[Foundation-l] Simple Wikipedia: different projects

[Ray Saintonge]

On 06/23/11 1:30 PM, rupert THURNER wrote:
> people working at teacher schools in switzerland approached us a couple of
> times to push into a direction of *having wikipedia for different age groups
> *. first discussed ideas included the *groups **kids, junior, standard, *and
> * expert*. this would mean maximum four times as many articles, nicely
> hidden behind a gui which allows a quick switch between the variants, and
> also the inviting "missing article" feeling a red link gives.
>
> up to now we always thought there is a lack of support for such ideas, or it
> would be just retargeted to wikijunior. also, we thought there might not be
> enough editors. but recently things started to change, at least imo. (1)
> editors do not have anything to edit any more because wikipedia is so
> complete. (2) the whole wiki movement has more money and energy to improve
> the software. (3) and most important, not only professors in ivory towers
> but long-standing, reputed wikipedians like you come up with ideas how such
> a topic could be addressed.
>
> one challenge of course is to encourage people providing low age contents
> because creating it takes so much more time - but i am pretty sure there are
> means to address it - let me just steal the brand "wiki loves monuments" and
> rephrase it to "wiki loves kids".
>

In the very earliest times of Wiki Junior I remember raising the 
question of multi-level writing.  It was important to provide examples 
of just how this would look, generated by people who truly understood 
what was required at each level. What projects of this sort mostly need 
is people to implement them.

The group of Swiss teachers would do best by showing initiative, and 
working to get the idea off the ground without relying on the rest of us 
to accomplish what they know best.

Ray