Very probably the duplication in examples comes from the time when Raised by Wolves was a real mess, containing (duplicated) examples from Wild Child, examples from No Social Skills, from a non-existant trope vaugely clustering around people with a range of difficult childhoods and from the current meaning, children raised by animals. At the time Wild Child had quite a few bad and duplicated examples, too. Possibly we need to go over the examples on the trope pages one more time.
After going through those ~500 wicks I'm of the firm opinion that Wild Child and Raised By Animals are both tropes and quite distinct. Raised by Wolves involves parenting. Wild Child doesn't. Like you say, Kids Raised by Wolves have all kinds of outcomes, but are functional people. A Wild Child is dramatically lacking in all the basics.
I think the distinction is useful because a (smaller) number of kids in fiction are feral for reals — and they go in Wild Child.
edited 26th Apr '11 11:51:43 PM by Camacan
I understand that in theory the difference is that (a) Wild Child is supposed to be for characters who have serious repercussions from their time without human contact, possibly not even being able to speak, whereas a character who is Raised by Wolves might integrate into human society just fine, and (b) Raised by Wolves necessitates that the character be raised by animals, whereas a Wild Child may just have been neglected.
However, as it stands, the example sections are nearly identical, and I suspect the usage on other pages is equally muddled (though I haven't gone through the wicks). These articles either need a merge or a serious clean-up and some rewriting to emphasize how they're different from one another.
(Personally, I'm on the fence about whether the distinction is useful or not; to a certain extent it seems like one trope Played for Laughs vs. Played for Drama, but there is the "raised by animals" vs. "cut off from human contact with no animals involved" angle.)