Wikipedia:History of the Simple English wikis
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This essay is meant to be a reminder of how the Simple English wikis came to be and for new editors to understand why we do certain things in a different way compared to other wikis. Please feel free to add interesting events that happened which changed the course of the Simple English wikis (and particularly the Simple English Wikipedia).
Early stages (2001 - 2003) change
The Simple English Wikipedia was launched when the English Wikipedia had around 150,000 articles, although the first edit is likely to be made before 18 September 2001 [1], or around October 2001 when the majority of the non-English Wikipedias were created. [2] Before 18 December 2003, the Simple English Wikipedia used the UseModWiki software before it got changed to MediaWiki, but due to how UseModWiki stores revisions, some of the older revisions were lost and not able to be imported over to the new MediaWiki software.
There was little to no activity on the Simple English Wikipedia until around 2003 when User:Angela came and tried to revive the project by copying articles from the English Wikipedia and simplifying it to suit the Simple English Wikipedia. On 14 November 2003, Wikipedia:Simple talk was created as a place for the community to discuss matters about the project (previously using the "HomePage/Talk" page during the UseModWiki era). It is also likely that during this time, the new MediaWiki software was being tested before officially used in December 2003.
Initial growth (2004 - 2006) change
With the revival of the project, many new policies and guidelines were written to guide editors in writing Simple English articles, many of which still exist today (such as Wikipedia:How to write Simple English pages). These policies, written around the period of May 2003 to 2004, served as the foundation of the wiki.
On 1 May 2004, the Simple English Wiktionary was started due to a policy where all existing Wikipedias will have a Wiktionary automatically created for them. [3] The Simple English Wikibooks was also created on 25 July 2004 and the Simple English Wikiquote was created on 4 August 2004.
In the early parts of 2004, there was strong growth in the number of articles on the wiki, and there were many discussions among editors about the definition of Simple English (see Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 1#Standards for Simplicity). The aims of the wiki, as defined on the main page then, were:
- To make pages easy to read by people who do not speak English well
- To make pages that are easy to translate to other languages and from other languages, with the simplest sections first, but which are still complete encyclopedia articles.
In 2005, the first idea of project closure was proposed on Meta. This marked the first step in the endless battle for the survival of the Simple English Wikipedia. There were also many questions raised about the actual purpose of the Simple English Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 2#Why??? and Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 2#What is the purpose?). As User:Private Butcher puts it:
Simple English uses fewer words and easier grammar than the original English Wikipedia. This is not its only difference. It is focused on readers who tend to be quite different people with different needs: students, children, adults with learning difficulties, and translators
It is believed that those words were the guiding principles of the Simple English Wikipedia back in 2005 until a formal definition was needed in 2006 at Wikipedia talk:Project charter, which concluded that the Simple English Wikipedia aims to help four groups of people:
- People who are learning English as an additional language (EAL)
- People who translate articles from English to other languages
- People who have learning difficulties and therefore cannot understand articles with hard words and complex grammar, like articles at English Wikipedia
- Children, whose vocabulary is limited by their limited experience.
Also in 2006, an improved logo was adopted by the Simple English Wikipedia and the site had its 10,000th article created.
The fight begins (2006 - 2009) change
When the closing project policy of 2006 was passed, the Simple English wikis were among the first few to be proposed for deletion (except for the Simple English Wikipedia). The following table shows the different proposals and their respective opening/closing dates and results:
Eventually, both the Simple English Wikibooks and the Simple English Wikiquote were not able to withstand the test of time and were officially closed at their third nominations on 14 January 2010 and 9 December 2009 respectively.
It was only after the new closing projects policy was adopted by the Language Committee in 2011 which gave certain special protections to both Simple English Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Despite having new proposals made to close Simple English Wiktionary in 2012 and to close Simple English Wikipedia in 2018, the size of the wikis and the stance taken by the Language Committee has largely made such proposals doomed for failure.