[offline] UserGroup update - African-Wikimedians

9 Apr 2019


      Hello everyone,
*About the Offline UserGroup*
There have been many efforts to distribute offline snapshots to places 
with little connectivity, via schoolservers, wikireaders, and 
pocket-sized servers that run on batteries.
* We created astatic content initiative
    https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Static_content_groupearly on;
  * Anoffline mailing list
    https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-lhas been
    around for many years;
  * Kiwix has provided a stable toolchain for creating and viewing
    offline snapshots;
  * At various times (2011-12, 2016-) the WMF has staffed or supported
    offline teams testing and developing toolchains for translation and
    article selection, including one simply called "Offline".
  * A number of community grants from WMFR, WMDE, WMF and other
    foundations have supported offline deployments and focused
    translations for that purpose.
This user group is a shared community for people using the mailing list 
and developing any of these related initiatives!
*Objectives of the UserGroup*
+ Consolidate and support offline snapshots of wiki knowledge, and
    deployments of them in schools, clinics, and rural communities.
    + Update and maintain theoffline projects portal
    https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_projectshere on Meta.
    + Advocate for better distribution of and awareness of offline
    wikis, in all parts of the world where internet access is
    restricted, expensive, or unavailable: including schools, clinics,
    prisons, refugee camps, disaster areas.
*Activities*
* Development of offline distributions with Kiwix
  * Support for editors compiling modern snapshots of wikipedia, such as
    WP 1.0
  * Offline distributions to rural clinics, schools, and libraries
  * Offline editing with WikiFundi
  * Development of synchronizing solutions
  * Past events: 2017 offline hackathon in NY
  * Future events: Offline meetup @ Wikimania, Kiwix hackathon
*Membership ***Following the last update during Wikimedia Summit regarding WMF board seats selection [1], the UserGroup needs to clarify its membership.
For those already members in 2018, please confirm whether you are still a member of the Offline UserGroup in 2019.
If you were not yet a member and want to be, add your name ;)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_for_offline_wikis#Membership_in_...
Anthere