Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-09-18/Interwiki report

Status and community news
The Simple English Wikipedia has approximately 11,000 articles, making it 45th in volume compared to other Wikipedias. There is no equivalent to featured articles on the Simple English Wikipedia, but a peer review page has been started to help identify very good articles.

Simple English has approximately 5,200 registered users and 16 registered (eight active) Administrators. The project has two registered bureaucrats, only one of whom is currently active. User:Angela, a long-time proponent of the project, stepped down as a bureaucrat but remains a semi-active administrator.

Background
"Simple" began about three years ago as a resource for those teaching and learning English. While the subject matter is intended to be as complex as a standard encyclopedia, authors are asked to use the 1000 most common English words, to write in simple grammatical structures, and to explain more complex words whenever they are encountered (see examples).

The project can also act as a translation "middle ground" between the other Wikipedias. For example, an article in one language can be "translated" to Simple English and from there over to another language.

A special gateway for schools has been established, including a Teachers' Guide and student tutorial. Several classes have contributed content for SE Wikipedia, including a Grade 12 class from St. Andrew's College (Aurora, Ontario) that submitted several physics-related articles.

Image uploads prohibited
As stated in its image use policy, Simple English Wikipedia uses only images from the Wikimedia Commons. One of Simple English's functions is to serve as a translation source for other Wikipedias, and using Commons images makes re-use much simpler. The policy also helps to discourage users from creating too many extensive "pop culture" articles, whilst fostering the creation of others which are more encyclopedic in subject. The Upload function is not completely disabled, however: it remains available for Spoken articles and other similar project-specific media.

Userboxes
Because it was deemed desirable to avoid the problems encountered by other Wikimedia Foundation wikis in this area, userboxes are limited to the language-specific "Babel" scheme.

Sister projects
Most of the Simple English sister projects have existed for quite some time, but are still in their very early stages and relatively small compared to others. All of these projects are currently nominated under "Proposals for closing projects".


 * SE Wikibooks is 46th with 27 textbook pages.
 * SE Wiktionary is 47th with 896 definitions.
 * SE Wikiquote is 48th with 10 pages.
 * There is no SE Wikisource or SE Wikinews.