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Wikipedia Zero

wikimediafoundation.org

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Re: Wikipedia Zero

#23

Post by DanBC »

throwaway092834 wrote: post #19
rsync wrote: post #14

I want to love this idea. I want to love wikipedia. But before I can do that, I need to be able to use wikipedia. And by use, I don't mean consume - I mean, be a full participant in a collective online encyclopedia. This is currently not possible. Rather than explain or give examples, let me challenge you to start any new article, or make any decent sized edit to any article, and let's assume for the discussion that…

I've contributed casually and anonymously in the past without problem, but it's been a while and I thought I'd take you up on your challenge. But there's a complication: Wikipedia appears to be TOO COMPREHENSIVE. I can no longer find a subject of general interest which isn't fleshed out to near (or beyond) my level of knowledge. All my local landmarks are well represented, as are the interesting areas I've travelled.…

Here's a list of requested articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles

Here are some stubs that might need expanding into proper articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Stubs

Here are articles that need more information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_in...

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#25

Post by retr0rocket »

rsync wrote: post #14

I want to love this idea. I want to love wikipedia. But before I can do that, I need to be able to use wikipedia. And by use, I don't mean consume - I mean, be a full participant in a collective online encyclopedia. This is currently not possible. Rather than explain or give examples, let me challenge you to start any new article, or make any decent sized edit to any article, and let's assume for the discussion that…

yet its still more accurate then any "properly" curated encyclopedia so your point is practically moot.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#26

Post by hansjorg »

jlgreco wrote: post #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.

I suspect this might be for political, not technical reasons.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#27

Post by 6cxs2hd6 »

_delirium wrote: post #13
kcorbitt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I do think there is some risk (though I'm not sure how much delta it adds to the risk either way) that it plays into normalizing the proposals for tiering, a specific kind of non-neutral net, where ISPs would give you access to different levels of "internet content" based on your subscription level, like cable TV packages for the internet. Example: a few sites are available in the Free tier, a basic whitelisted set o…

Which sounds like how cable TV works (at least in the US).

In the old days when city governments granted these monopolies to cable TV companies, part of the deal was community access channels (Wayne's World!). Even if these benefitted hardly anyone, they provided some moral cover and justification.

If I were an old media guy, I'd see Wikimedia Zero as the germ of an idea -- maybe suggesting a way how to squeeze the genie back in the bottle and wrap the internet in a cable TV model. And, hey, in the US most people's ISP is also their cable company. So ... I don't see it as a definitely bad thing, but I see the seeds of potential bad as well as good.

(In general, a lot of bad stuff flies under the flag of a good cause fighting some other bad thing -- "because terrorism", "because children", "because hyper-inflation", etc. Of course a lot of _good_ stuff also flies under good flags. I'm just saying it's not obvious either way.)

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#29

Post by smn »

smn wrote: post #20

We built the SMS & USSD connectivity for last week's launch in Kenya with Airtel [1] using http://github.com/praekelt/vumi . Happy to answer any questions about this, USSD isn't used as much and as such largely unknown outside of the majority world. [1]: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/25/wikimedia-foundatio...

We being Praekelt Foundation [1].

[1]: http://www.praekeltfoundation.org

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