Wikipedia:Advice for parents
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This page in a nutshell: This page offers a brief introduction to Wikipedia for parents and legal guardians. We're a friendly, open community focused on building an encyclopedia, but there are a few things you might wish to know... |
- See also: Wikipedia:Content disclaimer, Wikipedia:Profanity, WP:UNCENSORED, and Censorship
Wikipedia aims to offer "the sum of all human knowledge" in a format which is legal to copy, modify and redistribute (copyleft, as we call it) to all, at no cost. With this aim in mind, we have grown to become one of the largest collections of information ever assembled, and enjoy a high profile as one of the most popular websites on the internet. We hope you will find huge educational value within this project; and amongst 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.
This page is intended to help you consider the best way to allow either your children, or children you are responsible for, to engage with Wikipedia safely and enjoyably.
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Wikipedia is not censored, which in practice means that in relevant areas throughout the site, you will find possibly distressing content and pictures showing subjects like sexual activity. You may consider such material, present in a small percentage of articles, to be pornography. It is possible to configure Wikipedia to not display images if you would like to — there are many ways to do so. Editors range widely in both age and cultural background, and as such, profanity is also prevalent in some areas.
Pages which are normally appropriate for children to use may be vandalized with rude words or content which may be offensive. Vandalism is normally noticed and removed within a few minutes, if not seconds (via the recent changes function); but sometimes it may remain unnoticed for days, and even if not, someone will have to see it before it can be removed, and this can be anyone.
You may also be interested in another independent project, the Schools' Wikipedia — a specific selection of 5,500 articles from the English Wikipedia, suitable for school children, which has been checked and edited for this audience. It contains about the equivalent content of a 20-volume encyclopaedia organized around school curriculum subjects, and is available online and as a free download.
Wikipedia does not engage in a "working with children" check on editors, and it is possible for any editors to communicate with each other either on the wiki, or via email if the editor has an email account registered with Wikipedia. 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.
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, Wikipedia does not have staff to 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 good- 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 himself off as anyone on the Internet. Wikipedia editors are generally required to maintain the topic when they lead discussions on the web site; but, like every Internet community, Wikipedia brings together groups of people. Though these groups form of their own accord and there is no sanction of them from Wikipedia, parents should know that their children may attach themselves to strangers of whom nothing is known.
- Wikipedia:Schools' FAQ - A 'Frequently Asked Questions' page for schools
- Wikipedia:Help - our generic help pages
- Wikipedia:About - our generic 'about us' pages
- Wikipedia:Questions - if you have further specific questions, this page advises you how best to submit them
- Wikipedia:Contact Us
The following pages are essays describing the thoughts of some wikipedians, which have failed to gain broad acceptance as 'official' guidelines, or polices, but are in related areas;
