Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Here's a tool for testing web sites for suitability for colour-blind users. http://colorfilter.wickline.org/ It may be worth creating a mockup on a public server and testing. Good luck with the project, Mathias- glad to see so many of the projects discussed at EduWiki are actually happening. On 20 February 2014 12:37, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.netwrote: Le 20/02/2014 11:56, Richard Nevell a écrit : It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? The current colours on the main page were made by a 15 years old user of (mainly) Vikidia in French, we just make it in a wiki way you know ! (Would you believe it can work ? ;-) ) On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.netmailto: mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/ Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
I prefer Snook's Colour Contrast Check: http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html as it allows you to test the foreground/background colour combinations for compliance with WCAG 2.0, which is the internationally recognised standard for accessibility of web pages. I checked the front page of Vikidia - the worst spot seemed to be part of the Star article which had black text on a background of #24B88E. That passes most of the WCAG standards, with the exception of the colour difference - so that's acceptable for most purposes. The rest of the wiki is very clean with good legibility - well done! -- Rexx On 21 February 2014 14:54, Martin Poulter infob...@gmail.com wrote: Here's a tool for testing web sites for suitability for colour-blind users. http://colorfilter.wickline.org/ It may be worth creating a mockup on a public server and testing. Good luck with the project, Mathias- glad to see so many of the projects discussed at EduWiki are actually happening. On 20 February 2014 12:37, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.netwrote: Le 20/02/2014 11:56, Richard Nevell a écrit : It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? The current colours on the main page were made by a 15 years old user of (mainly) Vikidia in French, we just make it in a wiki way you know ! (Would you believe it can work ? ;-) ) On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.netmailto: mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/ Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
I would be grateful to learn how this Wiki project fits alongside Simple English Wikipedia: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page ...and how the project intends to avoid a situation where well-meaning volunteers find themselves spending a lot of effort doing work that's already been done. Bodnotbod On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the goal is still to create content an the knowledge resource benefit of such a project: school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives. - Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a certain stability in the functioning of the wiki, - children's involvement, even when they don't produce very long articles, let appear works on subjects that interest their peers, it responds to their aspirations and their desire to participate and they definitely take their share in growing the content and in maintenance tasks, - older children, teenagers that
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Hi, Le 21/02/2014 18:17, Bod Notbod a écrit : I would be grateful to learn how this Wiki project fits alongside Simple English Wikipedia: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page ...and how the project intends to avoid a situation where well-meaning volunteers find themselves spending a lot of effort doing work that's already been done. Well, we technically aloud users to import articles from both SEWP and Wikijunior (with patroller user group rights, it put the old records of the article in the history) but we don't plan to import all the SEWP (Simple English Wikipedia) article at once. I personally think that we should use it to grow this wiki with some part of the work already done on SEWP nevertheless chosen and adapted one by one. It is obviously an opportunity to grow this wiki faster, to save time in its growth, time to get some readers (and new editors) and as you say to avoid volunteers spending effort doing work that's already been done (and SEWP editor to feel their effort not valued as they could) I don't pretend to have a deep knowledge on SEWP but I tried to check out to which extend its content would fit to such a wiki for children. I think that the articles of SEWP and Wikijunior are uneven in suitability and content (many stubs on minor subjects), which means that we surely should do that with care, so we can watch and discuss what it brings to this wiki, and built a policy on it if needed. I guess the best way to discern if and which articles are suitable to be imported is to practice, and import some of them (which we have begun see http://en.vikidia.org/w/index.php?title=Rhineaction=history ). It will make us able to talk about the quality and suitability of the articles we can find, and other issues. We already felt that articles imported by SEWP had to be worked again for en.vikidia, and that some of them were not to be taken at all. We may choose the articles to import, and then edit and check them just after it. That's still some work but it makes then a good result and faster than if we have to write it from scratch. (Readers on fr.vikidia on the guest-book often say they want more content in the articles.) With some practice, we may have some ideas on how to do that in the best way, be it still slowly and safely, or with some tools/applications to select larger numbers of articles. It may be possible that way to get say 2000 to 1 of the best and most significant articles of SEWP in a few month. It ultimately depends on/pertain to the community of this wiki (both by their work on it and potential consensus against it...) I hope I answered you question ! On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Could someone explain how this fits with past experiences of setting up school-friendly versions of Wikipedia, like http://schools-wikipedia.org? Thanks, Fae -- fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Le 21/02/2014 21:44, Fæ a écrit : Could someone explain how this fits with past experiences of setting up school-friendly versions of Wikipedia, like http://schools-wikipedia.org? I answered above, see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediauk-l/2014-February/011827.html Moreover, it's not only a matter of providing content to children but for them to freely share knowledge and empower them to collect and develop educational content under a free license and to disseminate it effectively and globally. (Guess where I picked this up ! ;-) ) There is also the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (signed and ratified by the UK) which states: Article 13 - 1. The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive *and impart information* and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice. Even if the readers/editors rate is roughtly the same as on Wikipedia (I mean that while Wikikids.nl and fr.vikidia are some reasonable success in audience, they don't gather a massive community of editors. fr.vikidia has 600 000 UV a month, 175 active user a month and about 20 very active of any ages), I can tell that children and teenagers can really appreciate and be proud to be involved in such a project ! -- Mathias Damour 49 rue Carnot F-74000 Annecy 00 33 (0)4 57 09 10 56 00 33 (0)6 27 13 65 51 mathias.dam...@laposte.net http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Astirmays ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.netwrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/ Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the goal is still to create content an the knowledge resource benefit of such a project: school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives. - Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a certain stability in the functioning of the wiki, - children's involvement, even when they don't produce very long articles, let appear works on subjects that interest their peers, it responds to their aspirations and their desire to participate and they definitely take their share in growing the content and in maintenance tasks, - older children, teenagers that don't (yet) edit Wikipedia can have the chance to do it here, and to make a good work. The advantage is both the amount of
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Have you looked at working with the Wikipedia for Schools people? I spoke to them back in 2008[1], but don't have current contacts. [1] https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/2008-09_Wikipedia_for_Schools_goes_online On 2014-02-20 10:56, Richard Nevell wrote: It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour [1] we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org [2] and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 [3] Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the goal is still to create content an the knowledge resource benefit of such a project: school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives. - Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a certain stability in the functioning of the wiki, - children's involvement, even when they don't produce very long articles, let appear works on subjects that interest their peers, it responds to their aspirations and their desire to participate and they definitely take their share in
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Le 20/02/2014 12:22, Brian McNeil a écrit : Have you looked at working with the Wikipedia for Schools people? I spoke to them back in 2008[1], but don't have current contacts. Yes, I have met the person in charge of Wikipedia for Schools ( http://schools-wikipedia.org/ ) at EduWiki, he made a presentation just before I did. This project has a significant audience, however they sometimes have some remarks about the content being still too difficult for children. There is not many people working for it, so they can't rewrite each article. Meanwhile, Vikidia may be seen among others as a forge for encyclopedic content for children that may be reuse for a future release version of Wikipedia for Schools, it's some free content anyway ! :-) On Vikidia in french, we have been asked for on offline release, and it's available here : http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Vikidia_hors-connexion [1] https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/2008-09_Wikipedia_for_Schools_goes_online On 2014-02-20 10:56, Richard Nevell wrote: It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour [1] we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org [2] and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 [3] Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by
Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Le 20/02/2014 11:56, Richard Nevell a écrit : It's an interesting idea. The colours on the main page really stand out, though I wonder how easy it will be for people with colour blindness to read. Has it been tested for that? The current colours on the main page were made by a 15 years old user of (mainly) Vikidia in French, we just make it in a wiki way you know ! (Would you believe it can work ? ;-) ) On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net mailto:mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8–13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the goal is still to create content an the knowledge resource benefit of such a project: school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives. - Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a
[Wikimediauk-l] Launching a Wikipedia for children soon, you may help !
Hi, Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a presentation about the Wikikids proposal : https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_Mathias_Damour we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the 28th of February. It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl. Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals. If you want to have a look, it's http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are vikidia and aidikiv We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before launching the wiki. Here they are : http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8 Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message : May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ? * A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English ! Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range. Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch, with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers every month. Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack of a better resource. There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8–13 years old children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary resource. To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one child's motivation for the content as a reader. Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the goal is still to create content an the knowledge resource benefit of such a project: school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives. - Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a certain stability in the functioning of the wiki, - children's involvement, even when they don't produce very long articles, let appear works on subjects that interest their peers, it responds to their aspirations and their desire to participate and they definitely take their share in growing the content and in maintenance tasks, - older children, teenagers that don't (yet) edit Wikipedia can have the chance to do it here, and to make a good work. The advantage is both the amount of work they can bring, and what this work can bring to them, like for the younger ones and like any Wikipedia editor. http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:For_children_or_by_children%3F Vikidia representatives used to work on a proposal to be adopted within a multilingual
