Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Larger suggestions/Wikipedia kids app

Wikipedia kids app

  • Problem: Children cannot easily consume Wikimedia content.
  • Proposed solution: Create a Wikipedia mobile app for kids with features like:
    • Articles derived from Simple Wikipedia.
    • By default the app has no censorship, however, parents can set censorship filters if wanted.
    • Daily fun facts
    • Kid-friendly topic portals
    • Image-based informational storybooks/slideshows (Wikistories)
    • Games
    • Maybe early-education Wikiversity courses?
  • Who would benefit: Children
  • More comments:
    • Maybe this could turn into a completely new Wikimedia project with a website? Who knows?!
    • Please comment below other features you think this could have!
    • See the Basque Wikipedia's kids portal: eu:Txikipedia:Azala
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Sea Cow (talk) 06:25, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • Building an entire new app AND what is essentially a new 'wiki', seems a bit outside of the scope of the wishlist. I mean i'd love to see it too, but.... Anyway, I think this could be easily prototyped by someone as a website, which pulls from different parts of our wiki eco system. Projects like these need people who are personally invested into making them succeed I think. Better one dedicated volunteer with a vision and some tech skills, then a group of random developers. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 10:09, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, and I think that what you proposed in term of engagement etc. is actually better than lots of the 'wikikids'-wiki proposals I've seen out there. Also makes sense to do that on mobile, the kids I know seem to only use iPads/phones, I've only seen them use Chromebooks for school when they become 12yo or something. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 10:12, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Apparently out of TechCom's scope. Creating another app is something to be decided by WMF and its Board of Directors. Right? George Ho (talk) 08:28, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think what is needed is to cut down the scope of this proposal heavily in order to fit into community tech wish list. I see the proposal can be cut down to only "Adding children mode into the existing wikipedia app" with main features needed including "sensitive content filter", "access time limitation", "article reading history report", as well as "random DYK articles". But even just these aspects are already quite complicated by community tech standard. C933103 (talk) 22:36, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • OOS per George Ho, can someone please move this to Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Archive? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:42, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hello and thanks for taking the time to write this proposal. Echoing what folks said here, this is definitely out of scope for our team but an idea that's valid nonetheless. I am therefore moving it to the Larger Suggestions Category. Thanks again! Regards, NRodriguez (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Simple English Wikipedia is constantly short of editors; for this reason, things like "Portals" don't really exist. The "Fun facts" take at least a month to compile; of course Wikipedia isn't censored, so the "access restrictions" will be difficult to implement there. As long as there are not more editors on SEWP, this is not realistic.-Eptalon (talk) 22:34, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Eptalon Ya I see this too. The creation of this app might encourage editors to contribute. Though, I don't think we should build something when the content isn't even there to support it yet. We're going to have to find a better way to encourage contributions to Simple or come up with some other way to deliver simplified content. Lectrician1 (talk) 11:16, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • FYI, Txikipedia exists in Basque, this is something you can do without asking the WMF to. There's also an app for Txikipedia (links in the main page). -Theklan (talk) 08:10, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Voting