[Wikipedia-l] Children's Wikipedia

[Florian Konnertz]

Hi all!

I've been glad to read about this idea.

If you know children well you might consider the possibilty that they 
had this idea before us ;-)

I assume that there are already a lot of wikis maintained by children, 
especially in the context of local areas, school intranets, etc.

As already stated by Fred there is a need for people like teachers who 
are already working with children to help them to connect their wikis to 
each other.
IMO for children it is not so much important to contribute to *the* one 
and only encyclopedia, if they could grasp this idea at all. They prefer 
  communicating to each other, and see only need for a steady storage of 
information if they are asked by others to explain them something and 
want to refer to some articles.

So i guess for the younger ones it should be the loosely combination of 
a wiki communication and collaboration space where they can play and 
explain things to each other and the older children could do the task of 
refractoring the contributed stuff and build a uniform wikipedia from 
it. (with the help of us wikipedians and their teachers)

I want to encourage you to keep this idea in mind as it would be nice to 
watch the children's wiki grow. Never underestimate their creativity and 
the readiness of the older to help the younger ones.

Another point is the phenomenon that children often explain things to 
each other in very pictured language and funny where we adults can 
profit also as some grasp some sorts of things easier that way. The 
corresponding pages could be referenced from wikipedia more or less for 
fun to learn how children think about an issue - and this will keep the 
generations together.


Concerning the question how the wikipedia and the *wikidia* could be 
linked to each other: I cannot imagine a proper solution (namespaces 
etc.) yet. I'll think about this problem, i already do some related work 
on interwiki solutions as suggested i.e on 
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AllInOneWiki
There's still much work to do and good ideas needed.


I'd appreciate your further comments and ideas about a kid's wiki/ 
-pedia. I would like to contribute to such a project!


Regards,
Florian



-- 
Florian Konnertz

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