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Wikipedia Zero

wikimediafoundation.org

31–40 of 84 posts

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#32
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.

That is my suspicion as well. It doesn't strike me as correct that technical limitations prevent them from offering all languages in Saudi Arabia or Russia, but the Democratic Replubic of Congo has it figured out. Going from wikipedia, it seems like Saudi Arabia has far more developed telecom...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Saudi_Ara... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_the_Democ...

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#33
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…

maybe they just don't like you, I've had no problems with wikipedia. contributed many pages (mostly on art)

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#34
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 quite frequently make small edits to Wikipedia. Sometimes I just ask for clarification on something that sounds wrong (but I'm having trouble looking it up) on the talk page. It's rare that my edits are reverted and when they are I've never felt that it wasn't reasonable for the edit to be reverted. I don't normally make huge edits as I haven't got the time but lots of small changes will still slowly improve the article.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#35
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…

Wikipedia is now and always has been a giant turf war, roamed by amalgamations of insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedants and paid PR shills. There was a time something could've been done about it, but Wikipedia chose not to.

I stopped editing in 2005.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#36
I remember hearing about the WikiReader [1] a few years back and thinking it would be great for this sort of use. It's basically a cheap handheld device with an LCD display and a local Wikipedia text-only cache that runs off of AAA batteries. Might be useful for delivering Wikipedia content to places where there's no cell phone infrastructure.

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

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#37
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.…

I've often wondered why Wikipedia doesn't push the Simple English Wikipedia more: http://simple.wikipedia.org/ It only has 100k articles but I've found a bunch of excellent stuff there.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#38
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.

I agree. Handouts in any form other than straight cash often does more to undermine systems than improve it. Just like USAid food handouts undermine local economies, this could undermine net neutrality.

Instead of paying for the bandwidth for people, what can we do instead to reduce the cost to the point where people in these regions can afford to access wikipedia?

Also, what can wikipedia do to reduce the payload size of wikipedia articles so that users in those countries are downloading the least amount of data possible?

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#39

I remember hearing about the WikiReader [1] a few years back and thinking it would be great for this sort of use. It's basically a cheap handheld device with an LCD display and a local Wikipedia text-only cache that runs off of AAA batteries. Might be useful for delivering Wikipedia content to places where there's no cell phone infrastructure. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader

http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page

There is an android version, Full Text of Wikipedia is about 9GB. A smaller selection that includes some thumbnail images is around 3.5GB.

Re: Wikipedia Zero

#40
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…

Wikipedia is now and always has been a giant turf war, roamed by amalgamations of insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedants and paid PR shills. There was a time something could've been done about it, but Wikipedia chose not to. I stopped editing in 2005.

What is a concrete example? Many of the Wikipedia controversies I've read about have been related to political figures and events.
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