Simple English Wikipedia


The Simple English Wikipedia is an English-language edition of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia written primarily in basic English and learning English. It was launched in 2001. It is one of five Wikipedias written in an Anglic language, the others being the English Wikipedia, the Pitkern-Norfuk Wikipedia, the Scots Wikipedia, and the Old English Wikipedia, though the last is largely unintelligible to speakers of the modern language. The site has the stated aim of providing an encyclopedia for "people with different needs, such as students, children, adults with learning difficulties, and people who are trying to learn English". As of , the site contains over content pages, and has more than registered users, of whom are currently active.
Simple English Wikipedia's basic presentation style makes it ideal for beginners learning English. Its simpler word structure and syntax, while detracting from the raw information standpoint, can make the information easy to understand. Material from the Simple English Wikipedia forms the basis for One Encyclopedia per Child, a One Laptop per Child project.

Website structure

The articles on the Simple English Wikipedia are usually shorter than their English Wikipedia counterparts, typically presenting only basic information. Tim Dowling of The Guardian newspaper explained that "the Simple English version tends to stick to commonly accepted facts". The interface is also more simply labeled; for instance, the "Random article" link on the English Wikipedia is replaced with a "Show any page" link; users are invited to "change" rather than "edit" pages; clicking on a shows a "page not created" message rather than the usual "page does not exist". The project uses around 1,500 common English words, and is based on Basic English, an 850-word auxiliary international language created by Charles Kay Ogden in the 1920s.

Statistics

As of March 2020 the Simple English Wikipedia contained 431.4 thousand references, of which 1.79% had the digital object identifier and 6.1% had the international standard book Number. The total share of articles with at least one reference was 52.4%; 5.64% had at least ten and 0.2% had at least a hundred.