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One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

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removed at example

May 30, 2009, 7:38 PM

Post #1 of 56 (1631 views)
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One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

Given currently existing technology, and technology that we can reasonably
assume to be available within the next decade, how can the WMF best achieve
its goal of giving every person free access to our current best summary of
all human knowledge?

Consider that Google Translate has the best machine translation corpus,
consisting not only of the Internet but also all United Nations translations
and many other datasets. It is the closest existing thing to a Babelfish,
now supporting 41 languages and winning all translation competitions for
several years. It will continue to be the best for the foreseeable future.

Consider that 75% of the world is not online and that there may be a way to
beat market forces in the race to getting free Internet access to every
person by literally giving Wikipedia to every person instead, offline. Our
current micro-content distribution model would be sufficient if everyone had
access to the Internet. They don't so it's not.

Consider that the money the WMF could potentially raise through competitive
market forces (the OLPC way) may lag behind the money they can raise through
their idealistic goals, uncompromised values and principles, and smart
ideas. This money can be used to give copies of the entirety of Wikipedia
away.

Consider that access to Wikipedia does not require readability proper
(beautiful prose), just the ability to comprehend the information, and just
barely. The human brain is the most powerful translator in existence, we
just have to meet said brain halfway. We may see a meta language in our
lifetimes but not within the next decade. The current best meta language is
a set of fuzzy translations that are a function of the size of the source
and target language corpuses.

I propose a cheap cellphone-sized device (OWPP) whose only purpose is to
read Wikipedia. The WMF teams up with Google to obtain CC-BY-SA translations
from all supported source languages to all supported target languages. The
device holds just one copy of all of the Wikipedia's in a single target
language.

The technical specifications of such a device allow for it to be extremely
cheap.
Let's let those of us fortunate enough to have access to the Internet
write an encyclopedia and give it to those who are not,
sooner rather than later.

Brian
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faigos at gmail

May 30, 2009, 11:50 PM

Post #2 of 56 (1587 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:38 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado> wrote:
> Given currently existing technology, and technology that we can reasonably
> assume to be available within the next decade, how can the WMF best achieve
> its goal of giving every person free access to our current best summary of
> all human knowledge?
>
> Consider that Google Translate has the best machine translation corpus,

I think it is too early for this.

Don't forget that there aren't a Wikipedia, but Wikipedias.
Each language version of Wikipedia has slightly different viewpoints/bias.
Which will you chose to be the source for the translations then?

And why partner with Google? There are Free alternatives in development:

http://www.apertium.org/

http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Main_Page

--
△ ℱajro △

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May 31, 2009, 1:10 AM

Post #3 of 56 (1595 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

Proprietary algorithms aren't what make their system better - it's that they
have a larger corpus. Google has published a trillion token dataset for
machine translation researchers but it's presumably just a subset of what
they now have. The data that makes their system so good is already
available public but it is not (yet) within the scope of the WMF to harvest
all copyrighted information in order to increase the performance of already
published machine translation algorithms.

It would cost the WMF dearly in resources to build such a system themselves
based on published
research. In other words, as long as the output of the black box is
CC-BY-SA the other factors aren't very important.

In my mind if you consider using a corporation's semi-proprietary
translation engine to be a violation of the WMF's principles then accepting
visitors that come from Google in the first place would be an analogous
violation. We have no idea how the search engine that is the single largest
source of visitors to Wikipedia works, and yet we accept them graciously.

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 1:45 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen [at] gmail>wrote:

> Hoi,
> Currently the translation engine by Goole works for some twenty languages.
> We have Wikipedias in over 250 languages and we localise in over 300. If we
> are to collaborate with Google on this, we should partner in the building
> of
> translation engines for our other languages. We could and we should
> consider
> this when the software was to be open source.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> 2009/5/31 Foxy Loxy <foxyloxy.wikimedia [at] gmail>
>
> > I would guess a partership with Google would be a good idea because:
> > 1) They are the best (according to Brian) and
> > 2) If we were to go through with this proposal we'd want the translation
> > technology now, not in X years when the technology catches up with
> > google, if at all.
> >
> > And with many OSS/free projects, the X could be insanely high.
> >
> > On Sunday, 31 May 2009 2:50 pm, Fajro wrote:
> > > And why partner with Google? There are Free alternatives in
> > > development:
> > >
> > > http://www.apertium.org/
> > >
> > > http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Main_Page
> > >
> > > --
> > > △ ℱajro △
> >
> > --
> > fl
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user_talk:fl>
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l [at] lists
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
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rarohde at gmail

May 31, 2009, 1:30 AM

Post #4 of 56 (1588 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 7:38 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado> wrote:
<snip>
> The technical specifications of such a device allow for it to be extremely
> cheap.
<snip>

I think you are underestimating the size of Wikipedia. Even
compressed a snapshot of the English articles with both text and low
quality images would run you 20+ GB. At that storage capacity a
handheld display device using modern technology would cost $200+,
which is probably way too much to ask a third world person to pay.
For comparison, OLPC has a total capacity of only 1GB. In another
decade perhaps it would work, but I don't think it is currently an
economical project to talk about giving large numbers of people static
copies of Wikipedia. (There is perhaps something to be said for
distributing a much smaller core subset of articles though.)

-Robert

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gerard.meijssen at gmail

May 31, 2009, 1:44 AM

Post #5 of 56 (1590 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

Hoi,
The notion that this black box needs to use text that is licensed under the
CC-by-sa is a folly. The data that is gathered by data mining strips the
meaning of the text. Consequently it can be considered to be a completely
and utterly separate work. Using text as the basis of a corpus is
essentially less intrusive then using the same text for "search engine"
purposes.

I have never argued for the WMF to involve itself in machine translation.
What I do argue is that the WMF might partner with organisations that are
involved in machine translations. It is not just Google that comes to mind,
Apertium is another project that has a different approach that is effective
for certain language combinations.

The legalities and practicalities of language technology are quite distinct
from our standard considerations.
Thanks,
GerardM

2009/5/31 Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado>

> Proprietary algorithms aren't what make their system better - it's that
> they
> have a larger corpus. Google has published a trillion token dataset for
> machine translation researchers but it's presumably just a subset of what
> they now have. The data that makes their system so good is already
> available public but it is not (yet) within the scope of the WMF to harvest
> all copyrighted information in order to increase the performance of already
> published machine translation algorithms.
>
> It would cost the WMF dearly in resources to build such a system themselves
> based on published
> research. In other words, as long as the output of the black box is
> CC-BY-SA the other factors aren't very important.
>
> In my mind if you consider using a corporation's semi-proprietary
> translation engine to be a violation of the WMF's principles then accepting
> visitors that come from Google in the first place would be an analogous
> violation. We have no idea how the search engine that is the single largest
> source of visitors to Wikipedia works, and yet we accept them graciously.
>
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 1:45 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen [at] gmail>wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Currently the translation engine by Goole works for some twenty
> languages.
> > We have Wikipedias in over 250 languages and we localise in over 300. If
> we
> > are to collaborate with Google on this, we should partner in the building
> > of
> > translation engines for our other languages. We could and we should
> > consider
> > this when the software was to be open source.
> > Thanks,
> > GerardM
> >
> > 2009/5/31 Foxy Loxy <foxyloxy.wikimedia [at] gmail>
> >
> > > I would guess a partership with Google would be a good idea because:
> > > 1) They are the best (according to Brian) and
> > > 2) If we were to go through with this proposal we'd want the
> translation
> > > technology now, not in X years when the technology catches up with
> > > google, if at all.
> > >
> > > And with many OSS/free projects, the X could be insanely high.
> > >
> > > On Sunday, 31 May 2009 2:50 pm, Fajro wrote:
> > > > And why partner with Google? There are Free alternatives in
> > > > development:
> > > >
> > > > http://www.apertium.org/
> > > >
> > > > http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Main_Page
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > △ ℱajro △
> > >
> > > --
> > > fl
> > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user_talk:fl>
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l [at] lists
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l [at] lists
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
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removed at example

May 31, 2009, 1:51 AM

Post #6 of 56 (1589 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:44 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen [at] gmail>wrote:
>
> The notion that this black box needs to use text that is licensed under the
> CC-by-sa is a folly.

Just to be clear I never said you had to use CC-BY-SA text as input.
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geniice at gmail

May 31, 2009, 3:50 AM

Post #7 of 56 (1588 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/5/31 Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado>:
> Given currently existing technology, and technology that we can reasonably
> assume to be available within the next decade, how can the WMF best achieve
> its goal of giving every person free access to our current best summary of
> all human knowledge?

Dead tree technology. Wikipedia based encyclopedias in the most widely
used languages.

Select the 40K most important articles (that will be fun). 40K was
2002 encarta and most people I knew who used it felt that that was a
fairly complete encyclopedia. There are a number of languages with
less than 40K articles. The problem ones are:

Bengali (19K)
Hindi (32K)
Punjabi (1.4K)
Javanese (19K)
Tamil (18K)
Marathi (23K)
Sindhi (.3K) very low
I'm not sure there is a Berber language wikipedia. Can't find it nor a
Tamazight one. Anyone know what's going on here?
Oriya (.5K) again very low
Kannada (6K)
Azeri (20K)
Sundanese (14K)
Hausa (.1K) very low
Pashto (1.3K) although you might have a hard time finding volunteers
to distribute anything in those areas.
Uzbek (7K)
Yoruba (6K)
Amharic (3K)

Strangely Telugu and Malayalam do break the 40K barrier.

I've not included the various Chinese languages in this list because I
don't understand how spoken languages map to written languages in
china.

Now a lot of those languages are Indian which since they tend to be
fairly closely related and bilingualism is fairly common Bengali,
Hindi, Punjabi and English should cover most cases.

So how to fill the gaps? Auto translation is one option but not one I
like.. Seeing if we can obtain funding to pay people to write articles
is another.

--
geni

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wikimail at inbox

May 31, 2009, 5:34 AM

Post #8 of 56 (1587 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado> wrote:

> I propose a cheap cellphone-sized device (OWPP) whose only purpose is to
> read Wikipedia.

That's probably both the wrong form (too small) and the wrong content (too
flighty) for people permanently without access to the Internet (who
presumably also are without access to television - otherwise why not beam
Wikipedia through whatever network carries the television signal?). The
vast majority of content would be useless to someone in that situation.
What they need is the information to get themselves into a better living
situation - to get that Internet access. That's what I would want, anyway.
Put me in a third world country with little education, no television, no
Internet, no good schools, no job opportunities, etc., and then give me a
picture of how people live in the rest of the world. I don't want
Wikipedia. I want a basic high school education and admittance to a
university somewhere else. Most likely I don't need Wikipedians to provide
me with *anything* to accomplish this, but a high-school level wikibooks
collection geared toward people in environments without Internet access
wouldn't hurt if there was really no one else in my town who could teach me.

How many people are in this situation, though? How many people have
absolutely no Internet access, not just in their homes, but in their entire
towns, have no access to a school or library, and have no means to escape to
another town where the situation is better? And is this something
Wikipedians can directly help fix?

Maybe the WMF could offer scholarships to one person in each such town (for
as many towns as there are funds for). They would set up a private school
(in name, it need not be a separate building), for children or adults, and
the WMF provide them with the information they need to run the program
(geared to their requests) and hopefully work with another organization to
provide some funding. If it's a matter of providing 100 people with
cell-phone like devices or 1 person with a desktop PC and continuing
updates, isn't the latter cheaper and just as effective? Or is the
political situation so bad that the PC will get stolen while the cell phones
might be kept hidden?

In any case, I think a small targetted wikibooks collection is going to be
more useful than Wikipedia.
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May 31, 2009, 5:41 AM

Post #9 of 56 (1589 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:50 AM, geni <geniice [at] gmail> wrote:

> Dead tree technology. Wikipedia based encyclopedias in the most widely
> used languages.
>
> Select the 40K most important articles (that will be fun).

Do you really think the 40K most important Wikipedia articles are more
useful than a set of high school textbooks?

Wikipedia is sometimes good for getting answers to specific questions, or as
a place to find out what you don't know so you can then check other
resources to learn it. But it can't replace a good textbook for learning
something from scratch. Really, no encyclopedia can.
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gerard.meijssen at gmail

May 31, 2009, 5:49 AM

Post #10 of 56 (1590 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

Hoi,
May I remind you that the majority of our Wikipedia do not have 40K articles
..
Thanks,
GerardM

2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>

> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:50 AM, geni <geniice [at] gmail> wrote:
>
> > Dead tree technology. Wikipedia based encyclopedias in the most widely
> > used languages.
> >
> > Select the 40K most important articles (that will be fun).
>
>
> Do you really think the 40K most important Wikipedia articles are more
> useful than a set of high school textbooks?
>
> Wikipedia is sometimes good for getting answers to specific questions, or
> as
> a place to find out what you don't know so you can then check other
> resources to learn it. But it can't replace a good textbook for learning
> something from scratch. Really, no encyclopedia can.
> _______________________________________________
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>
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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 5:52 AM

Post #11 of 56 (1587 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado> wrote:
>
>> I propose a cheap cellphone-sized device (OWPP) whose only purpose is to
>> read Wikipedia.
>
>
> That's probably both the wrong form (too small) and the wrong content (too
> flighty) for people permanently without access to the Internet (who
> presumably also are without access to television - otherwise why not beam
> Wikipedia through whatever network carries the television signal?).

Wikipedia over TV would never work. There isn't the bandwidth for it.
TV is a broadcast medium, that means you have to be constantly sending
everything anyone could want (or, at least, sending it fairly
frequently, like teletext does). There is no way that is ever going to
work for even a small portion of Wikipedia. You need to either give
people the whole lot in one go (as the suggestion here is) or have it
in a way they can request and article and promptly receive it (which
is what the web does).

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May 31, 2009, 6:08 AM

Post #12 of 56 (1585 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen [at] gmail>wrote:

> Hoi,
> May I remind you that the majority of our Wikipedia do not have 40K
> articles
> ..
> Thanks,
> GerardM

Sure, but that's not at all a helpful comment.
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May 31, 2009, 6:16 AM

Post #13 of 56 (1587 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 8:52 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado>
> wrote:
> >
> >> I propose a cheap cellphone-sized device (OWPP) whose only purpose is to
> >> read Wikipedia.
> >
> >
> > That's probably both the wrong form (too small) and the wrong content
> (too
> > flighty) for people permanently without access to the Internet (who
> > presumably also are without access to television - otherwise why not beam
> > Wikipedia through whatever network carries the television signal?).
>
> Wikipedia over TV would never work. There isn't the bandwidth for it.

So only broadcast a subset.

> TV is a broadcast medium, that means you have to be constantly sending
> everything anyone could want (or, at least, sending it fairly
> frequently, like teletext does).

Presumably there's a hard drive at the other end. On one channel broadcast
updates, on a second channel broadcast random articles weighted by relative
importance.

By the way, I'm not really sure what you mean by "TV is a broadcast
medium". But presumably anyone without Internet access but with TV access
is receiving the TV signal through a broadcast, so I can safely ignore this
nitpick.
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dgerard at gmail

May 31, 2009, 6:30 AM

Post #14 of 56 (1586 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:

> In any case, I think a small targetted wikibooks collection is going to be
> more useful than Wikipedia.

For a practical example, the Schools Wikipedia is proving enormously
popular with teachers in countries of all economic levels. Requires
something that can read a DVD, or have said DVD dumped onto its hard
disk somehow, and in print it'd be roughly 15 Britannica volumes.

So an encyclopedia is proving wanted in practice. Textbooks would be
fantastic too, of course. But Wikibooks doesn't (AIUI) have a complete
set of those yet.

- d.

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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 6:34 AM

Post #15 of 56 (1585 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
>> Wikipedia over TV would never work. There isn't the bandwidth for it.
>
>
> So only broadcast a subset.

A very small subset.

>> TV is a broadcast medium, that means you have to be constantly sending
>> everything anyone could want (or, at least, sending it fairly
>> frequently, like teletext does).
>
>
> Presumably there's a hard drive at the other end. On one channel broadcast
> updates, on a second channel broadcast random articles weighted by relative
> importance.

TV's with hard drives are a pretty new in the developed world and
presumably all but non-existent in the developing world, I would be
very surprised if many people have a TV with a hard drive and no
internet access (or, at least, no ability to get internet access if
they wanted it). So, you would have to give people these hard-drives,
so you might as well fill them before you hand them out. So, what you
are suggesting is the same idea as Brian suggested but with the
ability to update articles over TV transmissions - not a bad extension
to the idea, but it's the same basic idea.

> By the way, I'm not really sure what you mean by "TV is a broadcast
> medium". But presumably anyone without Internet access but with TV access
> is receiving the TV signal through a broadcast, so I can safely ignore this
> nitpick.

By "broadcast medium" I mean a one-way transmission of information.
The TV people choose what you broadcast and you just choose to either
pick up what they send or don't. You can't request specific
information like you can online. That dramatically increases the
bandwidth requirements, since you have to broadcast everything.

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May 31, 2009, 7:20 AM

Post #16 of 56 (1580 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> >> Wikipedia over TV would never work. There isn't the bandwidth for it.
> >
> >
> > So only broadcast a subset.
>
> A very small subset.
>

A single channel can broadcast over 5Mbps. That's 52 gigabytes per day,
enough to broadcast all of Wikipedia in a few days on one channel, and all
updates as they come in live on a second channel.

TV's with hard drives are a pretty new in the developed world and
> presumably all but non-existent in the developing world

Who said anything about using a TV?

> So, you would have to give people these hard-drives,
> so you might as well fill them before you hand them out. So, what you
> are suggesting is the same idea as Brian suggested but with the
> ability to update articles over TV transmissions - not a bad extension
> to the idea, but it's the same basic idea.

Thanks. I also suggested not using hand-held devices, though. Too
expensive.

> > By the way, I'm not really sure what you mean by "TV is a broadcast
> > medium". But presumably anyone without Internet access but with TV
> access
> > is receiving the TV signal through a broadcast, so I can safely ignore
> this
> > nitpick.
>
> By "broadcast medium" I mean a one-way transmission of information.

I don't know about yours, but my TV uses two-way transmission. So a
statement that "TV is a broadcast medium" is just not correct. True, it's
probably correct in the vast majority of situations, but, blah blah blah, I
think you see what I'm getting at...

The TV people choose what you broadcast and you just choose to either
> pick up what they send or don't. You can't request specific
> information like you can online.

Umm, yes I can. But like I said, I was nitpicking. TV isn't a medium, and
it isn't necessarily broadcast.
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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 8:05 AM

Post #17 of 56 (1582 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
>> By "broadcast medium" I mean a one-way transmission of information.
>
>
> I don't know about yours, but my TV uses two-way transmission. So a
> statement that "TV is a broadcast medium" is just not correct. True, it's
> probably correct in the vast majority of situations, but, blah blah blah, I
> think you see what I'm getting at...
>
> The TV people choose what you broadcast and you just choose to either
>> pick up what they send or don't. You can't request specific
>> information like you can online.
>
>
> Umm, yes I can. But like I said, I was nitpicking. TV isn't a medium, and
> it isn't necessarily broadcast.

Who has cable TV that can't get internet access? You mentioned TV in
the context of a way of getting information to people without internet
access, so I ignored the existence of cable since it doesn't apply.

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May 31, 2009, 9:09 AM

Post #18 of 56 (1583 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> Who has cable TV that can't get internet access?

I didn't say *cable* TV.

> You mentioned TV in
> the context of a way of getting information to people without internet
> access, so I ignored the existence of cable since it doesn't apply.

Here's the context that I mentioned TV in: "for people permanently without
access to the Internet (who presumably also are without access to television
- otherwise why not beam Wikipedia through whatever network carries the
television signal?)"

That pretty much anyone with TV can get at least one-way Internet access was
precisely my point. (Two-way Internet is a bit more expensive for people
who have to rely on satellite or long distance OTA for television, though.)
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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 9:35 AM

Post #19 of 56 (1591 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:
>
>> Who has cable TV that can't get internet access?
>
>
> I didn't say *cable* TV.

What kind of TV do you have that can go two ways, then? The only types
I know are cable, satellite and regular radio waves, only the first of
which allows 2-way transmission.

>> You mentioned TV in
>> the context of a way of getting information to people without internet
>> access, so I ignored the existence of cable since it doesn't apply.
>
>
> Here's the context that I mentioned TV in: "for people permanently without
> access to the Internet (who presumably also are without access to television
> - otherwise why not beam Wikipedia through whatever network carries the
> television signal?)"
>
> That pretty much anyone with TV can get at least one-way Internet access was
> precisely my point. (Two-way Internet is a bit more expensive for people
> who have to rely on satellite or long distance OTA for television, though.)

There is no such thing as "one-way internet access". The internet is
always 2-way. You aren't making any sense.

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May 31, 2009, 11:14 AM

Post #20 of 56 (1581 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Who has cable TV that can't get internet access?
> >
> >
> > I didn't say *cable* TV.
>
> What kind of TV do you have that can go two ways, then? The only types
> I know are cable, satellite and regular radio waves, only the first of
> which allows 2-way transmission.

Radio and satellite (which is radio) are both capable of 2-way transmission.
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May 31, 2009, 11:31 AM

Post #21 of 56 (1581 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> There is no such thing as "one-way internet access". The internet is
> always 2-way.

Perhaps so (depends on your definitions), but then, Wave probably isn't
dependent on internet access in the first place. I see no reason it would
be.
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geniice at gmail

May 31, 2009, 11:34 AM

Post #22 of 56 (1582 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:50 AM, geni <geniice [at] gmail> wrote:
>
>> Dead tree technology. Wikipedia based encyclopedias in the most widely
>> used languages.
>>
>> Select the 40K most important articles (that will be fun).
>
>
> Do you really think the 40K most important Wikipedia articles are more
> useful than a set of high school textbooks?

There are a number of existing projects to send out school text books.
An encyclopedia however is a useful part of wider learning.

--
geni

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geniice at gmail

May 31, 2009, 11:35 AM

Post #23 of 56 (1585 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/5/31 David Gerard <dgerard [at] gmail>:
> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
>
>> In any case, I think a small targetted wikibooks collection is going to be
>> more useful than Wikipedia.
>
>
> For a practical example, the Schools Wikipedia is proving enormously
> popular with teachers in countries of all economic levels. Requires
> something that can read a DVD, or have said DVD dumped onto its hard
> disk somehow, and in print it'd be roughly 15 Britannica volumes.

However it is english only as far as I'm aware.

--
geni

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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 11:51 AM

Post #24 of 56 (1579 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:
>
>> There is no such thing as "one-way internet access". The internet is
>> always 2-way.
>
>
> Perhaps so (depends on your definitions), but then, Wave probably isn't
> dependent on internet access in the first place. I see no reason it would
> be.

If it doesn't work over IP then it isn't the internet, and IP is a
two-way protocol.

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May 31, 2009, 11:51 AM

Post #25 of 56 (1583 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:34 PM, geni <geniice [at] gmail> wrote:
>
> There are a number of existing projects to send out school text books.
> An encyclopedia however is a useful part of wider learning.

I guess, but a print copy of some subset of Wikipedia doesn't seem like the
best solution for someone who already has access to school textbooks. If
you're talking about a major language, there are already encyclopedias
written for them, and copies can probably be had for much less it would cost
to publish a print edition of Wikipedia. If you're talking about a minor
language, I don't know. Are there languages for which Wikipedia is
unarguably the best encyclopedia, with enough native speakers to make a
print run feasible, and for which offering an encyclopedia in a non-native
language wouldn't be more effective?

Maybe. Want to start that focus group?
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