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

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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 11:53 AM

Post #26 of 56 (1364 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:
>
>> 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.

My TV does not have a radio transmitter in it and nor does anybody
else I know's. TV is a broadcast medium. You turn your TV on and
whatever is being broadcast at that time appears on the screen. That's
how it works. That's how it was worked for over 50 years. That's just
what TV is. I don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about,
but it isn't TV.

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May 31, 2009, 11:53 AM

Post #27 of 56 (1360 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 2:51 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> 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.

That might work except it isn't true. UDP/IP is one-way.
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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 12:02 PM

Post #28 of 56 (1366 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 2:51 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>
> That might work except it isn't true. UDP/IP is one-way.

It's not. How can you load a webpage without being able to send GETs and POSTs?

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May 31, 2009, 12:11 PM

Post #29 of 56 (1370 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 3:02 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail
> >wrote:
> >> If it doesn't work over IP then it isn't the internet, and IP is a
> >> two-way protocol.
> >
> >
> > That might work except it isn't true. UDP/IP is one-way.
>
> It's not. How can you load a webpage without being able to send GETs and
> POSTs?

HTTP uses TCP/IP, not UDP/IP. Your comment was "If it doesn't work over IP
then it isn't the internet". If you'd like to change that to "If it doesn't
work over TCP then it isn't the internet", fine. But it probably wouldn't
be difficult to run the Wave protocol over UDP. Then you could send one-way
Wave updates through a one-way satellite feed, or a one-way OTA feed. Add
in a low-bandwidth or intermittent connection to send in the other
direction, and you can get an email account better than most people had in
1995. Remember when BBSes used to subscribe to UUCP email?
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geniice at gmail

May 31, 2009, 12:14 PM

Post #30 of 56 (1369 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 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.

Evidence? Remember there are rather a lot of major languages where any
native speaker well educated and rich enough to actually buy an
encyclopedia (even in the west britanica was a middle class symbol) is
unlikely to want to buy one in that language.

>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?

Tagalog is the first example that comes to mind. Telugu perhaps but
the pro English bias there would be an issue.

> Maybe. Want to start that focus group?

It's not a focus group issue. It's a document what encyclopedia's
actually exist in non European languages issue.

--
geni

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geniice at gmail

May 31, 2009, 12:20 PM

Post #31 of 56 (1365 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>:
> HTTP uses TCP/IP, not UDP/IP. Your comment was "If it doesn't work over IP
> then it isn't the internet". If you'd like to change that to "If it doesn't
> work over TCP then it isn't the internet", fine. But it probably wouldn't
> be difficult to run the Wave protocol over UDP. Then you could send one-way
> Wave updates through a one-way satellite feed, or a one-way OTA feed. Add
> in a low-bandwidth or intermittent connection to send in the other
> direction, and you can get an email account better than most people had in
> 1995. Remember when BBSes used to subscribe to UUCP email?

However that has expensive upkeep costs and is reliant of functioning
infrastructure. Books do not stop working just because somebody broke
SAT-3/WASC.

--
geni

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dgerard at gmail

May 31, 2009, 12:23 PM

Post #32 of 56 (1365 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 geni <geniice [at] gmail>:
> 2009/5/31 David Gerard <dgerard [at] gmail>:

>> 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.

Yes indeed. It is an improvement on nothing, however, and shows how
similar things could be done for other languages (e.g. Schools
Wikipedia was done by a charity for use in its own schools).

- d.

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May 31, 2009, 12:56 PM

Post #33 of 56 (1369 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 3:20 PM, geni <geniice [at] gmail> wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> > HTTP uses TCP/IP, not UDP/IP. Your comment was "If it doesn't work over
> IP
> > then it isn't the internet". If you'd like to change that to "If it
> doesn't
> > work over TCP then it isn't the internet", fine. But it probably
> wouldn't
> > be difficult to run the Wave protocol over UDP. Then you could send
> one-way
> > Wave updates through a one-way satellite feed, or a one-way OTA feed.
> Add
> > in a low-bandwidth or intermittent connection to send in the other
> > direction, and you can get an email account better than most people had
> in
> > 1995. Remember when BBSes used to subscribe to UUCP email?
>
> However that has expensive upkeep costs and is reliant of functioning
> infrastructure. Books do not stop working just because somebody broke
> SAT-3/WASC.

Depends on the topic. Some books go obsolete pretty quickly, and delivering
new ones is quite expensive.

I've got nothing against books, though. They're a big part of any
solution. That said...

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 3:14 PM, geni <geniice [at] gmail> wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> > 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.
>
> Evidence? Remember there are rather a lot of major languages where any
> native speaker well educated and rich enough to actually buy an
> encyclopedia (even in the west britanica was a middle class symbol) is
> unlikely to want to buy one in that language.
>

Brand new and for retail price, sure. But used and/or at cost (which surely
there are publishers willing to provide for this sort of thing), I don't see
how you could beat the established players.

>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?
>
> Tagalog is the first example that comes to mind. Telugu perhaps but
> the pro English bias there would be an issue.
>
> > Maybe. Want to start that focus group?
>
> It's not a focus group issue. It's a document what encyclopedia's
> actually exist in non European languages issue.

I'm not sure we should waste everyone on this mailing list's time going
through the details and formulating a plan. Let's take Tagalog. We've got
22 million native speakers, of which what % have internet access, and what %
of those without it would be interested in a copy of Wikipedia? What kind
of technology do these people have? What % have electricity? What % have
access to a library? What are the schools like for them? Do the schools
have computers? Do the libraries have computers? What topics would be most
important? How big is the Tagalog Wikipedia? What are its strengths? What
are its weaknesses? What is the government's role in education? How is the
funding? What's the mean and median income?

I'd love to put something into action here. But it's not something I see
being worked out over foundation-l.
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geniice at gmail

May 31, 2009, 1:42 PM

Post #34 of 56 (1369 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>:
> Brand new and for retail price, sure. But used and/or at cost (which surely
> there are publishers willing to provide for this sort of thing), I don't see
> how you could beat the established players.

For fairly obvious reasons the existing publishers have not encouraged
the second hand market.

> I'm not sure we should waste everyone on this mailing list's time going
> through the details and formulating a plan. Let's take Tagalog. We've got
> 22 million native speakers, of which what % have internet access,

15% maybe?

http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia.htm

> What % have electricity?

The Philippines has more than 85 million people,
spread over some 7,100 islands. Most parts of the
country, and all large municipal areas, have access to
electricity, but around 8 percent of the country�s
42,000 barangays (villages or neighborhoods) re-
mained unserved in 2005. Roughly half of these are in
remote rural areas. The government has set a goal of
bringing electricity to all barangays by 2008

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:HlRig71JtZwJ:www.gpoba.org/docs/OBApproaches_Philippines_SPUG.pdf+electricity+supply+in+the+philippines&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

>What % have
> access to a library? What are the schools like for them?

Literacy rate is 92.6%. Not bad.

> What topics would be most
> important?

Thats the fun bit

> How big is the Tagalog Wikipedia?

22K

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikipedias

> What is the government's role in education?

It runs schools.

> How is the
> funding?

US$138 per pupil

But schools would not be the target in this case since most of the
pupils likely have a reasonable grasp of english since that is what
some of the lessons are taught in:

http://countrystudies.us/philippines/53.htm
--
geni

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May 31, 2009, 2:01 PM

Post #35 of 56 (1364 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 4:42 PM, geni <geniice [at] gmail> wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> > I'm not sure we should waste everyone on this mailing list's time going
> > through the details and formulating a plan. Let's take Tagalog. We've
> got
> > 22 million native speakers, of which what % have internet access,
>
> 15% maybe?
>
> http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia.htm
>

That's Internet usage, not Internet access. Considering that 60% of the
world uses cell phones (as in, has a subscription, those living in areas
covered by cell phone signals is presumably much higher), and only 25% uses
the Internet, apparently lack of Internet usage isn't due to an
infrastructural problem in most cases. That's not to say that there isn't
an infrastructural problem in some cases. In fact, those cases are probably
the ones we should be focusing on.

I've looked at bit and am having some trouble figuring out what percentage
of the world lives in a location (other than by personal preference) where
neither they nor someone nearby them can get Internet access.

But schools would not be the target in this case since most of the
> pupils likely have a reasonable grasp of english since that is what
> some of the lessons are taught in:
>
> http://countrystudies.us/philippines/53.htm

What would you suggest for the target?
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May 31, 2009, 3:18 PM

Post #36 of 56 (1375 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 6:05 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Ray Saintonge <saintonge [at] telus>:
> > Assuming that I were somewhere in rural Africa, and perfectly
> > functioning hardware with Wikipedia software loaded in dropped in front
> > of me from the sky like a magic Coke bottle from the Gods, how much
> > would I then be able to use that gift to get a better yield from my
> > little patch of poor farm-land?
>
> Wikipedia could be *part* of a solution, it's never going to be a
> solution on its own. Wikipedia could be useful as part of an education
> system, but it can't be the whole thing.

I just found another statistic. Mobile networks cover roughly 80-90% of the
worlds population.

For them, using that mobile network is probably the most cost effective
solution. For the rest, giving them enough of an education to have the
means to come live with the rest of us, is probably the most cost effective
solution.
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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 3:52 PM

Post #37 of 56 (1370 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>:
> I just found another statistic. Mobile networks cover roughly 80-90% of the
> worlds population.
>
> For them, using that mobile network is probably the most cost effective
> solution. For the rest, giving them enough of an education to have the
> means to come live with the rest of us, is probably the most cost effective
> solution.

Those are basic mobile phone networks, not internet phones. I don't
think voice calls and SMS messages are going to be much help.

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May 31, 2009, 4:02 PM

Post #38 of 56 (1362 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 6:52 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> > I just found another statistic. Mobile networks cover roughly 80-90% of
> the
> > worlds population.
> >
> > For them, using that mobile network is probably the most cost effective
> > solution. For the rest, giving them enough of an education to have the
> > means to come live with the rest of us, is probably the most cost
> effective
> > solution.
>
> Those are basic mobile phone networks, not internet phones. I don't
> think voice calls and SMS messages are going to be much help.

It's mostly GSM. You're telling me these networks can't handle the use of a
GSM modem? If it can carry voice, it can can carry data.
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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 4:17 PM

Post #39 of 56 (1364 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/6/1 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:
>
>> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
>> > I just found another statistic. Mobile networks cover roughly 80-90% of
>> the
>> > worlds population.
>> >
>> > For them, using that mobile network is probably the most cost effective
>> > solution. For the rest, giving them enough of an education to have the
>> > means to come live with the rest of us, is probably the most cost
>> effective
>> > solution.
>>
>> Those are basic mobile phone networks, not internet phones. I don't
>> think voice calls and SMS messages are going to be much help.
>
>
> It's mostly GSM. You're telling me these networks can't handle the use of a
> GSM modem? If it can carry voice, it can can carry data.

Fair point. I guess I'm so used to broadband I forgot about the
existence of dial up for a second! You would need to hand out phones,
laptops, and network subscriptions, though - that's getting rather
expensive just to give someone an up-to-date encyclopaedia. The
network subscription could probably be heavily discounted if you were
only able to phone one number and that was to a WMF phone line that
handled the updates (so not strictly an internet connection).

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May 31, 2009, 5:50 PM

Post #40 of 56 (1372 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 7:17 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> I guess I'm so used to broadband I forgot about the
> existence of dial up for a second! You would need to hand out phones,
> laptops, and network subscriptions, though - that's getting rather
> expensive just to give someone an up-to-date encyclopaedia.

I guess I'm forgetting how cheap labor is in so many parts of the world.
Here in the US we're talking about less than a week's work, but in an Indian
call center we're talking about over a month.
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thomas.dalton at gmail

May 31, 2009, 6:08 PM

Post #41 of 56 (1362 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/6/1 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:
>
>> I guess I'm so used to broadband I forgot about the
>> existence of dial up for a second! You would need to hand out phones,
>> laptops, and network subscriptions, though - that's getting rather
>> expensive just to give someone an up-to-date encyclopaedia.
>
>
> I guess I'm forgetting how cheap labor is in so many parts of the world.
> Here in the US we're talking about less than a week's work, but in an Indian
> call center we're talking about over a month.

People working in Indian call centres probably already have internet
access, or at least can access the internet somewhere (in a internet
cafe, or something). They are generally quite highly educated (I
believe many even have degrees, but can make more money in a call
centre working for a foreign company than using their degree working
for an Indian company). For people in rural areas, there is no way
they could ever afford these things themselves, many have a
subsistence lifestyle, there is no possibility to save up for stuff.

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May 31, 2009, 6:42 PM

Post #42 of 56 (1364 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 9:08 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:

> 2009/6/1 Anthony <wikimail [at] inbox>:
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail
> >wrote:
> >
> >> I guess I'm so used to broadband I forgot about the
> >> existence of dial up for a second! You would need to hand out phones,
> >> laptops, and network subscriptions, though - that's getting rather
> >> expensive just to give someone an up-to-date encyclopaedia.
> >
> >
> > I guess I'm forgetting how cheap labor is in so many parts of the world.
> > Here in the US we're talking about less than a week's work, but in an
> Indian
> > call center we're talking about over a month.
>
> People working in Indian call centres probably already have internet
> access, or at least can access the internet somewhere (in a internet
> cafe, or something). They are generally quite highly educated (I
> believe many even have degrees, but can make more money in a call
> centre working for a foreign company than using their degree working
> for an Indian company). For people in rural areas, there is no way
> they could ever afford these things themselves, many have a
> subsistence lifestyle, there is no possibility to save up for stuff.

The educated people in rural areas generally get themselves out. If someone
voluntarily chooses to live a subsistence lifestyle, there's no point in
providing them with a free copy of Wikipedia in the first place.

But still, over a month's salary is pretty steep, considering that there's
no guarantee it'll help. I guess for now it's better to focus on providing
access in schools and libraries.
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magnusmanske at googlemail

Jun 1, 2009, 5:21 AM

Post #43 of 56 (1333 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 7:50 AM, Fajro <faigos [at] gmail> wrote:
> And why partner with Google? There are Free alternatives in development:
>
> http://www.apertium.org/
>
> http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Main_Page

I tried this with a "first paragraph" from en.wikipedia, translating
to Spanish and back. Worked surprisingly well, even though it renamed
"New Jersey" to "New Sweater"...

Magnus

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removed at example

Jun 1, 2009, 10:53 AM

Post #44 of 56 (1336 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

I took a stab at summarizing this thread on Meta

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OWPP
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/One_Wikipedia_Per_Person

The three main ideas I found were

- Offline Handheld Wikipedia Reader
- Dead Tree Technology
- Wikipedia TV

All three contain quite a bit of promise. What will it take to get the WMF
to broaden its distribution efforts?
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Jun 1, 2009, 11:08 AM

Post #45 of 56 (1330 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

While I'm thinking about it:

I would like to see the WMF solicit feedback on these kinds of issues - how
it might further its goals (distribution for example) - from the wider
readership. The small, well informed and focused group on foundation-l can
do a lot, but what about inviting everyone to the conversation in a medium
that makes it easy for them to contribute their ideas?

Erik, you had pitched us the Ideazilla application not too long ago. That in
coordination with a site notice would be an awesome experiment. Let's do it
sooner rather than later? :)

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado> wrote:

> I took a stab at summarizing this thread on Meta
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OWPP
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/One_Wikipedia_Per_Person
>
> The three main ideas I found were
>
> - Offline Handheld Wikipedia Reader
> - Dead Tree Technology
> - Wikipedia TV
>
> All three contain quite a bit of promise. What will it take to get the WMF
> to broaden its distribution efforts?
>
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thomas.dalton at gmail

Jun 1, 2009, 11:20 AM

Post #46 of 56 (1332 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

2009/6/1 Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado>:
> While I'm thinking about it:
>
> I would like to see the WMF solicit feedback on these kinds of issues - how
> it might further its goals (distribution for example) - from the wider
> readership. The small, well informed and focused group on foundation-l can
> do a lot, but what about inviting everyone to the conversation in a medium
> that makes it easy for them to contribute their ideas?
>
> Erik, you had pitched us the Ideazilla application not too long ago. That in
> coordination with a site notice would be an awesome experiment. Let's do it
> sooner rather than later? :)

Did you see this email (and the resulting thread)?
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-April/051580.html

The kind of discussion you suggest could well be part of that, or at
least done in connection with it.

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node.ue at gmail

Jun 1, 2009, 2:07 PM

Post #47 of 56 (1334 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

Berber isn't a unitary or standardised language.

As far as I'm aware, we have a WP in one of the Berber languages only
right now, Kabyle: http://kab.wikipedia.org/

Mark

skype: node.ue

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 3:50 AM, geni <geniice [at] gmail> wrote:
> 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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yann at forget-me

Jun 1, 2009, 2:22 PM

Post #48 of 56 (1335 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

geni wrote:
> 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)

I think Gujarati (6K) must be in this list.

> Strangely Telugu and Malayalam do break the 40K barrier.

Not surprising: Malayalam is one of the Indian state with the best
literacy rate. Telugu is the language of Andhra Pradesh, the 5th Indian
state by population, and the South Indian language with largest speaking
population.

Regards,

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Biblioth�que libre
http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres

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meta.sj at gmail

Jun 1, 2009, 4:12 PM

Post #49 of 56 (1323 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

This is a good thought-experiment to rerun regularly : working through
what 'all human knowledge to each person in his/her own language'
means (practical approximations of "all", "each", and "own", &c).

I think at a minimum, without trying to directly solve high-upkeep
projects such as hardware manufacture or physical distribution, this
should include making available reasonably
good/complete/comprehensible
* USB-key distributions
* half-offline cell-phone/portable distributions
* compact offline distributions (for laptops and computers)
* 'full' distributions for PCbangs, net cafes, and school computer labs
* the above in one- and two-language editions,

All of this should be done regularly, with the best that can be done
at a given time; regularly snapshotted with a process that improves
over time.

Someone has already suggested this isn't the best place to have this
discussion. I think it's a pretty good one for at least another
while, but wouldn't mind seeing a dedicated group and on-wiki
discussion grow out of this and tap into the WP-1.0 and (old-school)
WikiReader energy whose contributors rarely chat here.

SJ

(to the comment that there's not enough space on handhelds to store a
'full' WP snapshot, that's no longer true... offline readers that can
keep articles compressed and Flash prices that drop faster than WP
grows make it easy enough for most single languages. that said, many
people for whatever reason still have a hard time downloading GB of
programs or files; which is the real reason to maintain svelte
subsets.)

SJ

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus [at] colorado> wrote:

> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OWPP
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/One_Wikipedia_Per_Person
<
> � - Offline Handheld Wikipedia Reader
> � - Dead Tree Technology
> � - Wikipedia TV

Also Wikipedia Radio. And don't forget distributed ideas like WP-over-DNS...
https://dgl.cx/wikipedia-dns

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wikimail at inbox

Jun 2, 2009, 11:58 AM

Post #50 of 56 (1305 views)
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Re: One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia) [In reply to]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 8:14 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton [at] gmail>wrote:
>
> While I can't imagine how I managed it now, I don't remember
> struggling with browsing Wikipedia on a 56K modem. In fact, I think I
> browsed it on a 36.6K modem... If it is what you are used to, it
> really doesn't seem that bad.

As long as you can download an article (with images) faster than you can
read it, it at least serves the basic purpose of providing access to
knowledge.

But in my opinion Wikipedia (like any encyclopedia) is an absolutely
terrible source of knowledge standing alone. An encyclopedia can provide a
broad outline of a topic to evaluate which topics you are interested in
learning more about, point you to some resources for further reading, and
remind you of the answer to some specific questions as they come up, but an
encyclopedia cannot stand alone. Education requires access to the rest of
the library as well. And it also requires things that probably won't be
found in any library (or Wikibook). How to bribe the local police comes to
mind. And then there's the whole world which is excluded from Wikimedia
projects for being allegedly "POV". Perhaps if the definition of "POV" had
been better designed this wouldn't be such a problem, but considering that
WP:POV says such things as "Hard facts are really rare", I think it's quite
obvious NPOV knowledge is not sufficient.

So unless you're going to create a very targeted library for each
individual, I think that means full internet access (even that is quite
incomplete though, especially if you ignore non-free resources like e-books
and audiobooks). Going through all the trouble of providing a netbook and
wireless connection and then crippling it to only be capable of accessing
Wikipedia (and presumably the rest of the Wikimedia sites) would be
incredibly wasteful. If full Internet access is too expensive for one
individual, have it shared among many. If even that is too expensive,
probably because sufficient sharing is infeasible due to low population
density, then the solution should be explicitly temporary.

Enough generalities, though.
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