Vikidia:Talk/2016/27

Starting from existing articles on other wikis

Hello, many new pages have been created recently and some seem to be copies of other wikis (I didn't check, probably Simple Wikipedia or WikiJunior). 2 remarks about this process:

• Starting from available free content makes sense. Just copying the whole stuff, however, may not bring much added value. In particular, many articles then need to be revised to suit our main target readers (children). It's not just about language complexity, also about the level of details, the length of the article...
• Don't forget to mention the source. There are two main ways to do this:
  • Either the article is inspired by a main source yet written directly for the English Vikidia: in that case mention the main source at the end of the article (example: Help:Wiki syntax).
  • Or the initial version of the article on Vikidia is a copy of (a big part of) an article from an other wiki: in that case, it is better to actually start with an import which fully links to the original article and preserves the article history (example: United States Bill of Rights).

Have a nice week-end. Klipe (talk) 09:15, 9 July 2016 (CEST)

Thank you for your message. I think it becomes clear to every Vikidian this way. I personally think the length of articles don't matters very much. For example the country Sweden. You can write a lot about this country; the history, the geography, but also subjects like politics or economy you can explain to children. I always say, it's the writer of article who can make things interesting. Greece was the last years in the news, cause of the financial crisis. You can write in the words that an adults would use or write in the words that a child will use. What I mean is that adults have (usually) more knowledge than children. To explain some difficult things to children, means sometimes more text and a longer article, and that's of course now problem. Just to clean the air. Good luck, Mike1023 (talk) 17:58, 9 July 2016 (CEST)

I agree, keeping articles short is not a goal as such. Length and complexity are just some of the criteria that we should keep in mind when assessing the value of an article to our readers. A Vikidia article may be long, if very well organised and structured for it to be useful/interesting to children (example: although children won't read fr:Faune d'Europe at once, all of its 191KB (!) make sense thanks to focus and structure). Also, shortening an article doesn't necessarily mean that the information should not be presented somewhere in Vikidia (e.g. the paragraph German language#Authors or poets has been shortened dramatically from what it was in WikiJunior: although it's not the case yet, most removed details should definitely be present in dedicated Vikidia articles about each mentioned author). Similarly, complex words should not be systematically avoided either. Instead, they may deserve explanation. Klipe (talk) 13:34, 10 July 2016 (CEST)

I get it. Mike1023 (talk) 09:34, 14 July 2016 (CEST)

I also agree :-) I would add that children readers ask themself (on the guestbook of Vikidia in French : fr:vd:Livre d'or) for substabtial content (they want to get enought information). Another thing on starting with an import and having the article history : you can import an article (ie. its history) even after it has just been copy-pasted. So just do it if you happen to meet an article that have obviously been copied from Simple WP, without credits. Astirmays (talk) 21:53, 14 July 2016 (CEST)