Wikibooks talk:What is Wikijunior

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Okay everybody. What is Wikijunior? --xixtas 19:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The cynic in me says that Wikijunior is the abandoned effort for fundraising by certain members of the WMF board of trustees in their attempt to try and kiss the behinds of a couple of wealthy benefactors who gave some money back elsewhen for a cool idea called "Wikijunior", but has since been taken over by Wikibookians and changed to their own devices and goals. The money collected was spent on some crazy party that seemed cool at the time, but nobody remembers what really happened.

A more sincere and apologetic response would be that Wikijunior represents an attempt to create books that are oriented toward children, with an eye toward creating high quality content over starting a whole bunch of random stubs that are half-started. The money raised in various fundraisers was used to finance the bandwidth and hosting costs of this project.

There are many good intentions with Wikijunior, but I would have to say that this project needs to find a new focus and goal in many ways. There is some incredible content that has been created under the "Wikijunior" brand, and it should also be noted that in many ways Wikijunior represents a completely seperate Wikimedia project that just happens to be using Wikibooks as an internet hosting service.

That so many of the Wikijunior books have also achieved "Book of the Month" status shows something of the quality that this content has already reached, and that there may be some merit to the slow growth development style. But this slow growth does have its own costs as well.

For where to take this page, that is a good question. I've been a long critic of Wikijunior being hosted on Wikibooks for the reason that such projects should be on something like the Incubator Wiki (that was finally created!) Still, it is here on Wikibooks, and for now I can live with that. There are areas of Wikijunior that need development and improvement, and this page may be a good place to start. --Rob Horning 01:21, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Before I started this recent effort I thought long and hard about whether moving Wikijunior forward was worth the effort. My eyes are wide open. I have seen what I perceive to be substantial indifference to this project from every quarter. But I believe in the idea that quality free content for kids makes the world a better place. This project has made a start on 14 useful open-content titles for kids. That's nothing to sneeze at. I am an idealist at heart. After careful deliberation, I believe that Wikijunior can accomplish important things, and this is step one. The community needs to decide what Wikibooks Wikijunior should be. Step two we can figure out once we know the outcome of step one. --xixtas 03:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

As has been said elsewhere I don't do policy however to me Wikijunior is the flagship part of Wikibooks. It is tightly focused, well maintained and has good (generally consistent) contributors. May not help you but my 0.02 anyway --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Herby, that's a very nice thing to say. We do have some great contributors here who are not at all indifferent. Forest for the trees and all. --xixtas ^talk 02:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

My stance is the following: I am a casual contributor to the wiki* projects and I have only recently started contributing to Wikijunior which is why I do not have strong sentiments towards the relationship of wikibooks and wikijunior. My general feeling, however, is that it is of mutual benefit (I for one thing have found my way to junior through books). Sboehringer 11:18, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, the policy is quite good. At the moment I don't see any ideas for improvements in it.

Speaking about Wikijunior - is there any sense in discussing here whether Wikijunior should be a part of Wikibooks? Such things are always decided on Meta Wiki. My personal view is that there is no reason for separating Wikijunior from Wikibooks. When Wikijunior and Wikibooks exist on the same wiki, there is a greater chance that users of one get involved in another. As a significantly smaller wikiprojekt, Wikijunior would only benefit from larger community of Wikibooks. Splitting projects is always an inconvenience: you have to register on another project and learn how to deal with a new community. Keeping dividing projects into small ones is a road to nowhere for me. --Derbeth ^talk 20:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any great advantage to splitting the projects apart. Personally I don't have the time or energy to launch a wikiproject. We do need to launch a separate child's portal that will be unlike anything else on any other mediawiki project (so far as I know), but I think we can do that and continue developing content here. --xixtas ^talk 02:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I like the proposed policy and believe that it pretty much encompasses the aims and spirit of the Wikijunior Project. If i may make a suggestion, though only a little one, could we change any instance of the word 'kid' to 'child' and 'kids' to 'children'. Just for consistencies sake and no other. However I am impressed by the policy proposed here. And i agree with you there Xixtas, we need to work on a portal for accessing the Wikjunior projects for children to use, something simple but striking. Urbane (Talk) (Contributions) 17:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

To my mind "kids" and "children" are synonyms and that change doesn't change the meaning of the policy in any meaningful way. Go ahead and change it. If you want to note that you specifically favor that revision then you could just include the number of the revision you favor in your comments. I don't think anyone would object to such a change. --xixtas ^talk 03:14, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clarify "Kid friendly"

I think we should clarify the "kid friendly" part of this policy to show explicitly that WJ books are censored by the community for the protection of minors. Alternatively, this could be an addition to the bottom of the page or something. If we do say that WJ is censored, however, we have to make it clear that the censoring process is not immediate, nor is it a guarantee or a statement of liability. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree something needs to change if WJ is intended to be censored. I'm not so sure if a liability statement is needed specifically for WJ. I think the general disclaimer, and other disclaimers apply to WJ as much as it does to the rest of Wikibooks. I think if a statement about censoring WJ is added it also needs to be clear on what types of censoring is appropriate or not, or how its decided whether its appropriate to censor something. I'm in favor of adding it as an addition to the bottom of the page rather then changing the meaning of kid-friendly. --darklama 18:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that we may be getting hung up on the word "censored". The objective is to create kid friendly content (in every sense.) This means content that is inappropriate for kids should not be included and must be removed. What is inappropriate? well, offensive racist or intolerant hate speech, gratuitous or prurient sexual content, gratuitous violence, instructions for doing or making things which are very dangerous or widely illegal... Those are three off the top of my head. I'm not sure how much of this isn't already covered by WB:NPOV and the stipulation that Wikibooks doesn't allow fiction. I don't object to adding a stipulation that Wikijunior is censored (meaning doesn't allow certain types of content) for the protection of minors but I'm not convinced that it's necessary. Is there really confusion about this? --xixtas ^talk 00:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Well after your crude statement on VfD about censorship, and trying to put a stop to any suggestion of it being otherwise, yes I think clarification is needed. Different people have different views on whats appropriate for children or whats kid-friendly. I think kid-friendly basically says to write in a way that is understandable for children and will be enjoyed by children. The same issues of being dangerous and illegal that apply to Wikibooks as whole apply to children books, even more so because you not only have different laws which don't apply everywhere, but you also have different cultures and views on parenting. Children can be exposed to all the things you used as examples and may be something that some parents might feel ought to be discussed in a book here for children to read, rather then simply ignored or censored, and may be perfectly legal to do. --darklama 01:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand where you're coming from at all. So if someone starts a "Wikijunior Illustrated Guide to Sexual Positions" we shouldn't even be allowed to discuss whether it's appropriate? Because you assumed (incorrectly) that the phrase "kid friendly" only applied to style issues and not content? (even though content is discussed in the second sentence following that bullet point.) Again, I don't understand it. I still don't see the value in adding more legalistic verbiage to this policy. --xixtas ^talk 02:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Just to be absolutely clear, the policy already says that content in Wikijunior should be kid friendly. It's like you're not recognizing that it already says that. --xixtas ^talk 04:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)