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Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Simple English Wikipedia (3)

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This is an archived version of this page, as edited by TonyBallioni (talk | contribs) at 15:13, 20 June 2018 (→Survey: rmv LTA vote). It may differ significantly from the current version.

This is a proposal for closing and/or deleting a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is subject to the current closing projects policy.

The proposal is currently open for discussion by the community.

Proposal

I will try to keep it simple, and the most simple TL;DR thing to say is - the king is naked and SEW is effectively useless. It was, certainly, a good intention (a project whose target audience are "people with different needs, such as students, children, adults with learning difficulties, and people who are trying to learn English".), but queue in the proverb about good intentions. More than 10 years on, there is no proof that the project is reaching its target audience; on the contrary, it is doubtful it is used by anyone - it's a curio visited by its small group of volunteers and occasionally some random person stumbles upon it, looks around bewildered, and heads back to the much more comprehensive English Wikipedia. I have been teaching students at university in English in South Korea, and not once have I found a student (or a single regular person in Korea or Poland, outside Wikipedia volunteers) who knows of this project. SEW does not show up in Google (or other) search engines, and remains a curiosity, known to some people in the Wikipedia movement - but, again, not to its intended audience.

Now, closure doesn't mean the end of the idea of helping special audiences. We can do it better - in the place which is known to those audiences, i.e. English Wikipedia itself. The best solution would be to integrate it into English Wikipedia through a new tab or prominent button. Nobody clicks on the SEW interlanguage link, and hence very few people, including SEW target audience of ESLs and other special audiences, is aware of it and benefits from the effort of SEW volunteers. So instead of the intuitive 'object, don't close my beloved project', please consider a conditional support 'close if En Wiki gets a new feature to showcase SE content'). INHO this would be the ideal outcome, and then this closure proposal, while put on hold, could be brought to WMF and En Wiki community to discuss how to implement such a feature.

Few other points.

How do you know almost nobody is using this project? Impact comparison: page views for Donald Trump on SE: 187 a day ([1]), vs EN Wiki: 50,963 [2], so that's a ratio of 1:1000, roughly. If the project was used by ESLs, who outnumber native speakers by ~10x or so, those numbers would be widely different. But they are not.

Another dimension: SEW school projects list on average one educational project a year: [3]. En wiki gets dozens if not hundreds of such projects every year ([4] is obsolete, but see [5] for a newer version - note how many of those projects are from ESLs (through not all target En wiki)). The point here, is, again, that as a platform to engage ESL students, SEW has failed. Instructors who want to use Wikipedia in education will do so on normal Wikipedia, not on the obscure and unknown SEW.

But what about the claim from English Wikipedia that "Material from the Simple English Wikipedia forms the basis for One Encyclopedia per Child,[ a One Laptop per Child project"? en:One Laptop per Child is a nice imitative, but I have not been able to find any studies or data suggesting its use of SEW is significant. They have been using SEW content for 10+ years - without so much as a single academic study suggesting or confirming it is a good idea. Without scholarly analysis, we cannot say that SEW has educational benefits, one could just as well argue that it gives readers a dumbed down, poorly referenced/written version of content they need. If SEW was really useful, it would be more popular.

An overview of scholarly literature on SEW, again, does not show any indication that the project is useful to its target audience, the few academic papers that discuss it do so generally from the computer science/linguistics perspective, using its simplified word data set for some lingustica/cs analysis like: [6]. This suggests that the only real world group that finds some moderate use of this projects are a few lingustic/computer science scholars who have a new dataset to play with. While as a scholar myself I appreciate new data sets, I don't think a project whose only effective use is allowing few scholar to publish some obscure research is what we should be supporting.

What do we lose by allowing SEW to exist? There are few dozens if not hundreds volunteers involved in this project, creating content of very little, if any, impact. Their work should would be much more beneficial (to the entire world, including the SEW target audiences of ESLs and others, who - again - generally are not aware of SEW existence, and use En Wiki anyway) if it was incorporated with en Wiki. Some of those volunteers are clearly confused; just a few days ago I copied content from SEW about en:Lee Sang-Bong, an article that should've been created on en wiki, and that does not seem particularly 'simply written' to me. In addition to misdercting few hundred of volunteers into creating content of little impact, maintaining its infrastructure/views does consume some (if small) portion of WMF budget. Those donations are a limited resource, and even if this project effectively costs [insert random small sum here], this money could be spend on something that is actually useful to a wider group (ex. readers of English Wikipedia, which, yes, I am repeating myself, include majority of SEW target's audience).

It is also worth nothing that SEP suffers from spam. I run a query on Wikidata for articles missing from En wiki that are on simple, and indicative - the first three hits were two deleted articles (en:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amir Talai, en:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joe Maggard (3rd nomination)) and one that was a redirect (en:Brenda Ann Spencer).

Bottom line, SEW volunteers may think they are helping ESLs or people with special needs, but they are not, because those people don't know about SEW. They are, therefore, sadly enough, effectively wasting their time. Once the project is merged to En Wiki and closed, they can continue their efforts to improve content of interest to those people, simplify jargon per MoS, or such, on En Wiki.

One final note. I intend no disrespect to the volunteers who created and maintain SEW. Their heart is in the right place, but I do believe that their efforts are misguided and end up creating a trivial site, not something that is useful to the people they intend to help. There is some value in simple explanations of articles, but if you consider [7] or [8], note that they suggest that SEW is/should be a feature of English Wikipedia. To some degree, this is a feature issue, SEW simplified versions of articles would be much more useful if they could be accessed from some prominent button on English Wikipedia (nobody looks at the language links to find SEW link...). If SEW volunteers care about having an impact and getting their efforts to the target audiences, they should support this proposal, perhaps conditionally on En Wiki adding a new, prominent feature, something like 'read a Simple English version of this article'. The effective way of bringing SE content to the wider world has to be done through the site that the world uses (i.e. English Wiki). Ending on that hopefully more constructive thought, Piotrus (talk) 08:42, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there. I am probably one of the oldest contributors (who still edits) Simple Wikipedia, and I have been with the project since the end of 2006. Over the least years I have seen that there is a growing knowledge that SEWP exists within the community; I think there have been (failed) proposals to start with similar ideas for French and German language Wikipedias. Many editors I have known from EnWP have an ambivalent, to hostile attitude towards SEWP, its editors, and its users. In that context, I cannot see how the project could be "absorbed" into EnWP. Yes, SEWP faces the problem of visibility, but I guess thats common to most smaller Wikis. How many editors are there for the Latin language, Scots, Gaelic, or Alemannic Wikipedias? - How many times have the closure of the respective projects been discussed? Another problem I see: How many editors care about readablity? - If the article is about mathematics, put the formulas, they stand for themselves? Compare simple:Navier–Stokes equations to en:Navier–Stokes equations, and tell me how much a person that is not in natural sciences will understand from each version? - In my opinion, many editors of ENWP have lost the interest in explaining concepts, so that a common audience can understand them. The result is, that ENWP has many poor quality articles, which are not improved, because quality is not enforced. SEWP has a small base of quality aware editors, so that the rate of poor quality article is probably lower. Simple English Wikipedia is about explaining concepts well, it is not so much about using word-lists. A word list won't help when it comes to scientifically accurate articles. SEWP has an issue with visibility; it does not have one with content. "Merging" SEWP into ENWP will not solve the problem. It will increase the problem, because as I pointed out, many editors of ENWP lack the interest and incentives to write scientifically accurate articles that a common person with no specialized ___domain knowledge can understand. In short: Merging won't work. Even if the userbase is small,the project has found its niche, and I don't think it should be deleted, for the reasons given. --Eptalon (talk) 10:29, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Before I forget: Being featured in pages like XKCD shows that the project has a certain visibility outside the community. --Eptalon (talk) 11:10, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
EnWiki is big and some people are hostile to anything new. But that doesn't change the fact that SEW niche is too niche to be useful to pretty much anyone. Other languages are not a valid comparison, as they are, well, other languages. Simple English is a variant that can be, with some support from MediaWiki coders, incorporated into English Wikipedia. If you care about SEW content, you should care to make it as visible as possible. And the only way to make it visible (and hence, useful) is to make it a feature of En Wiki. Please don't think about losing identify, or project history, or such. This shouldn't matter, our main concern should be the benefits for the reader. My Korean students would certainly enjoy reading SEW articles which are more suited to their language level than general En Wiki articles, but there is no way they'll start using SEW because it has so little visibility it doesn't come in search engines. It's time to fix this. Let's not assume En Wiki will be by default hostile to absorbing SEW content. If this is done as a cool new feature (a new tab, perhaps), or such, majority should be ok. --Piotrus (talk) 11:10, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The idea that it doesn't come up in search engines is just plain false, it is often the first hit for a number of subjects. Or at the very least the link right below the English one. So that is an idea that needs to be nipped in the bud right away. And yes other languages are a valid comparison as Simple English has recently been recognized as a distinct language with its own ISO code. So it is no different than the variants of other languages that Eptalon mentions below that have even less of an audience than we do. -Djsasso (talk) 14:25, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
What is the ISO code? I couldn't find one. Note: ISO 639–6 has been withdrawn, and LangCom doesn't use it. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:47, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Your claim that no one uses it is also false. You used the example of simple:Donald Trump, which is quite misleading. I was actually surprised at how little Donald Trump was viewed, but it is not like that on other pages in the SEW. The article Names of God in Islam receives a daily average of 1791 daily views. The English Wikipedia article Names of God in Islam receives an average of 526 daily pageviews. Recently when Donald Trump announced the proposal of the U.S. Space Force, Military of the United States was viewed 6,530 times. This is not as insignificant as you make it out to be in your examples. Furthermore, this year the Simple English Wikipedia has received an average of 614,344 daily page views. If you look at the all-time graph, you'd see a steady increase in average daily page views. See this graph comparing the SEW (52nd largest wiki) to the 51st, 50th, and 49th largest Wikipedias. Regarding you saying "there is no way they'll start using SEW because it has so little visibility it doesn't come in search engines", could I ask what search engine they're using? I just tested it on computers/browsers that I've never used to edit, and in many cases it shows up on the first or second page of results. Vermont (talk) 16:44, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Alemannic is one of the many dialects of German; there are no discussions to merge it into German language Wikipedia. As to the different varieties of Gaelic, how many of them have subprojects? - Scots, Irish, possibly Manx, and the variant in Brittany? - Should we therefore have one Wiki for "Gaelic", rather than three or four? - about ten million people have a passive knowledge of Plattdeutsch, about two million speak it natively. Is this reflected in the number of editors we have for Plattdeutsch? (and yes, with some effort it could probably be merged with the Dutch language Wiki). So please stop arguing that a project should be closed because it has little visibility; you had rather work towards increasing its visibility. --Eptalon (talk) 11:40, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've been with Simple English wiki since 2009, and contributed about 2,600 articles, and over 60k article edits. To start with, the comparison with Donald Trump is misleading, because the top few En wiki articles are flushed by transient hits caused by notoriety. I kept records for many years of the simple pages I had written, especially the ones I had written without using copy-text from En wiki. I found the ratio was roughly 50 to one: there are about 50 En wiki hits to every one on Simple.
I edit subjects which are on basic school and university curricula, and try to write them much more simply that their counterparts on Englosh wiki. I always have been utterly shocked at the poor standard of prose written on En wiki. There are some exceptions, of course, and some whole areas where the contributions are superb. Music on En wiki is one example. But overall, the general standard is below poor. It is common to find sentences so long that it's clear the writer has completely lost track of where he started. Basic concepts are not explained properly. This is especially damaging where the topic is one which will occur on school syllabi. In fact, every possible error in writing prose can be liberally found on En wiki pages.
Moving on, moving on... The other topic is the link between a given article on En wiki and its counterpart in Simple. Many of us pleaded for putting the link for Simple at the top of the list of languages on En wiki pages. This was rejected. Now we get buried near the bottom of the list. Anything which improves the connection is to be welcomed.
Though it's only a minor point, remember that no branch of wikipedia has any effective kind of audience research. We don't even know who the users are! If we want to improve wikipedias in general, that is the place to look. It would be a major enterprise, of that I am sure. But it is the weak spot of all open wiki systems that they cannot know whether they achieve what they set out to do. If you think I'm exaggerating, have a look at the kind of developmental research done in programmed learning, and by the childrens' television workshop. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:59, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I mentioned Alemannic (als), Latin(la), and Scots wikipedia further up. Looking at the number of daily page views they are a factor of 20 behind SEWP (In the order of 10-20k, compared to the 500k of SEWP). Just for clarity... --Eptalon (talk) 18:26, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just have a very quick observation. There is a Wikipedia in Northern Sami. (se.) To the last data available (which is 20-30 years old), there are about 10-11 samic languages. These languages form two or three large groups; languages within the group are mutually understandable, those from another group need a lot of training/ exercise. Some of the languages had as little as 20 speakers (at the time the data was collected, that is either 1993 or 2002). In total, there were about 25.000 speakers of Samic languages; about 60% of them also understood Northern Sami. I could now argue that the about 7.000 people who did not understand Northern Sami, would proably not be able to profit from Northern Sami Wikipedia, and that Northern Sami Wikipedia should be closed down... And yes, ISP 639 has 11 (3-letter) codes for the different Sami Dialects. Different Sami dialects are recognised minority languages in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Lets now assume that we capture 5% of the Sami people with our project. This would make almost 2.000 potential editors. Closing down Northern Sami would be amlost painless, yet, some people at the foundation consider Wikipedia to have a mission. Even if only very little money is spent on Northern Sami Wikipedia, its editor is much more valuable...--Eptalon (talk) 18:03, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

  • Support closing it. Simple is more effort than it is worth to maintain. I support maintaining it while we have it, but what it basically is now is a playground for vandals, spambots, LTAs, and people who have been blocked from various other WMF wikis to try to prove that they should be unblocked on their home wiki. It takes up more volunteer time than it provides value. For what it’s worth, en.wikinews is probably a better candidate for closing first, but simple still shouldn’t exist. Also, to the comments above about would we shut down other small language Wikis, well, that's the thing: Simple English isn't a language group. We already have a Wikipedia for English. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:17, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose It's viewed by over a half million people daily, has over 130,000 articles, and provides useful content for many. I see no reason to close it, and the vandal/LTA issue is managed without issue. There are vandals on all Wikipedias; it's no reason to warrant closing an entire project. Vermont (talk) 17:49, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Saying that it's a "breeding ground for the worst parts of the internet" is exaggerating the issue exponentially. It is not causing enough disruption to warrant closing the project. Vermont (talk) 17:59, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Also keep in mind that although some LTA's may use it to vandalize people's talk pages and harass them, if this project is closed because of it the main effect will be the exact opposite of WP:DENY, as it'll give the LTA's a sense of victory, and all they'll do is move to another wiki. Just yesterday, I blocked an account on simple.wikipedia and they began harassing me by editing my commons and cy.wiki talk pages. Vermont (talk) 18:43, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
comment view count in this context is pretty meaningless and should be taken with a grain of salt. Look at the spambot filters for any given project. Chrissymad (talk) 17:52, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Could I ask why this time is wasted? There are dozens of of other Wikipedias with a lot of volunteer time spent on it and mostly all of them have less of an audience than the SEW. Are you suggesting that closing down the Simple English Wikipedia, which will free up about 20 editors, is worth it? Vermont (talk) 18:02, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closing it. I've dabbled in Simple here and there and I've found it's highly inconsistent. What language is "simple" versus language that's, I don't know, overly complex? The spirit behind the idea was wonderful, but what's there is really just a mishmash of articles that aren't as well-written, detailed, or comprehensive as their enwiki counterparts, as an inherent limitation imposed by simplicity. Eventually, when constructing an article in "simple" English, you reach a point where you either sacrifice complex details due to the limited vocabulary, or sacrifice simplicity in the interest of content. Compare for example simple:Mourning dove (a "very good article") with en:Mourning dove (also a featured article) - the two are practically indistinguishable, except that some of the language has been simplified in simplewiki, but not to the point that you'd expect a reader in Simple's target audience would not still have difficulty understanding the material. And once you get to that point, why not just direct that development to enwiki?
On the other hand, the effort of creating a wiki that's easy to use on the project side is magnificent, and I do hope that at least some of the simplified terminology makes its way into enwiki. All of the pages linked from simple:Wikipedia:Rules are fantastic. Ivanvector (talk) 18:00, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The article simple:Mourning dove is in Simple English. Put the pages side-by-side, and you'll notice the distinct difference in phrasing and linking. Vermont (talk) 18:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closing. To put it mildly, simple.wiki is a joke. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:05, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - This isn't a zero-sum game in terms of resources. There is an active community of volunteers maintaining simplewp, and there are very little WMF or global community resources that need to be expended on maintaining it. It's true that simple English isn't a language, but I'm not concerned about that since the project has a dedicated community and reader base. – Ajraddatz (talk) 18:18, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • But its not being maintained... That's the problem. It basically exists for LTAs to create accounts and harass people and a place for people who have been blocked in their home wikis to go and be toxic in hopes of getting unblocked later. None of that is good for the movement. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:20, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Closing the project won't resolve the problem - LTAs would just go to other wikis to create accounts and do the harassment, etc. This is not specific to simplewiki. Whether or not it's maintained, there are several sysops in the project and they should have an idea about this. -★- PlyrStar93 →Message me. ← 18:36, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Yes; simple does a relatively good job compared with some other projects (*cough* enwikiversity *cough*) when dealing with the enwiki-banned crowd. Deleting simple won't remove that problem. – Ajraddatz (talk) 19:00, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - While it is a niche project, it has it's place, especially for articles on the technical side. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:22, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, sadly. There are too many examples where it has been used to push a POV rejected here, with no real notice or oversight. JzG (talk) 18:41, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Could you provide an example, please? - If there are many, finding one shouldn't be difficult...--Eptalon (talk) 18:54, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:45, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose closure of an active project. It’s well-used and the apparent issues about LTA doesn’t mean it needs closing. Aiken drum (talk) 18:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Without firmly dissucssed RFC on proposed merger. Closing the project to me would also send the wrong message to potential ESOL contributors. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:55, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: per Vermont and Ajraddatz, this would be the closure of an active project that receives enough traffic to sustain itself. I fail to see a purpose behind that. Javert2113 (talk) 18:58, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose If it isn’t getting through to it’s target audience then the solution is to ask the WMF for help in raising its progfile, not to shut it down. If there is a serious problem with trolls and LTA wingnuts to the extent that the local admin corps can’t handle it, the project should consider using flagged revisions as a solution. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:02, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose I think the points made by Piotrus are very good, as same with Ivanvector, but I think, all in all, SEW still has its place, and a legitimate one for sure. It could do with some TLC, but not closing. My name is not dave (talk) 19:17, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The SEW could use a lot of work, but it's not a net negative. I don't think closing it is necessary at this point. Natureium (talk) 19:31, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose if it needs improvement, let's suggest how to improve it. This reminds me of an AFD where the principle vote to delete is "I don't like it". With 500,000 hits a day, it's far from dead (unlike, say, Wikinews). And like AFD, we can simply work on improving it rather than consigning it to the annals of history. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:40, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support merge – The key quality of Simple English wp is to offer an easily-accessible summary of each topic, rather than the comprehensive, and sometimes dense, en-wiki articles. Compare this to the lede section of an enwiki article, which when well-written should effectively convey the essentials about the subject matter. A reader can skim Wikipedia and get a fairly basic understanding of anything by just reading the lede sections. In that spirit, I would very much support the OP's suggestion of a new tab in enwiki that would show the "simple" version of the article. This could be edited together with the main article, provided some technical markup mechanism is devised (a few templates and scripts could probably do the job without changing mediawiki code). This would elegantly resolve all issues:
  1. More visibility for the simple-English versions of articles;
  2. Harnessing volunteer work by Simple English editors;
  3. Incentivizing the general population of English-language editors to keep simple-English versions up to date;
  4. Easier policing thanks to advanced anti-vandalism tools and legion of admins working on enwp.
In summary, a merge looks beneficial to everybody. JFG (talk) 19:48, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose merge - The quality of the articles on simple.wiki is such that any merge with en.wiki would be detrimental to the reputation and integrity of en.wiki. There is simply not the time or the manpower available to take on the task of bringing simple.wiki up to the standards expected at en.wiki. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:14, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Blocked. Thanks for reporting it. Vermont (talk) 20:47, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - The project fills an important niche. If it suffers from lack of visibility, per Beeblebrox, deletion is not the solution. As with any wiki, there are problems, some unique to the project. However, closing the project would be tantamount to shooting the horse over a thrown shoe. You can supplement whatever anecdote your feel most comfortable with. The wisdom still applies. Lets address and improve or correct the problems. This, of course, will require those saying there are problems to specifically identify the problems they refer to. Operator873 (talk) 19:54, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose-ish — I like having a simple version of articles available for when I don't understand the normal one. I don't normally read it, but when I have needed it it has been helpful to me. Changing it to a tab of EnWP could work (since I'm just a reader, not an editor there, I don't really care one way or the other regarding where the content is, as long as I can read it when I want it). Goldenshimmer (talk) 20:07, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure No obvious supporting evidence of significant historical development, no likelihood of future development, project is a liability of lower quality information due to lack of critical mass of participants and engagement, failure to establish consensus for what "Simple English" manual of style the project will use among various competing off-wiki standards, highly defensive community culture which keeps the project inaccessible for editors as a way to protect the project (for example, no WikiProjects or community meeting spaces allowed), high likelihood of dissatisfaction among participants, low recruitment rate of new regular editors, no plan for change in the foreseeable future. We do have prospect of reform for a next generation project and that is the use of Wikidata to automatically translate structured data basics into simple Wikipedias of all languages. I would advise anyone who wants to advance the future of plain language Wikimedia projects to engage with Wikidata as the most stable, highest impact use of time and labor. Wikidata has a high satisfaction rate among participants. The Reasonator Wikidata / Wikipedia prototype is very encouraging as a Simple English Wikipedia replacement. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:48, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
To address your arguments: A lack of many editors is not a reason to close a Wikipedia. There are not multiple competing off-wiki standards as to the quality of content, as you imply. Your assertion that WikiProjects and community meeting spaces are not allowed is simply false. Although WikiProjects are very rarely in project namespace, there are many in userspace, and we also have simple:WP:ST for community discussions. I don't see what you mean by "high likelihood of dissatisfaction among participants." You don't have much of an editing history there, so have you conducted a poll or some other sort of means by which to find that information? Regarding a plan for change in the forseeable future, the viewership of the SEW has continually been increasing over the years (significant historical development), we have recently been gaining more active editors, and although we aren't planning any drastic changes, there are none required. The usual policy/guideline discussions happen, and your description implies that the Simple English Wikipedia is a small, inactive wiki with a few sad editors. The rest of your comment seems like an advertisement for machine translation, and that's a whole 'nother discussion. Vermont (talk) 22:36, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Vermont: This is not the place or an appropriate channel to go through all of this but I stand by what I said. If you want to talk then we can video or voice chat and take notes or record.
Most of my conversation has been off-simple in the context of other projects, including en:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force, Internet-in-a-Box, Wikipedia:Education program and various discussions about writing styles. All of these projects need plain English content but Simple English Wikipedia is unable to meet any of the needs of these programs. Yes, I have had 1:1 conversations with at least 100 people about plain language solutions for Wikimedia projects, and yes, I know that Simple English Wikipedia is not meeting the needs of users in this space.
About WikiProjects - can you resolve this issue for me and let people make WikiProjects or community project pages? Every other Wikimedia project allows community project pages. Simple English Wikipedia prohibits community organizing. This is so strange! Simple English Wikipedia turns away so many potential collaborations! Why do you turn people away? Can you flip the switch and allow community projects?
The community of people developing Simple English Wikipedia content is greater and more active off-Simple English Wikipedia than on Simple English Wikipedia. Yes, there could be a debate about whether structured data is the future, but there can be no debate about the number of people and amount of resources advancing that idea versus human-written Simple Wikipedia text. Much, much more attention and effort to produce a Simple English Wikipedia is going in directions other than to Simple English Wikipedia as it exists now. I know lots of people who have had conflicts with Simple English Wikipedia, but I am not aware of anyone from Simple English Wikipedia bringing value to any plain language project elsewhere. Please get anyone from Simple English Wikipedia to help these other projects or be more inviting of collaboration.
Yes, there are multiple competing standards of manuals of style. Various university programs like this one at Berkeley do things like plain language translations, develop standardized vocabularies for technical jargon, present limited vocabulary lists, and offer algorithms for readability metrics. There is not a standard in Simple English Wikipedia. Someone could use one plain language manual of style and it be very simple, and another person could use another and it be too complicated. Simple English Wikipedia does not host conversations to resolve this. I would not mind a debate but it is not asking too much to set some minimal expectations of what is and is not appropriate. It really hurts to submit something and get rejected due to an individual asserting a personal preference when Simple English Wikipedia has no manual of style. Matching with a single academic definition of "Simple English" could resolve this, but instead, anything goes and there is too much arbitrary rejection.
Simple English Wikipedia is a liability with serious problems. If it is not closed it needs serious urgent reform and strong leadership. The WMF has money. If anyone in Simple can get organized or get an institutional partner they should apply for a US$100k grant ASAP because the volunteer only unfunded administration is not working. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:20, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
simple-wiki risks acting as an excuse to deprioritize clarity and unambiguous expression on en-wiki, which may seem unintuitive, but is a defence I've come across far too many times. Closing simple-wiki could bring editors versed in writing simply back to en-wiki, and would send a clear signal that Wikipedia is for everyone, not just those who can read at a post-graduate level.
We need simple writing, and that is why we don't need simple-wiki. Wikipedia's articles vary, some more amenable to simple language, but all can benefit from the work of editors who can express themselves tersely. Even very complex topics need well written and easy to understand introductions. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 22:04, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If closed, the amount of editors it would bring to en-wiki is insignificant, if any. As you said, there is a very small editing force, and thus articles, especially in constantly updating fields like medicine, are not always up to date. But, outdatedness is not a reason to close a project; if it were, the majority of small wikis would have reason to be closed. Vermont (talk) 22:18, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
While the number of editors that move may be low, it will act as a strong indication that writing simply is important — and that even editing with the sole intention to simplify difficult language on en-wiki — is not only acceptable, but highly desirable. I think you underestimate the amount of good you could do in a WikiProject Simple English. CFCF 💌 📧 22:26, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Is your idea to make a simple namespace on enwiki? If not, how would you integrate the content, if at all? Thanks, Vermont (talk) 22:37, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Seems harmless. I don't think that closing Simple would automatically mean that its contributors would take up some other Wikimedia project. Some might leave the project altogether, including some who currently work on multiple projects. I would think, perhaps, that a reasonable alternative would be to limit the coverage of the project to, say, a hundred-thousand vital topics in clearly defined areas, to avoid spamming of a less patrolled project. BD2412 T 22:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. It's #51 on the list of Wikipedias. Are we also shutting down the smaller ones? LeadSongDog (talk) 22:24, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Closure and integration are two different things. The proposal is not well-developed. We have other considerations such as the mobile view and wikidata. Integration of these linked projects might be sensible but there is not a good structure for this currently. In the current chaotic way of doing things, competition is healthy in providing alternative approaches. Andrew D. (talk) 22:32, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per TonyBallioni and CFCF --Alaa :)..! 22:33, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support in principle. At the current point Simple English Wikipedia simply does not fit in the grand scheme of things: it is not a separate language, it was a good idea some years ago to have such project that would have articles that are easier to understand for people, but right now it is the only exception among more than 300 language versions that we have. Simple X projects get frequently rejected, Simple English projects (there’s also Wiktionary, btw) sits there alone in a complete limbo. Don’t think we should completely delete it or disband the active community, but the opposite, if that is applicable: narrow down its idea to something like Wikikids, which is already being developed in some languages and even functions as a sub-project of Basque Wikipedia, reformat the project, make it Wikimedia-level initiative and allow the communities to grow under a new brand and under Wikimedia movement’s umbrella. Then it wouldn’t be sticking out like a sore thumb, but rather would allow us to do something bigger on the basis of established project. (I don’t know how well other language versions of such project would do, I just think that it is very hypocritical to keep Simple English Wikipedia and force other projects to do workarounds if they want to work on something similar on their own.) stjn[ru] 22:44, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • To add in response to some points above: the place in list of Wikipedias shouldn’t mean anything, because other wikis, even if they are the smallest of them all, still represent a corpus in respective languages. Simplewiki is the only project that does not, so it is not correct to compare it with language editions in any way. stjn[ru] 22:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose Simple is useful to new english speakers, such as people who have never spoken english before. I agree that it needs some work - but it is not enough to warrent closing it. Xenrøse • T 22:51, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per TonyBallioni and CFCF .Simple English is not a separate language further it is not clear or there is no evidence how Simple English Wikipedia helps starters or that it has a separate audience or that new English speakers benefit from it there are thousands of articles in English Wikipedia which use simpler English than Simple Wikipedia or what is the benefit of having a separate Wikipedia that English Wikipedia does not cover.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 23:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Rather than using the ambiguous "thousands", could you provide examples? From my experience, the English Wikipedia is almost always significantly more complex than it's SEW counterpart-article, and when it isn't they're of equal simplicity. Vermont (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Many LTA's edit on the Simple English Wikipedia after their socks had been blocked on the English Wikipedia. With the specific example of LovelyGirl7, see simple:User:Vermont/Reports/LovelyGirl7. A lot of my work (which I would be doing even if SEW didn't exist) is anti-LTA. It's not as large of an issue as many make it out to be. Most are blocked within an hour of their first edit, and with few exceptions, their edits are not left for any period of time. Vermont (talk) 23:37, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support basically per TonyBallioni, Ivanvector and CFCF. It would be better to dedicate the effort to making enwiki more accessible, or other language versions more complete than continue with what amounts to a poorly-defined content fork, which is frequently used as the playground of LTAs. stwalkerster (talk) 23:47, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Vermont and Eptalon. Jared837 (talk) 00:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose: I think ideas of integration with enwp are interesting, and were something concrete suggested I might agree with it (e.g. having another tab at the top of the browser view so it reads "Article | Simplified article | Talk"). But I don't think shutting down the project would be helpful, particularly without any specific plans of what to do with the content. Also, volunteers can work on whatever they want, and all who edit Simple are choosing to do so (though I concede perhaps a few are misguided in their thoughts of how helpful their edits to Simple are).
    I'm slightly in two minds because from what I've seen, the Simple English Wikipedia is not of particularly consistent quality and doesn't always have great prose. Then again, I'm not the target audience. As for how well-known a thing it is, I think it's fairly obscure but I've had the (very) occasional article pop up in the first few Google results for a term, and I once overheard someone in high school telling their friend that if they clicked the "Simple English" link in the sidebar, it would "simplify the article". — Bilorv (talk) 00:46, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The opening premise of the proposal that "it is doubtful it is used by anyone" can be debunked pretty quickly. It's had more than 15 million readers per month since September 2017 and the number of page views has been increasing steadily since 2015. I'm surprised it's that high, but evidently people are finding it somehow. Maybe it would be worth surveying the readers about whether their needs are being served by simple Wikipedia before we consider closing it. Richard Nevell (talk) 01:11, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose unless there is a a clear, well-defined and realistic plan of including the "new tab or button" as mentioned. Also disagree that it is merely a playground for vandals, since there is an anti-vandal bot, ORES support and fairly active admins for a wiki of its size. Darylgolden (talk) 01:48, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Is this Wiki taking up too much bandwidth or something? I also want to mention that this has already been nominated twice for deletion in the past. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 02:37, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Piotrus, TonyBallioni, Ivanvector, and CFCF. Double sharp (talk) 04:15, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per the rather thorough opposing arguments listed above. Any of the issues raised by the opposing arguments above can be solved without closing the project. If a merge does happen though, a separate Simple: namespace should probably be the method of consolidating the content. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 05:11, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Simple.wp is not achieving its mission. If you pick random articles from that site and run them through readability tests, they generally fail for the target audience level, most of them are woefully inadequate, are outdated in the cases where currency of the information is an issue, and many are full of unsourced and even patently false (i.e. vandalism) claims. The site is disused by readers, and has too small an editorial base to ensure even basic accuracy and other quality measures. It would make more sense for some combination of various forms of Simple English to be integrated into en.WP itself, perhaps as a sidebar option. The large editorial base at the main English Wikipedia is in a much better position to create and maintain "translations" of full-English articles into a simplified form of the language.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  06:31, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Last month the site received 18 million views from 7.8 unique devices. How do you define 'disuse by readers'? Richard Nevell (talk) 07:32, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose closure there are active editors and readers on this wikipedia, so I see no reason to close. A different amount of completeness to the EN WP is no reason to close. Unless there are severe widespread systemic problems, which I haven't read from above, this decision should be determined by editors from within said wikipedia, not canvassed editors from the EN WP. --LT910001 (talk) 10:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose Used it plenty in my younger years and it definitely has its place. Very useful when new English speakers don't understand the en-wp article, they can simply hop over to simple. --Treetear (talk) 14:47, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • Note I have posted notice on the administrators noticeboard and village pumps of the English Wikipedia as this proposal would affect it (by diverting editors from simple to en.wiki) and it is the main Wikipedia for the English language, and thus participants from that language group would likely be inteterested. See: [10], [11], [12], [13]. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:31, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note I have notified the English Wikipedia Medicine WikiProject at [14], as they have had some interaction with SEW in the past. --Mark viking (talk) 18:38, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I am very much in between on this. I think there are many reasons that this project should be closed but I also think that the concept has significant value. What I would like to see come from this is meaningful change within the community itself and administration. Simple, at it's heart is meant for readers, just like every other project. The content should be simplified for all the people it is meant to target. The problem is, the project is not attracting editors to bring that content and instead attracts all those mentioned above. This isn't about LTAs or vandals but I think the downfall of Simple Wikipedia has been the intense focus on the bureaucracy of it, where so much of the community and time is spent making the backend editing "simpler" and is being used as a stepping stone for editing that wouldn't be accepted elsewhere. Specifically, I think all of the backend stuff, the things that the target audience (readers) will never see or know exists, should mirror that of it's successful sister projects, meaning policies, guidelines, to an extent. This, in my opinion, will help attract competent editors again and get rid of that "she doesn't even go here" attitude. If I am mistaken about the core purpose of this, I think the whole thing needs to be re-valuated as ultimately, this is an extension of an encyclopedia and ultimately the output is content and if we want to encourage people who would otherwise struggle, specifically due to language barriers or other issues on larger projects to edit, perhaps there needs to be a new project, similar to Wikiversity or test wiki. Chrissymad (talk) 19:35, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I (and others) have voted above based on the merits of simplewiki, rather than the merging proposal given in the introduction. That proposal might be worth exploring, but should really be done on enwiki. A project to create "executive summaries" of pages could be started on enwiki and tested to see how it works. – Ajraddatz (talk) 19:51, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. One of the problems of simple English is that it is actually very difficult to write well about a complex topic in simple English, but that is not a reason to shut it down. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 20:05, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question. Is the claim that closing simple will bring its editors to en: based on anything beyond wishful thinking? · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 20:08, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I know that for many editors on simplewiki, the fact that it isn't enwiki is a feature not a bug. Not everyone likes the bureaucracy and drama associated with a large project. – Ajraddatz (talk) 22:13, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's more than wishful thinking, in my opinion. Ajrddatz is completely right; many of SEW's editors prefer it due to the lack of bureaucracy and drama that is plentiful in enwp. Vermont (talk) 22:21, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. here Operator873 (talk) 20:33, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I haven't decided to support or oppose this proposal yet, but I have been looking over the Simple English Wikipedia, where I had never made any edits until today (in over 5 years of editing on this account). What I have found does not do much to convince me that the project should be kept, even though I have become skeptical of claims that "we need to delete everything!" since someone tried, unsuccessfully, to delete all portals on en.wiki (many of you of course know what I'm talking about). One of the biggest problems is that the Simple wiki is not very active, so vandalism can sometimes sit unchanged and unnoticed for much longer than it should (or would on en.wikipedia, or other much more active projects). This even happened over a decade ago and they covered it on NPR. Apparently the Great Barrier Reef was discovered by 'Ben Dover'. This is what people need to bear in mind when someone says "what's the harm, so long as some people use it?" The answer is that it provides a relatively save haven for trolls, vandals, and good-faith users who don't understand how to create well-written and -sourced articles, all of whom can and do roam far too freely, often without anyone cleaning up their messes, on a project that is not very active. Simple also has the side effect of inviting mockery for its numerous poorly-written articles. I am also sympathetic to the idea of merging Simple with en.wikipedia.org, because English Wikipedia articles should be written simply enough for non-experts to understand them anyway (though I realize that's not quite the same thing as writing an article to be read by ESL students/children). But maybe it'd be a good idea to add a "simplified version" button as mentioned above by some users. Everymorning (talk) 21:05, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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