Talk:Simple English Wikipedia

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This article was nominated for deletion on February 18, 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Removed interwiki 2 Simple Wikipedia of dubious value 2.1 User comment IP confusion 3 Ageist 4 Should go away 5 Should there be a criticism section on this article?

[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)

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)

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)

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.

--Meno25 19:34, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. However, there is one good thing about it: it's often very, very amusing. Specifying that a rapist is "the person who rapes", for example. That makes me laugh. However, the EDUCATIONAL value of the site is almost zero, and I'm fairly certain that it's not there to make bored teenagers laugh (even if that IS the only real purpose it serves). ~Shippinator Mandy ^{(For best results, use twice daily.)} 04:10, 30 December 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)

I agree; the Simple English Wikipedia is a ridiculous idea. It's absolutely patronizing at best, and at worst, it is just a collection (albeit a large one ... see, I couldn't say "albeit" on the simple English wikipedia) of dull blather (hey, couldn't say that either, I guess. Writing in a deliberately dumbed down (not just simplified) manner will not help anyone to learn English. However, I don't think that we can vote for its deletion or take other drastic action from here, the English Wikipedia. So, the question is, to whom do we appeal about this travesty of a project? By the way, take a look at the Simple English article on Sex. It's hilarious.
M412k 17:48, 31 January 2007 (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)

[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)

[edit] Should go away

The Simple English Wikipedia should go the same way Esperanza did here, on English Wikipedia. Totally useless and harmful. The worst thing is that it often uses absolutely unidiomatic, extremely bad "artificially simplified" English. It does a great disservice to all trying to learn English. Avoid it. 131.111.8.96 19:09, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

...It's Esperanto, not Esperanza. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.12.165.191 (talk) 05:20, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

No, I really meant Esperanza. This was a project here on English Wikipedia that existed for some time, and then it was decided that it was detrimental to Wikipedia, and it was discontinued. I wish the same could be done to Simple English. It is just so awful. The articles are absolutely useless, and written for most part in very bad English. It is absolutely of no help for anyone who tries to learn English, on the contrary, whatever "English" they would pick from it would be totally mangled. 131.111.8.99 03:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Should there be a criticism section on this article?

I personally don’t have much of a problem with the Simple English Wikipedia, but whenever I here about the Simple English Wikipedia all I here is about how bad it is. It would be something it was just a few Wikipedians that said a few bad things about it, but I have seen countless people question about it effectiveness or even its existence. Whenever someone suggests a simple Wikipedia in another language all anyone ever dose is say that the simple English one was bad enough and that there didn’t need to be one in another language. The talk page of the simple Wikipedia has a few users trying to vote for deletion. Heck even this talkpage has people complaining about it. There’s just too much criticism about the simple Wikipedia to go unnoticed in this article. I would add a section myself, but I wouldn’t be able to cite my sources or make it sound unbiased enough. I would really like it if someone with better editing skills add this section for me.--66.176.63.70 02:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)