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Wikipedia Zero

wikimediafoundation.org

1–10 of 84 posts

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#2
I haven't looked at the details, but at initial glance - I love the direction.

While Wikipedia my not be the shining-light of data accuracy, it definitely fits the bill for achieving good: "Perfect is the enemy of good" [1]

I believe removing barriers to knowledge access for everyone is a step in the right direction. This tries to solve a single barrier. We still have a long way to go.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#3
I can't help pondering about the implications this move could consequently bring to the perceptions of net neutrality.

Not that I see this project as something inherently bad, it is just the contrary, but it can give rise to some bad moral precedents.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#4
post #3

I can't help pondering about the implications this move could consequently bring to the perceptions of net neutrality. Not that I see this project as something inherently bad, it is just the contrary, but it can give rise to some bad moral precedents.

Would you care to expand on these bad precedents that you are referring to?

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#5
I think this is very important step. If this works, then we will have real data to argue about providing free basic internet connectivity (Enough for text for example) for entire world population.

This would allow for text only MOOC's accessible by everyone at the very least.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#7
> "Some partner billing systems restrict the possibility of zero-rating all Wikipedia languages"

What? Their billing systems can't handle a wildcard subdomain? Even so, it isn't exactly difficult to enumerate all of the wikipedias. There are less than 300 total, and only 121 with 1000+ articles.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#8
post #4
post #3

I can't help pondering about the implications this move could consequently bring to the perceptions of net neutrality. Not that I see this project as something inherently bad, it is just the contrary, but it can give rise to some bad moral precedents.

Would you care to expand on these bad precedents that you are referring to?

If you get access to sites you care about for free, or heavily subsidized. Would you pay for access to full internet? This might give a lot of informational control to governments/internet providers. If let's say Google, and Facebook are accessible, would those companies fight for some libertarian website that was blocked?

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#9
post #4
post #3

I can't help pondering about the implications this move could consequently bring to the perceptions of net neutrality. Not that I see this project as something inherently bad, it is just the contrary, but it can give rise to some bad moral precedents.

Would you care to expand on these bad precedents that you are referring to?

Well, presumably if carriers provide reduced- or no-cost access to Wikipedia that's a direct violation of net neutrality, aka charging the same amount of money for data moving through the pipes no matter what it is or who it comes from.

Presumably the OP is concerned that this could degenerate from "breaking net neutrality is fine as long as it favors sites we like" to "breaking net neutrality is fine".

Note that I don't necessarily share the belief of the OP, but it's certainly a point worth some real consideration.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#10
post #4
post #3

I can't help pondering about the implications this move could consequently bring to the perceptions of net neutrality. Not that I see this project as something inherently bad, it is just the contrary, but it can give rise to some bad moral precedents.

Would you care to expand on these bad precedents that you are referring to?

No, of course not. I'll try to be short, though.

The first thing to ask is what differentiates Wikipedia content from the rest of the 'net so that it would be OK to break net neutrality principles towards the implementation of this project.

So, even if this breakage is somewhat worth the bending of the rules, companies must support the idea. Once they do it, what would be the moral ground to rightfully deny another proposals from content providers that offer them money to do that?

Well, this problem is not something really new. Net neutrality is already broken, though almost everybody agrees on its importance. There must be some kind of consistency if we want it to survive.

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