Social:Vikidia

Vikidia is an online encyclopedia written for children and teenagers and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as vikidians, through open collaboration. Vikidia is available in 17 languages. Created by Mathias Damour on November 14, 2006, and currently administered by the Vikidia Association (a non-profit organization).

Vikidia owned as of August 2022 in 17 languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, English, Russian, Catalan, Sicilian, German, Basque, Greek, Armenian and Portuguese with dynamic communities that, for the most part, also contribute to others wikis of movement. For most young collaborators, Vikidia is their first step into the wiki world, before they start writing on Wikipedia and other sister projects. In Italy, much work is done in schools with courses for teaching students. In October 2020, Vikidia signed an agreement with Wikimedia France to promote this encyclopedia in the school environment as an alternative to Wikipedia for educational projects with an audience of young teenagers or children, who are too young to contribute a Wikipedia.

History

Based on the proposal of a user of the French Wikipedia, the possibility of building a encyclopedia for children between the users themselves was evaluated. To do this, some articles from Wikipedia would be selected and adapted to a children's audience. This discussion carried over to other language versions of Wikipedia as well.

One of the users attached to this project, Mathias Damour (registered under the name of Astirmays), differed in that the texts should be corrected a priori instead of being created and edited by the children themselves, not believing to see a close agreement in said discussion. That is why on 17 November 2006, autonomously and independently of the Wikimedia Foundation, opened the wiki Vikidia.

• In May 2008, Vikidia in Spanish (es.vikidia.org) was created. The same year saw the publication of the first book mentioning Vikidia.
• On April 9, 2011, the Vikidia association (association law of 1901) was created and became the owner of Vikidia.
• In April 2012, Vikidia in Italian (it.vikidia.org) was created. In November of the same year, Vikidia in Russian (ru.vikidia.org) was born.
• In December 2013, Vikidia in English (en.vikidia.org) was created.
• In June 2015, the community opened up to two other languages: Sicilian and Basque.
• In June 2016, Vikidia launched an edition in Catalan.
• In August 2017, Vikidia in German opens after three years of discussions. Two months later, Vikidia in Armenian is created.
• In May 2018, Vikidia in Greek was created.
• In February 2021, Vikidia in Portuguese is created. In December of the same year, Vikidia in Occitan was launched.

Policies

Vikidia's conventions, rules and policies, just like Wikipedia, are different in their different language versions.

However, the different versions agree that these conventions, rules and policies are established by the project participants themselves, through a community consensus.

At Vikidia in Spanish, the number of policies is limited to the way of writing and illustrating the contents of the site and a guide on proper behavior within the site.

License

Vikidia uses the Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0 license and maintains the GNU Free Documentation License for some of its articles. Like Wikipedia, it accepts the use of content that possesses equal or compatible licenses.

Relations with other projects

A link to WikiKids is on the Vikidia homepage.

Vikidia in French is greatly supported by Wikimedia France, although the project is not part of the Wikimedia movement.

See also

• Popularization
• List of wikis
• Simple English Wikipedia

External links

• – multilingual portal (contains links to all language editions)