Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[David Gerard]

2009/6/2 George Herbert :

> OLPC will last far longer out in the field than alternate platforms,
> and uses less power.
> Durability matters...


This is true. Netbooks tend to the "cheap and cheerful" end of the
spectrum, and I can hardly think of a popular model that's been out
more than six months without common hardware problems cropping up -
e.g. the left mouse button on Eee 701 and 901, the yellow tinge at the
right of the screen on the MSI Wind ...


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 4:59 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>
>> 2009/6/2 George Herbert :
>>
>> > OLPC is focused on kids.  That's important.  Perhaps a sister program
>> > to provide one OLPC or like device per village, with a more adult
>> > development / educational / practical hands on skills data set load
>> > would be appropriate.
>>
>>
>> http://www.pixelqi.com/ are displaying their first prototypes this
>> week at Computex in Taipei. Put one of those in a cheap cheap cheap
>> netbook with lotsa flash. Expensive this year, half the price every
>> second year following.
>
>
> Yeah, OLPC without the focus on kids is just a netbook, and there are
> already netbooks cheaper than OLPCs.

OLPC will last far longer out in the field than alternate platforms,
and uses less power.

Durability matters...


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 4:59 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> 2009/6/2 George Herbert :
>
> > OLPC is focused on kids.  That's important.  Perhaps a sister program
> > to provide one OLPC or like device per village, with a more adult
> > development / educational / practical hands on skills data set load
> > would be appropriate.
>
>
> http://www.pixelqi.com/ are displaying their first prototypes this
> week at Computex in Taipei. Put one of those in a cheap cheap cheap
> netbook with lotsa flash. Expensive this year, half the price every
> second year following.


Yeah, OLPC without the focus on kids is just a netbook, and there are
already netbooks cheaper than OLPCs.
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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[David Gerard]

2009/6/2 George Herbert :

> OLPC is focused on kids.  That's important.  Perhaps a sister program
> to provide one OLPC or like device per village, with a more adult
> development / educational / practical hands on skills data set load
> would be appropriate.


http://www.pixelqi.com/ are displaying their first prototypes this
week at Computex in Taipei. Put one of those in a cheap cheap cheap
netbook with lotsa flash. Expensive this year, half the price every
second year following.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[George Herbert]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:42 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> 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.

Few people voluntarily chose to be poor or near starvation - they
don't have access to appropriate education, economy, and technology to
advance.

We cannot solve the second any more than the western world has over
the last couple of centuries, but we can help with 1 and possibly 3 if
we bring knowledge closer to people.

WikiHow is probably more hands-on practical for some of this purpose,
let's generalize out to "Freely Available info sources" from
"Wikipedia" - we could coordinate something but include much more than
just our own info.

OLPC is focused on kids.  That's important.  Perhaps a sister program
to provide one OLPC or like device per village, with a more adult
development / educational / practical hands on skills data set load
would be appropriate.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 8:14 PM, Thomas Dalton 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 8:14 PM, Thomas Dalton 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/6/2 Yann Forget :
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> 2009/6/1 Yann Forget :
>>> Last I asked, broadband Internet access in India was about INR 1500 (32
>>> US$), which is at least a week day salary for an Indian worker.
>>> True, in theory, there are Internet cafes, but last I tried (in 2007)
>>> they can be really used for looking at Wikipedia (too slow).
>>
>> 1500 rupees for how long? And do you mean week's salary or day's
>> salary? It can't be both! What is the point of these internet cafes if
>> the connection is too slow to browse a predominantly text website?
>
> Sorry, INR 1500 for a month.
> Well, you can still send a few mail (think it is like a 56 K connection).
> But most people have TV, so broadcasting some content could reach a lot
> of people.

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.

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Yann Forget]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 2009/6/1 Yann Forget :
>> Last I asked, broadband Internet access in India was about INR 1500 (32
>> US$), which is at least a week day salary for an Indian worker.
>> True, in theory, there are Internet cafes, but last I tried (in 2007)
>> they can be really used for looking at Wikipedia (too slow).
> 
> 1500 rupees for how long? And do you mean week's salary or day's
> salary? It can't be both! What is the point of these internet cafes if
> the connection is too slow to browse a predominantly text website?

Sorry, INR 1500 for a month.
Well, you can still send a few mail (think it is like a 56 K connection).
But most people have TV, so broadcasting some content could reach a lot
of people.

Yann
-- 
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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Samuel Klein]

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  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/6/1 Yann Forget :
> Last I asked, broadband Internet access in India was about INR 1500 (32
> US$), which is at least a week day salary for an Indian worker.
> True, in theory, there are Internet cafes, but last I tried (in 2007)
> they can be really used for looking at Wikipedia (too slow).

1500 rupees for how long? And do you mean week's salary or day's
salary? It can't be both! What is the point of these internet cafes if
the connection is too slow to browse a predominantly text website?

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Yann Forget]

mike.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote:
> On 2009-06-01 00:18, Anthony wrote:
>> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Thomas 
>> Daltonwrote:  
>>> 2009/5/31 Ray Saintonge:
 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.
> You also found any statistics on what prices for internet access through 
> mobile networks are? What proportion of the world's people can afford a 
> internet connection in the first place, and how many can afford a 
> connection which is useful to browse wikipedia?
> I'm just curious as I know someone - a westerner - working in Africa and 
> finding internet access hideously expensive. (chat and email ok, but she 
> tells that she avoids browsing the net as the cost is per downloaded MB)

Last I asked, broadband Internet access in India was about INR 1500 (32
US$), which is at least a week day salary for an Indian worker.
True, in theory, there are Internet cafes, but last I tried (in 2007)
they can be really used for looking at Wikipedia (too slow).

Anyway the priorities are very far from being able to access any online
resources. Even when there is a phone, often it doesn't work because
people can't pay the bill.

Yann
-- 
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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Yann Forget]

geni wrote:
> 2009/5/31 Brian :
>> 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
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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Mark Williamson]

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  wrote:
> 2009/5/31 Brian :
>> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/6/1 Brian :
> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Brian]

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  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Brian]

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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Magnus Manske]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 7:50 AM, Fajro  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/6/1 mike.wikipe...@gmail.com :
> You also found any statistics on what prices for internet access through
> mobile networks are? What proportion of the world's people can afford a
> internet connection in the first place, and how many can afford a
> connection which is useful to browse wikipedia?
> I'm just curious as I know someone - a westerner - working in Africa and
> finding internet access hideously expensive. (chat and email ok, but she
> tells that she avoids browsing the net as the cost is per downloaded MB)

Indeed. That's why I was suggesting not using a regular ISP but rather
having them phone a WMF number to get direct access to the appropriate
data, sort of like the old BBS system. That could be subsidised/free
except for the cost of the phone call (which could hopefully be
subsidised/free, but would require negotiation with the network
provider).

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[mike.wikipe...@gmail.com]

On 2009-06-01 00:18, Anthony wrote:
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Thomas Daltonwrote:
>
>
>> 2009/5/31 Ray Saintonge:
>>  
>>> 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.
You also found any statistics on what prices for internet access through 
mobile networks are? What proportion of the world's people can afford a 
internet connection in the first place, and how many can afford a 
connection which is useful to browse wikipedia?
I'm just curious as I know someone - a westerner - working in Africa and 
finding internet access hideously expensive. (chat and email ok, but she 
tells that she avoids browsing the net as the cost is per downloaded MB)
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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/6/1 Anthony :
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Thomas Dalton  >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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/6/1 Anthony :
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Thomas Dalton 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Thomas Dalton 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/6/1 Anthony :
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
>> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
>> > 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
> > 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Ray Saintonge :
> > 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Ray Saintonge :
> 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.

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:50 AM, geni  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.

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?

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Ray Saintonge]

geni wrote:
> 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.

That's very generously European of you.  The three Indian languages that 
you chose are all Indo-Aryan.  Manipuri, Munda and Tamil are as 
different from these as they are from each other.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 4:42 PM, geni  wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
> > 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[geni]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 3:20 PM, geni  wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
> > 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  wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:34 PM, geni  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[David Gerard]

2009/5/31 geni :
> 2009/5/31 David Gerard :

>> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[geni]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[geni]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:34 PM, geni  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Thomas Dalton  >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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
>> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
>> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Thomas Dalton > >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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Thomas Dalton  >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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Thomas Dalton 
> wrote:
>
>> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
>> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Thomas Dalton > >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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:34 PM, geni  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Thomas Dalton 
> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[geni]

2009/5/31 David Gerard :
> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
>
>> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[geni]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:50 AM, geni  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Thomas Dalton 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Thomas Dalton  >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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Thomas Dalton 
> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Thomas Dalton 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
>> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
> >> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
>> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[David Gerard]

2009/5/31 Anthony :

> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 8:52 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony :
> > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Brian 
> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen
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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Anthony :
> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Brian  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Gerard Meijssen]

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

2009/5/31 Anthony 

> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:50 AM, geni  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 6:50 AM, geni  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Anthony]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Brian  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Marc Riddell]

> 2009/5/31 Foxy Loxy :
> 
>> Assembling a chain of production that long, particularly for a
>> non-profit foundation that doesn't have the best reputation (I'm not
>> saying it's justified, but many people in high places will go 'ew,
>> wikipedia').
> 
> on 5/31/09 7:29 AM, David Gerard at dger...@gmail.com wrote:

> [citation needed]
> 
> People in high places appear to love us and/or respect our power, in general.
> 
[citation needed]

The power to do what, David?

Marc Riddell


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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[David Gerard]

2009/5/31 Foxy Loxy :

> Assembling a chain of production that long, particularly for a
> non-profit foundation that doesn't have the best reputation (I'm not
> saying it's justified, but many people in high places will go 'ew,
> wikipedia').


[citation needed]

People in high places appear to love us and/or respect our power, in general.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[geni]

2009/5/31 Brian :
> 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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Brian]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:44 AM, Gerard Meijssen
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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Gerard Meijssen]

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 

> 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
> 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 
> >
> > > 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
> > > 
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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Robert Rohde]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 7:38 PM, Brian  wrote:

> The technical specifications of such a device allow for it to be extremely
> cheap.


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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Brian]

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
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 
>
> > 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
> > 
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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Gerard Meijssen]

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 

> 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
> 
> ___
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Foxy Loxy]

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

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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Fajro]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:38 PM, Brian  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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Re: [Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Foxy Loxy]

It does sound like an excellent idea, but it does appear to require us 
teaming up with Google, a hardware vendor, a software vendor (the OS of 
course), a distributor and various governments that may or may not wish 
they people having access to 'forbidden' information.

Assembling a chain of production that long, particularly for a 
non-profit foundation that doesn't have the best reputation (I'm not 
saying it's justified, but many people in high places will go 'ew, 
wikipedia'). And then of course we have the money issue.

On Sunday, 31 May 2009 10:38 am, Brian 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,
> 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.

--
fl


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[Foundation-l] One Wikipedia Per Person (regarding the distribution of and the ability to read Wikipedia)

[Brian]

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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