Fully Linked
In a previous post (Basic English) I constructed a dictionary where (almost) every word was a link to its definition. In this post I've tried out the same process on a Wikipedia pagem specifically, The Simple Wikipedia's version of the Simple English Wikipedia.
Bold text refers to the current article. Numbers are not linked. Everything else is a link to either Simple Wiktionary or Simple Wikipedia. This is very different to Wikipedia's current style of "Only link a word the first time it is used in the article, but do not link the same word more than once in an article." Weirdly, the styling required to avoid having links show everywhere results in links showing up nowhere; it almost looks like a page from an ebook and paper book.
Simple English Wikipedia
The Simple English Wikipedia is an English language version of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, that is written in basic English. It was created on November 17, 2003. All of the articles in the Simple English Wikipedia need to use shorter sentences and easier words and grammar than the regular English Wikipedia.
People with different needs use the Simple English Wikipedia. They include:
- Students
- Children
- Adults who might find it hard to learn or read
- People who are learning English as a second language
Other people use the Simple English Wikipedia because the basic language helps them understand hard ideas or topics they do not know about.
Many articles are shorter than the same articles in the English Wikipedia. Technical subjects use some terms which are not simple. Editors try to explain these terms in a simple way. This makes Simple English articles a good way to understand difficult articles from the ordinary English Wikipedia. If someone cannot understand an idea in complex English, they can read the Simple English article.
When the Simple English Wikipedia began in 2003, the ordinary English Wikipedia already had 150,000 articles, and seven other Wikipedias in other languages had over 15,000 articles. Since the other Wikipedias already have so many articles, most Simple English articles take articles from other Wikipedias and make them simple; they are usually not new articles. Right now, the Simple English Wikipedia has 150,000 articles. As of October 2017, it was the 51st largest Wikipedia.