Talk:Wikijunior/Archive 1

From Wikipedia Junior:

In the October 16, 2004 board meeting it was mentioned that the "Beck Foundation is granting us $10k to create a Junior Wikipedia." As no other page could be found on meta, this page has been created to discuss this.

I think this is great! I would be very interested in getting involved in the project from the start. Things we need to think about are:

• We need a logo
• We need a name - junior wikipedia, Childrens wikipedia, Kiddiepedia, juniorpedia, schoolpedia, um that's all i can think of at the moment.
• Are there any strings attached to this money, if so what are they?
• What will the target age be?
• How do we decide on content? Sex, violence, trivia etc - should they be included.
• is this to be written by adults for kids, or do we actively ancotage kids to write it themselves. If we opt for the latter we should have guidlines about what goes on user pages etc. I don't want 10 year olds revealing personal information about themselves for example.

• Yup
• Wikikids? Wikijunior?
• Wikid?
• We have to produce something. Tomorrow I will post the proposal for you to see.
• Avoid sex and violence, unless necessary. Trivia is fun.
• At first, adults will be doing the writing, though we must come up with ways to incorporate kid's feedback and content. Danny 02:57, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Theresa knott 18:00, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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Related pages: Proposal, Wikijunior project logo, Wikijunior project name, Recurrent character proposal, "Kiki"

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I added the above to wikipedia junior before I saw this page. I see that some of my questions have already been answered. So let's plough on:

Kids Wikipedia?

from the en:village pump Why not start a Wikipedia for kids? Theresa knott said she's interested in working on it, and while I probably wouldn't be a regular contributor I'd be willing to help during the first few weeks. Is anyone else interested in this? If two or three more people say they are, maybe we could take it to the foundation-l mailing list. anthony (refactored after reply)

As someone else said on that page how do you decide what is suitable for kids and what isn't? Sounds like a major POV problem to me. violet/riga (t) 18:44, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

To me it seems like a minor POV issue which needs to be addressed. anthony 警告 20:16, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Some parents think it's fine for their kids to see horrific images, others don't. We shouldn't be trying to force our view of what is acceptable for kids onto the parents. violet/riga (t) 20:47, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

We would have to work out some guiding principles. My own view is probably consevative but not draconian. We would need to define those terms of course.Nothing is being forced on parents. If for example we decide not to illustrate an article on War with pictures of dead people, and parents decide that their children should see pictures like this so that their children grasp the full horror of war, they can simply come to Wikipedia. That's why I'm happy for a childrens encylopedia to be fairly conservative. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 21:09, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Exactly (what Theresa said). We wouldn't be forcing our view that horrific images are unacceptable any more than en forces the view that original research is unacceptable, or that pornography is unacceptable, or that dictionaries are unacceptable, or that French is unacceptable, or any of the other things in en:Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Any project has to define itself. En has defined itself one way, and no one is trying to change that. Anthony DiPierro 13:50, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I would love to get involved with a kids encylopedia but probably not the sort the censoring types have in mind as i'm pretty liberal myself. I do think that Wikipedia is a great resource for older children but younger children will find the text too difficult to read. I have two daughters. The 15 year old regulaly uses wikipedia as a resource, the 12 year is only just starting to use it, because it is too difficult. I have in mind a typical 10 or 11 year old. They are set research type homeworks but a present don't have an easily available resource. Maybe yahooligans but we can do better than that IMO. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 19:44, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't this just duplicate simple? [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 20:08, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No i don't think it would. I always thought simple was intended for an adult readership, maybe I'm wrong about that. The name cetainly doesn't sound like a childrens encylopedia though."Children's Wikipedia" does exactly what it says on the tin. I have in mind something that is very rich in pictures, with text that is not only simple but child centered e.g "A microscope is a cool device that magnifies things. A bit like a magnifying glass only much much stronger. With a microscope you can see realy tiny things, things that are too small to see with your own eyes. A hair looks like [picture] a fly looks like [picture]" and so on. We could also put in animations -adults complain that they find animations destracting, but kids love 'em. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 21:00, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It would seem quite sensible if simple also satisifed the censorship for a kids Wiki (at least in not showing potentially offensive images). Kids in generally will have a smaller vocabulary so simple:Wiki would be appropriate. Sensitive subjects are a fairly small percentage of the total number of articles, these could be handled with interwiki links to the main en:Wiki which adult readers could follow if they wanted. However Simple shouldn't be turned into a purely kids focused version. -- Solipsist 21:45, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've just checked simple's main page. It's intended for adults who do not speak english well. I don't think an adult who doesn't speak English well would want to be adressed as a child. And I really don't think that an adult would want us to censor material from simple. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 21:50, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry Solipist i didn't read what you wrote properly. I've just reread it and understand now what you mean. Yes we could do it that way, but I'm not sure it's the best way to go. I still think starting a seperate childrens wikipedia is the best solution. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 21:54, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If there were a trivial way to copy most of Simple to a KidsWiki: that would be ideal. On the other hand, as a general rule, kids usually want to be treated as adults too. Further a similar kids censorship problem applies to interWikis in most other languages (we probably don't need to worry about the Klingon one.) -- Solipsist 22:05, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There is a junior Wikipedia in planning. I know Danny has mentioned it, and it is mentioned here, too. ✏ Sverdrup 22:11, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Strongly, strongly opposed. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 01:43, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Um this is not a vote. Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 08:14, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

A better project than all the mindless mirrors out there. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:39, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Please consider the following points:

• There are a load of articles that people will argue about
• What age is considered to be an adult and how does that affect the censorship? Further, what would the minimum age be?
• What will encourage the kids to look at that specific version when the main en.wiki will a) remain the top search engine result and b) be the target from wikipedia.com. Of my experience kids tend to use google and haven't heard of most child-specific websites.

Don't get me wrong I'm very supportive of child-friendly material, but I don't think a separate kiddy wikipedia would work particularly well. violet/riga (t) 22:15, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In order:

• Maybe but that's true here as well. It would be better to work out some guiding principles in the early days to reduce arguments later, but I honestly don't think there will be as many problems as you think.
• Censorship is not my main aim, my main reason for supporting the idea is to write an article that kids will want to read. IMO we should write it for a bright 10 or 11 year old. Children younger than around 7 are unlikely to want to read an ancylopedia, children older than 14 or so will probably want to read the adult Wikipedia. As far as censorship goes, we could probably be guided by a typical school syllabus. in the UK (and probably in the US but i don't know) Children of that age will for axample have basic sex education for example. We could use educational websites as a guide. If it's in the BBC's bysize key stage 2 revision website then it clearly should be in. I honestly don't think that censorship problems will be very much of a problem.
• We will have a link to the childrens version along with the other language version on the wikipedia page. Maybe we could add a logo too to really make it easy for a child to spot. The'll come to the wikipedia page, realise they are out of their depth, see the link and find themselves in a wonderful place where all the information they've ever wanted to know about is at their fingertips. When their mates say "Could you do miss Dragonface's homework, I couldn't find any information on the roman empire in britain on the web" they'll them them about wikikids (or whatever we will call it). Teachers will get to know about the site and recommend it to children and parents.That's how my child found out about yahooligans, and the BBC site Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 08:45, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Parents all have different views as to what is appropriate. I know mothers of 14 year olds taking their kids to clubs and sharing their cigarettes with them. Many kids are taken out of sex ed. lessons because of their religion, or simply because their parents choose not to expose them to that. Some kids know a ton of information about sex, porn and everything related where others are still happy to live in their rainbow-filled world.

The UK government keep changing their mind as to what we should teach to the kids, and many teachers completely ignore that and use their own judgement. Censorship is one of the most difficult topics, especially as time goes by - I heard a presenter say "crap" on Blue Peter recently, and what is acceptable changes all the time.

By all means try a wikikids (please don't call it kidipedia!) and good luck with that, but I think it'll be too much hard work for too little gain. violet/riga (t) 10:20, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Four Separate Wikipedias

from the en:village pump

See: Wikipedia with viewership ratings

Content classification vs. removal

I see Wikijunior (or whatever it will be called) as a project very similar to the Simple Wikipedia, only done with consistent and well-designed policies geared towards kids. I would like to use the criterion of relevant knowledge as opposed to that of age-appropriate information. Both are subjective, but in the former case I believe we can make a lot more consensus-based decisions than in the latter.

To be more precise, on issues like sexual information, opinions and values vary greatly, and not just from country to country. There are different subcultures with very different beliefs about what is and isn't age-appropriate information. Just trying to be somewhere "in between" is something that most publishing houses do, but IMHO we have the tools to do a better job than that.

We don't have to use PICS. We have a category system, and we have user stylesheets. The two combined (with some user interface stuff on top) make for a powerful classification system that can be both page-based and element-based. For example, I could classify a page as [[Category:Description of sexual acts]], and I could choose not to view pages of that category. Or I could mark a diagram of the reproductive organs as such, and hide it from display using stylesheets.

Of course this doesn't address the problem that kids can still see the content if they want to. To address this, we could provide view logins, geared toward different audiences, and describe how people can block anonymous access (directly providing the tools to do so would probably be too controversial among my anti-censorship friends).

For the print edition, I really think we should use printing on demand. There are now several services which offer this without any cost per unit or in advance - they are funded purely through the costs they add on top of every unit. Cafepress is among them. I'm not sure if we can get color printing, this would have to be explored. Print on demand lets us offer multiple editions with a checkbox-like system of what content types to include.

Now, another issue is: What information to include? Should we discuss the creationism/evolution controversy, for example? I would have no fundamental problem with doing so, if done in an NPOV manner, although the "relevant knowledge" criterion could kill it. I would be absolutely against filtering out both topics just because there's a controversy. Knowledge about evolutionary biology is absolutely essential and has to be taught at an early age in order to be a good foundation for future learning.

The details will have to be worked out on the project, perhaps through voting if no consensus can be found. But this is my general principle which I would like to apply to Wikijunior: Do not exclude content just because some people might find it offensive. Instead, include all content that can be considered relevant to kids under different circumstances, and offer different views on this content geared towards different cultures and subcultures.--Eloquence

I believe you're a bit mislead in this Eloquence. I believe this is simply a series of publications, not an entire encyclopedia. Since it isn't a full fledged encyclopedia, we really don't have to worry about sensitive topics like you discuss. However, we may at some point want a sexual education, awareness and safety issue. -- user:zanimum

I can see the online version developing into a fully fledged childrens encylopedia. Why would we want to stop short of that? Theresa knott 01:32, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm not saying it couldn't, and I'm not saying it shouldn't. I'm just saying we should focus more on making a few high-quality issues/editions of this magazine/book series at a time. That content will gradually pile up through time, and turn into a superb encyclopedia. -- user:zanimum

I cant argue with that. And we certainly can start with topics that are unlikely to cause any issues with anyone. Theresa knott 18:42, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Relationship to Wikibooks

This sounds like a great idea, but I just want to make sure that development of this happens at Wikibooks and not a brand new wiki. This is exactly the type of thing Wikibooks should be doing. --Daniel Mayer 17:36, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

But wikibooks is open for anyone to edit. Part 5 of the onlinje projecvt says "The website that is accessible to kids will not be identical to the website accessible to contributors. That will avoid having kids who are just trying to do their homework get caught up in flame wars, personal attacks, and other assorted bullshit (you know exactly what I mean)." How do we do that at wikibooks? Theresa knott 19:56, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with presenting a static version for kids to read. Developement would still happen on Wikibooks. --mav

Development should happen on Wikibooks as it fits precisely its stated purpose. The content once passed as being the right quality would then be transferred to the Wikijunior website. This could happen following voting procedures established for featured articles. The Wikijunior project would thus be a major, even the major sub-project, within Wikibooks. This obviously would prove the Wikibooks concept at the same time. :ChrisG 19:31, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yep - Wikibooks needs a good kick-start. The project has slowed down a lot since its main founder and most active user left. --mav

I've put a note on the staff noticeboard at wikibooks. Hopefully some of the regular contributors will want to register an interest in this project. If development is going to happen there, we can get cracking on the first volume pretty much straight away. Which is cool by me because talk is good, but work is better. Theresa knott 11:35, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

A few thoughts

In reading this material I find that I have become a little warmer to the project than when I first read about it on the mailing list as another Wikispecies where the Board has gone off in its own direction without consulting the masses.

I was also beginning to see the project in a similar way to Mav with Wikijunior being a Wikibooks spinoff well before I reached his comments. One thing that a Wikibook should do is present its material in an organized fashion where the book's structure can give an overall view. A structured Wikibook can be the basis for a structured junior version of the same book.

If we really want to get the project off the ground we need to keep away from the controversial topics for the first few years. I'm ultra-liberal in what I believe should be available to kids, and eventually those subjects should be approached. Nevertheless, until we have built a credibility around the project we are better to avoid these things altogether lest we be remembered only for the controversy. There are many, many subjects that can be worked on in a way that will put our best foot forward.

Just last night I attended a meeting of our School District's Education Committee. (The district is committed to an inclusive approach to education, where opportunity is given for all segments of the community to be heard. I happen to sit as a parent representative on this committee.) At this meeting we had a presentation by two school librarians (one elementary and one secondary) on book selection for school libraries, and the kinds of things that must be considered. It is not enough to randomly select books for a library, but there is a need to serve a wide range of interests and reading levels. Boys are not interested in the same books as girls. Children in one grade may not have the same reading ability, even if their interests are similar. Harry Potter may be popular to kids of a certain age, and the good readers will have no problem with. A poor reader will be unable to manage, and soon get discouraged with attempting to read it. To deal with this there is sometimes a need to direct that child to something similar, where the required language skills are not as onerous. Theresa spoke above about the level of wikipediation that her two daughters have; Wikiholic parents risk breeding wikiholic children. The up side to that is that such children are likely to be good readers and researchers. At the same time I know from my parent association involvement that we are a small minority among parents. We cannot use the example of our own children as representative of what is really happening with children.

To succeed this project will almost certainly need teacher involvement, or at least an understanding of how children learn. We need several books on the same thing, dealing with roughly the same material, but where each is written for the benefit of a particular age group. The question is then how do we present the same material differently enough to satisfy the needs of six-year-old as much as those of a nine-year-old? Eclecticology 22:06, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

(<stands up> My name is theresa and I'm a wikiholic. I last edited wikipedia a few minutes ago <sits down>)My children aren't wikiholics though, my youngest is dyslexic and has only really learned to read properly in the last couple of years, never the less both my children are pretty well educated, and above average intelligence, and you're right, this is probably true of most wikipedians children, because most wikipedians appear to be well educated. Never the less, that doesn't mean to say we can't produce good childrens booklets. I've worked much of my adult life in schools. I'm currently working as a school lab technician though i have done teacher training in the past. I also work in a prep school one day a week as an assitant teacher, which will go up to full time after christmas. (Yes I know prep school kids aren't typical, but they are at least the right age group). Over the years I've produce a sizeable mumber of worksheets, posters and the like and feel i do understand what children like. They are as follows:

1. Pictures. It's no accident that it's first. Good pictures are really important. Children love pictures. Colour photos are the best, also brightly coloured drawings and diagrams.I know b&w is cheaper but children really do like colour.
2. Large font size. Sit a child at a wordprocessor and ask then to type something. First thing they always do is up the font size. 10 or 12 point? No way. They like 14, 16, or even 18. I don't know why this is true, they have better eyesight than adults and can see 10 point font perfectly well. They just like their letters big.
3. Text in manageable chunks. Children are lazy sods by and large.(Aren't we all?)If a section looks like hard work, they more often than not skip it. But small chunks of text, they look easy. Of course when printing, we want as much text on a page as possible, but there are ways round this. Putting text in boxes, or in speech markes, or by annotating diagrams visually chops the text up into easy pieces.
4. Fun and games. Reading is pretty passive stuff. Children like to be active, anything that actively involves them is good. Quizzes, games, cross word puzzles etc anything to get them involved. Paper is meant to be written on.
5. Repitition. Children want a need a lot of repitition in order to learn well. Having said that, they also get bored easily, so repitition has to be handled carefully. Saying the same thing in different ways is a good way to go. So you might say "lions live in savanna" in the main body text, but also show a lion in the savanna as a photo, then have a matching game where children have to match each big cat to their habitat, that sort of thing.

The above applies children of all abilities. But we could cater for different abilities by grading the text according to where it appears. For example the main body text could be aimed at average readers. We could then have a cartoon tiger (for example) say things in speech bubbles. The speech bubble text would be particulaly east to read. A younger child could then choose to ignore the main text and simply look at the pictures and read the speech bubbles. We could then put more difficult ideas in text boxes at the bottom of the page. If the text in the boxes is a little smaller than the main body text, this will give the child a visual clue that this stuff is harder. A bright child might choose to read the text boxes. A less able child might decide to skip them. That we we don't need to get into producing multiple versions of each booklet. User:Theresa knott

Personally, I wouldn't go over 14pt font. This is for 7-12 year old, and too big can only make the content look shabby in their highly critical and judgemental minds.

I don't see the issue here anyone, at any time, can change the font size on their own allready.[[User:BrokenSegue|BrokenSegue]] 12:55, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well yes, but don't forget that we are discussing a print version as well as an online version. Theresa knott 14:06, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You present an interesting concept for including multiple reading levels; it looks part of the whole but isn't. I'm not too sure design wise whether a harder level would look good. I'm speaking layout-wise, not in terms of the obvious educational benefits. Another possibility is just to eventually branched off into multiple magazines. Sesame Street Magazine (preschoolers) brought The Electric Company (5-8?) and 3-2-1 Contact (8-12?). -- user:zanimum

Only one way to find out. Let's try it out and see what it looks like. Wikijunior draft page layout (I'll work on it over the course of the evening.) Theresa knott 16:40, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ok I've finished the draft layout page, to see if the concept works. Let me know what you think. Theresa knott 19:17, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Rethinking the themes

I know the project is being called a series of "booklets", but what is it closer to really-- issues of a magazine or series of books? What I'm asking is whether there's a determined start and end (book), or whether it skips about, looking at little bits of the whole (magazine). If we want a high readership for a magazine format, I advise we don't just focus on one topic topic, like Ancient Egypt or The Solar System.

I personally would try to have themes, like "Leading the Way". It would be a look at leaders and leadership. Democracy, royalty, in various religions, in nature (lions), in businesses, in sports teams (captains), in entertainment (directors, lead actors), in music (the conductor), scouts.

These themes might be harder to come by, but we can almost guarantee that they'll be something that will interest everybody in every issue/edition. -- user:zanimum

Some of those didactic, morally uplifting themes sound too much like telling kids what to do. Eclecticology 23:03, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sigh... Here's a better example... A Canadian series called Timeblazers explores a theme at large each week. Security, transportation, money, health, communication, romance, school. Here's a bad episode guide for the series. http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/EpisodeGuideSummary/showid-20527/Timeblazers/ Essentially, one topic throughout history, how ideas and logic surrounding have changed, and what it means to society as a whole. One additional benefit would be being able to develop a stronger narrative to carry readers. -- user:zanimum

To be honest Zanimum. i'm not convinced. Yes, there might be something to interest everyone, but there also might be a lot of stuff that doesn't interest eack kid. Also I don't think a magazine is the best wat to go. Magazines are usually thrown away once read. Some people do keep magazines, but not many, because you can't easily find information again at a later date. Say for example tyou and me are kids again, and we get into an argument about lions. You say "lions are king of the jungle, so they obviosly live in the jungle. Im pretty sure you are wrong, but you not going to accept the fact on my say so now are you? I need written proof, so off I trot to my bookshelf, where i have loads of booklets. I pick up the one labelled "Jungles" and flick through, hmm no mention of lions there. I Try "big cats" great, it's here. I'm right and you're wrong Yippee! Two booklets took two or three minutes to flick through. I know instantly that there is no point in checking "How aeroplanes fly" or "The tudors" or any of the other hundred booklets that I have on my shelf. That would not be the case with a magazine, I'd have to check every issue. Theresa knott 01:24, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Subscriptions available?

I know it was mentioned that we're aiming to distribute these at a price that a child themselves can afford, which seems to suggest this will be distributed as a magazine, but format wise the project tends to be more like a book. Which format is it closest to, strictly for a distribution standpoint? -- user:zanimum

clearly magazin. format should depend on the price but DIN A4 is prolly the best. If we decide to be our own publisher then subscriptions are the best way to earn money and finance the project. If we can get 100 subscriptions from the beginning we should not care much about other kinds of distribution. --TomK32 WR Internet 21:59, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You're talking about paper size now, with the A4 reference? Also, we're not publishing it in my opinion if we only run 100 issues. We've got to have newsstands and sell it to libraries and schools all across the world. Actually, isn't Jimbo or someone speaking at a librarian's conference? Do you all agree that that would be a good place to promote and network the Wikijunior project? -- user:zanimum

Beck Foundation: where can I find out more about them?

The Beck Foundation doesn't seem to have a website; the most definitive thing I can find is that they offer a scholarship for Purdue. -- user:zanimum

Adult provision

Some things we might consider:

A comic style layout - with speech bubbles - this is fun (even for adults)

Some interesting titles

• "How to hypnotise your cat"
• "Weapons of mass destruction with kitchen ingredients"
• "How to retire by the age of 15"
• "Is Lesbianism for you?"
• "Becoming an Evil Genius for Beginners"
• "Start your own cult"
• "Brain surgery and rocket science for idiots"
• "Hotwiring, lockpicking,and breaking in (or out)"

Comments I like the anon's suggestion, but we can't use Beck money for adult titles. There is nothing however to stop us from creating those titles at wikibooks anyway. They could always be printed at a later date and sold at a small profit hopefully. Theresa knott 11:40, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I doubt the cowardly anon was serious in the first place. And to the anon, the whole maagzine isn't in the format you say it is, only sections are. -- user:zanimum

Naming of contributors

I suggest we put the names of the people who work on the booklets/magazines on the last page of each booklet, as well as a reference to wikibooks and wikimedia. We could put them under titles e.g. authors, copyeditors,fact checkers, layout and designers, photographs and diagrams, and so on. This has two advantages:

1. It ensures compliance with thr GFDL. On the web we can see who wrote a page by clicking on the history page, we can't do that with a book. A link to the relevant wikibooks page will solve that for children with access to the web, but many children who do not have internet access will be able to buy these books.
2. It will IMO be much easier to get people to contribute, if they see their name printed on the book. I'm thinking in particluar of photographs. The thought of having thier phtograph and their name on a book, along with the warm feeling that comes of doing good, is I think plenty of incentive for many people to give thier work away for no payment. Theresa knott 11:58, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, definetly to all the above. There's no way we're going to print the magazine without it, and still expect mainstream acceptance in the industry. Only thing, I was going to create a PDF of the American civics textbook from Wikibooks, but the author only wanted their user name on the cover. Pretty much for that reason, and because people were telling me to wait while things developed, I stopped trying to create the text. That element of trust, if only in a person lacking many credentials, is lost nether-the-less when there are no true credits. -- user:zanimum

Hopefully, most people won't mind putting their real name down. If we expect people to believe what we write, we should be willing to sign it IMO. Theresa knott 02:41, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Alternate text types

If the booklets are going to be produced in a magazine format, it might be good for them to contain a mixture of text types rather than being purely encyclopedic-style text. I don't know how feasible various text types would be. Fiction would be very appealing, but probably the hardest to do. For example a story such as the morning star might fit in well with the section on Venus in the Wikijunior Solar System book. If fiction is going to be too problematic to do collaboratively, there are text types that might be easier that would still add interest to otherwise encyclopedic information. Interviews, diaries, reports etc. Angela 23:59, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think that's a really good idea.We could still get a great deal of educational material over with the different text types. So for an example kiki could interview a cheetah. for the big cats booklet. The cheetah could talk about his life. "Oh yes I am very very fast, well I'm built for it you see. Look at these muscles! Mind you I wouldn't need to be such a fast runner if the thomson gazelles weren't so fast. My they can run. I can barely catch 'em. I usually go for the little ones - they have trouble keeping up with the rest, but even then they often get away" Theresa knott 14:18, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly with everything above. Most kids non-fiction books are in a rather narrative tone, they aren't flat encyclopedia articles. Now, on the topic of Kiki, would you all mind if tried to create a universe for her, some key recurrent friends for example. Like a professor for example, with some sort of "universal translator device" that lets her talk in any language, or to any species. Otherwise, she's Eliza Doolittle mixed with some sort of crazy linguist. On the general topic as a whole, we should balance the magazine-ness layout and formats with book sensibilities and quality. We want these to read like a magazine, but be informative and good enough physical and visual quality that people keep them as they would a book. National Geographic really, but on one topic, and more fun. -- user:zanimum

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Español

I've promoted the project in general, especially the South American book, on the Spanish Wikipedia. I've gotten good response, and pointers to some pictures. -- user:zanimum

I've promoted on the Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese Wikipedia village pump variants since this last post. Each has got a machine translated post say "Wikimedia is making a magazine for children. Wikimedia has a grant from the Beck Foundation to print this magazine. We need anyone with an interest in South America, outer space, or "big cats" (tigers, lions...) . We will need translators in a few months, to translate from the English original. See the English page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikijunior for more information." -- user:zanimum

That is great news. One thing I want to point out though is that more than just translating the English original, we want these languages to develop content independently also and share it with the other languages and groups. This is not just an English project--it should transcend all language boundaries and be a joint effort of Wikipedians everywhere. Danny 23:47, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A very strong Amen The bellman 10:22, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Inadvertent benefits for all Wikipedias

When promoting on the Portugese Wikipedia, I saw someone promoting Wikicommons. Of all the images to show, they chose one of these: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Panthera_tigris_sumatrae , which just made me think-- we can actually inadvertently help out an elsewise stagnent and thus useless project into being more useful, if only in small pockets of knowledge. -- user:zanimum

gfdl

i know, i know, i know, nobody (save trolls and rms) like to talk about copyright law, but as far as i know nobody has raised the issue yet. gfdl is not good for publishing things on dead trees becuase you have to print out the whole freaking multipage license every time. So does anyone know what the status of talks between jimbo, lessig and rms on cc-gfdl compatibility is? and if it doesnt look like these talks will be concluded before we go to print do we want to try dual-licensing what we write under the gfdl and cc (this would mean that we couldn't use anything from the other wikis in Keiki/wikijunior, but also that we could print what we have without printing out a whole license (which no kid is gonna want to have in thier book))? The bellman 04:48, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My guess is it would depend the amount of human resource available to this project. If we are in short of people, we would want to make use of existing wikipedia articles and pictures (though images may trun out to be insufficient in quality for printing). That means the license, history section, etc. should be included into the booklet. If we have plenty of contributors, then we can perhaps create our own from the scratch, dual-license the online concent and print version could be in CC-by or CC-by-sa. Tomos 10:55, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, there's no actual deadline on the grant. We can take as long as we need to create the issues, as I'm sure Beck would appreciate an extended effort more than just plunking in content we already have. -- user:zanimum

From the grant proposal "To launch this project, we would like to release our first pamphlet of 48 full-color pages (8½" by 11") on a topic related to animals by December 2005 (other projects will be released more frequently). As a trial run, we foresee printing 5,000 pamphlets for worldwide distribution." A year and a bit hardly means that we need to be hurrying. But if we want to realease the print version under CC-BY-SA we need to dual license NOW, while we still only have a few contributors, who can all be contacted for consent. The bellman 21:16, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

money

Another general question which may have been answered elsewhere... where is the 10k from the beck foundation going? into general expenses or into printing and disrubuting dead trees or into my bank account? i personaly prefer the last option, but doubt that i could gain consensus for it. The bellman 04:51, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Printing and pre-press. Hopefully we can convince some printers to print at cost. We'll have to figure out the cheapest yet best inks, papers, page size, direct to print/from a series of plates... -- user:zanimum

first three volumes.

I'm confused. are we creating a series of south america keiki/wikijunior/wikiworld books (as in one 48 page book on brasil, one on argentina, etc.) or are we creating one 48 page book with a chapter on brasil, argentina, bolivia, etc.)? the same question goes for the solar system and big cats. If it is just one book per subject area (ie. South america) then we need an introduction to go into the list of contents yes? i didnt want to create these incase i was misinterpreting what we were doing. The bellman 06:04, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it is a 48-page booklet about South America and needs an introduction Danny 12:25, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

thanksfor clearing that up, i was a tad bit confused.The bellman 03:22, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Eclectic topics

I think that we have a terrific market in the making for eclectic topics - stuff more off the beaten path than "big cats" or "the solar system," which, while they are good topics, are perennial kids' favorites that we see all the time. Kids, including ones in family, tend to like funny and unusual topics that are educational without seeming so. How about volumes that could encompass things like Exploding whale or the sort of things on Wikipedia:Unusual articles? Of course, there are a lot of inappropriate things there - but a lot of them could be good for kids' books. Some not quite as unusual but still unique and kid-friendly suggestions for Wikijunior volumes might include "humor" - which could include such good stuff as International Talk Like a Pirate Day or my favorite, No soap radio. A book on the recent history of music could appeal to pre-teenagers, which we certainly have loads of articles on. NPOV encyclopedia-type books for kids about topics like sports, television, and other entertainment topics are a major rarity as well. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that we should take advantage of the topics that Wikipedia covers and the World Book for Kids doesn't and won't. The breadth of unique and interesting topics is one of Wikipedia's big strengths. –Andre (talk) 22:52, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

By book, I mean magazine or whatever this is going to be. –Andre (talk) 22:54, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think that the exploding whale one could be interesting, if we moved away from straight encyclopedic information, and into a lighthearted scientific investigation of why the whales exploded. (en:User:Ta bu shi da yu must be so proud his pet article has almost become the wikpedia mascot.) The bellman 23:56, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If we were a straight magazine, we could devote a bit of space to this, a bit of space to that. Just one country each issue, one animal, one weird thing, one entertainment (which would be regionally changed), one tech toy, one explorer, one innovator. Just a plethora in every issue. However, then people aren't as likely to keep the publication, and it isn't a true reference. Even if you did keep all the issues, it would be hard to find anything. Each variant of the format has its own merits, but which one has more merits is up in the air for me. -- user:zanimum

intended age group.

The grant from the Beck foundation says 8-11 year olds, however them main page says 7-12 year olds. I am personaly of the opinion that a narrower age group will make the writing easier. Was there a reason that the age group got broadened along the way and would anyone have any objections to reinstating the origanal age range? The bellman 04:09, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We got it for 8-11, so we should follow up on that element. We don't want to "re-neg" on promises. And yes, I definetly agree that it would be easier to do. -- user:zanimum

Agreed. –Andre (talk) 15:43, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ok ill change it to 8-11 on the front page. The bellman 21:11, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Kennisnet

Kennisnet is a Dutch website that specialises in info for kids from the primary and secondary schools. They create a lot of content and, they use nl:wikipedia content already. After a discussion with Jimbo, I am going to have some explatory talk with Kennisnet on 15 dec with Oscar, another sysop from nl:.

Please have a look at their site and forward any questions to me :) GerardM 22:16, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for pointing it out. So are you suggesting we partner with them, or what? Also, to anyone criticising Kiki as being insulting to 8-11 year olds, check out http://www.kennisnet.nl/cpb/po/kids/ . -- user:zanimum

There is no partnership yet, they want partners and we can use partners. We are going to explore what is possible. GerardM 14:13, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oh wow, they're actually outright looking for partners? Cool. -- user:Zanimum