Wikipedia:Advice for parents



Wikipedia's goal is to offer knowledge for many different things, in a format which is legal to copy, modify, and redistribute (copyleft, as we call it) to all, at no cost. We hope you will find huge educational value within this project; and among our millions of articles, you will certainly find many relevant to almost all areas of study. No encyclopedia should be the end of the line in any research, however, and we hope you'll find our articles useful road maps for further exploration across a whole range of subjects. Although there are policies and guidelines for content, Wikipedia is freely editable by everyone, so inaccuracy and vandalism are problems that the project faces on a daily basis. A number of safeguards are in effect. These include insisting that editors cite reliable sources, as well as Recent Changes Patrolling for vandalism, and New Page Patrolling for recently created articles with inappropriate content.

This page and its subpages (linked pages) are intended to help parents, guardians, teachers, and other adults consider the best way to allow children they are responsible for to engage with Wikipedia safely and enjoyably. There is also a development area at Child protection. Read more about privacy, confidentiality and discretion on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia content
Wikipedia is not censored, which in practice means that in relevant areas throughout the site, you will find possibly distressing or offensive content and pictures showing subjects like violence, nudity, sexual activity or controversial topics. Such material is present in a small percentage of articles. Editors range widely both in age and in cultural background, and as such, profanity is also prevalent in some areas of content and discussions. See Uncensored and Offensive material for more information.

It is possible to configure Wikipedia to not display images if you would like to – there are many ways to do so. However, written content cannot be hidden with conventional software.

Pages which are normally appropriate for children to view, like articles about cartoon characters or books written for young readers, may be vandalized with rude words or content which may be considered offensive and inappropriate for some younger readers. Vandalism is normally noticed and removed within a few minutes, if not seconds (via the recent changes function, or via an automated bot); but sometimes it can remain unnoticed for days, and even if not, someone will have to see it before it can be removed, and this could be anyone. If you see vandalism, please report it (or even have a try at removing the vandalism yourself - it could provide valuable editing experience!).

Wikipedia community
Wikipedia does not engage in a "working with children" check on editors, and it is possible for any editor to communicate with any other either on wiki talkpages or via email, if the editor has an email account registered with Wikipedia (this feature can be disabled in your Preferences). This communication may not be monitored by other Wikipedia editors, and we strongly advise all editors not to publish private information such as full contact details. Accidental publication of personal or contact detail can be removed by requesting oversight, a form of hiding information so that it can only be viewed by only a group of especially trusted people, known as arbitrators or oversighters. They have signed a legal agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation, and if they disclose oversighted information without permission from foundation staff, severe sanctions will be imposed. For legal reasons, nothing inside our database is permanently deleted.

Most communication on Wikipedia occurs in an open, public, reviewable manner – even personal "talk page" messages are readable by anybody. Note, however, that contrary to some sites directed towards youth, the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation (who run Wikipedia) do not regularly patrol discussion pages or remove inappropriate comments; it only has volunteer administrators, who may exclude people breaching civility rules, but who will not censor conversations, even if they deal with adult topics.

Children and their parents must understand that any person, no matter how well- or ill-motivated, is free to participate in the project. While some child-focused online communities will remove members who are found/suspected of being dangerous towards children in the "real/offline" world, Wikipedia does not, as a rule, require users to disclose their identities, and hence cannot remove them according to anything that pertains to identity, including criminal or sex-offender records. A child, or anyone else, should never assume that if somebody has an account on Wikipedia, then they're safe to meet in person. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia project, not a social networking web site. Common sense must be applied where it most pertains, and in particular it must be remembered that anyone can pass themselves off as anyone on the Internet.

Wikipedia will nonetheless prevent users who appear to be using the site for inappropriate purposes from editing or logging in, and in extreme cases, issue a formal ban on that user. Inappropriate purposes ranges from trying to form or legitimize relationships with children to disclosing private information. For advice on what to do if such behavior is observed, please see Child protection.

The most useful piece of advice guardians can give to younger editors is to never divulge any personally identifiable information (name, age, location, school) on Wikipedia – or anywhere else publicly available on the Internet for that matter. Some sites may have ways of restricting access to personal information; however most, including Wikipedia, do not, please see Guidance for younger editors. If you suspect a minor has posted their personal information on Wikipedia, please follow the process detailed at Requests for oversight.