Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Larger suggestions/Wikipedia kids app

This proposal is a larger suggestion that is out of scope for the Community Tech team. Participants are welcome to vote on it, but please note that regardless of popularity, there is no guarantee this proposal will be implemented. Supporting the idea helps communicate its urgency to the broader movement.

Random proposal ►◄ Larger suggestions The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

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 (talk • contribs) 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 (talk • contribs) 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

Support Sounds lovely- would really encourage learning + provide an app for those parents that somehow maintain the insane belief that Wikipedia is unreliable Bristledidiot (talk) 19:07, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Maybe we could replace some words with other easier to understand ones Rzzor (talk) 19:49, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support (As creator) Sea Cow (talk) 23:52, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Lectrician1 (talk) 00:10, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support This would need to have a team dedicated to it, but could be incredibly valuable to new generations. "no censorship by default"; I would say is a little broad. I would think the app would censor what is shown by default. People could tag articles as "safe for children" or "not safe for children" and parents could enable or disable, etc.. Fazart (talk) 00:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with this is the following: at least internally, you need two users, one or more users 'Parent1..n' who could set the information of what is acceptable for user child to see. Then perhaps 2-3 different "levels of settings":

1) Age group: (3-5,)5-7, 7-9, 9-11,11-15,15-18

2) Different "Knowledge groups": Animals, Geography, People, Customs,...

3) Perhaps a negative list: no nudity, no atheism, no new religious movements, only christianity-related articles about religion.

etc.

No first of all: all these groupings need to be done using manual (or more likely: automatic) filtering. If your girl searches for bikini, do you want her to also be able to see information about 'micro bikinis' (they were developed by nudists in the US, because some states outlawed nudism), or pasties (even more minimal?). Or just information about the Bikini atoll (where nuklear tests were done, in the late 1940s-1980s, and local population was chased away, and some islands won't be habitable for a long time, see the dome they bulit on Runit island where they pur 'radioactive material')? - Note that the way the Wiki is built, there can be links from any article to any other article. So if your kid can see bikinis but not micro-bikinis, how would you make it obvious for them that 'micro-bikini' is off limits?

Note: no matter how it is implemenzed, the 'permissible-content-selction' needs to be done in the Application, and not on any of the Wikipedia projects. It might be difficult/ewrror prone to implement. Eptalon (talk) 20:53, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Klein Muçi (talk) 01:22, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Hanif Al Husaini (talk) 01:40, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support War (talk) 03:54, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ottawajin (talk) 05:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tranhaian130809 (talk) 11:09, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Veilure (talk) 01:43, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - While the content may be there (for English), I do not see enough editors willing to contribute (as editors). In addition, the idea of 'customizable-content-selection' is non-trivial to implement, and I currently do not see the manpower available. As noted above: In my opinion, 'content-selection'/'censorship' needs to be implemented off-wiki (that is: in the app).-Eptalon (talk) 21:04, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Libcub (talk) 01:11, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support daSupremo 04:27, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 19:34, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose KingAntenor (talk) 07:16, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose --Serg!o (talk) 11:29, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Syced (talk) 10:50, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wikipedia Kids (or euwiki has tikipedia) can be a learning material for children at school. Thingofme (talk) 13:14, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 19:12, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Daniel Case (talk) 19:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support ChhTJ096 (talk) 19:42, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]