience with that. We could prepare some easy HTML versions too, by calling &printable=yes. It would take more effort to get better quality files. Can the OLPC handle PDF files? If so, I think that would be an ideal method.

--Andrew Whitworth
 

_________________________________________________________________
Boo! Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare!
http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews