Talk:Simple English Wikipedia
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[edit] Removed interwiki
This might be controversial (if anything about stubs can be), but the interwiki that went to simple:Simple English Wikipedia is a redirect to simple:Wikipedia:Simple English Wikipedia. That's a projectspace article, an introduction - it's not written from a perspective of neutrality and verifiability, like our article on Wikipedia is, and so I don't think it should be interwikied. There is, of course, now a link to that article that I used to reference the project's stated aims. --Sam Blanning(talk) 22:42, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Simple Wikipedia of dubious value
Having just discovered the existence of Simple Wikipedia I must say that I question the value of the whole project. When I was at school my reading progress was helped by simply reading the adult papers and other information; although learning is helped by initial simplicity I didn't think that wikipedia was a language school. It might be said "just don't contribute, then" but I feel that these parallel projects drain effort from the main idea with little benefit. I have also no intention of registering separately for the Simple offshoot and coming back to the "Real" one. Sorry but as far as I can see it's wasted effort. Britmax 13:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
- You're not alone. A large number of people who have tried out the Simple English Wikipedia have questioned its value: it's populated largely by people who a poor grasp of English writing for other people who have a poor grasp of English, the end result of which is that silly errors and ambiguities end up being propagated all over the site as people learn "better" English in the worst possible way, all while filling the site with low-quality writing that is often not really any "simpler" than the normal English Wikipedia. And it's also true that a lot of much-needed activity is taken away from the English Wikipedia by this project (though at least it's not too much activity, thanks to the project's unpopularity). Even the "having a shorter version of each article" concept itself is dubious, since most people seem to think that it would make more sense to just use the lead section of high-quality articles for that purpose, should we ever need shortened versions of articles. -Silence 14:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
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- I agree. Surely it would benefit users with a poor grasp of English more to look up unfamiliar words they find in the "real" Wikipedia and expand their vocabulary in the process, rather than get sheltered in a little cocoon of familiar words, where they'll understand the whole passage at first glance, but won't actually learn anything? 218.212.119.149 10:14, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
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- I agree completely. It's like the blind leading the blind - their grasp of English is as bad as that of those who're going to read the articles. Not only will this lead to a lot of poor articles scattered everywhere, as you said, it is going to undermine effective comprehension of the articles by readers, who are trying to learn English. After all, I do not think that readers with a poor grasp of English can understand articles with a low English standard. It only serves to confuse them. 202.156.6.54 12:56, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
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- Me, too. I agree that the simple English Wikipedia is of no value. It distracts users. It wasts the efforts of the Wikipedia community. Wikipedia is not a school to learn languages.
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--Meno25 19:34, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] User comment IP confusion
Yesterday, I posted the last comment under 'Simple Wikipedia of dubious value', the one posted at 10:14, 2 August 2006 (UTC). Unfortunately, there was an edit conflict and a comment with the exact same wording (above) was posted by 218.212.119.149. There was only one version of the comment. I'm not accusing anyone of anything but can someone please get this cleared up? Thanks. 202.156.6.54 12:39, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I myself was curious about simple english wikipedia, so I looked up some article. They were poor quality, full of idiotic circumlocutions. But the best was this: "Diabetes means a disease where people make more urine than usual.". Frigo 10:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Ageist
Does anyone else think referring to children as one of the people who WILL need Simple English Wikipedia constitutes ageism? After all, not ALL children choose SWP over WP, and to say so would be to assume that all of them have a certain language standard. But this is only my opinion, so please comment! 202.156.6.54 10:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
