cross posting to Offline & Wikimedia-India.
Hi
I'm working on the Wikimedia Foundation's initiatives in India and I'm reaching out for help on a really exciting opportunity. Assam is a state in the North-East of India. The Government has an interesting scheme to give laptops to deserving students leaving secondary school (i.e., completed 10 years of education and about 15-16 year olds.) This scheme is being managed by an organisation called Amtron - who have issued a Tender for the procurement of these laptops.
There are 19,000 laptops that will be distributed in this initiative. (These are on Ubuntu Linux - and very reasonably configured.)
Assam has traditionally had a problem with infrastructure and Internet access is a problem. Someone who is supporting Amtron has asked the Foundation if we can give them an offline version of Wikipedia to pre-load onto these computers. Given that it is for 15-16 age group, it does need to be of appropriate content. They'd like it to have topics of academic interest covered (e.g., classical sciences, humanities, literature and accountancy.) Ideally we'd like them to also have articles on India (e.g. history, geography, culture, etc.) as well as other areas of general interest (e.g., music, sports, etc.) Currently, everything is required in English only.
While these laptops aren't going to necessarily be in classrooms, given that they will be with some students, it's safe to assume that other students, friends and relatives would access these. Given the context of Assam, I thank we can easily assume that 10 people would access these computers. That adds up to improving access for nearly 2,00,000 people! I'm really inspired by the potential of this partnership because because it allows us huge scale with efficiency in effort.
I understand that Wikipedia for Schools is readying for release sometime in July 2011 - and the timing couldn't be better.
Can you help us out with a) how you could help on adding the additional articles that this initiative would require? (You could also sign up on the Volunteer Page) b) how fast this can be given to Amtron? (They are looking for the inputs in July 2011.) c) any other ideas that you think might be useful?
Many thanks.
Best,
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs skype : hisham.wikimedia gtalk : hmundol@wikimedia.org twitter : @mundol
Forwarding to the openZIM developers mailing list for a heads up and to reach the Kiwix people there who deal with content generation and packaging a lot.
/Manuel
Am 23.06.2011 11:54, schrieb Hisham Mundol:
cross posting to Offline & Wikimedia-India.
Hi
I'm working on the Wikimedia Foundation's initiatives in India and I'm reaching out for help on a really exciting opportunity. Assam is a state in the North-East of India. The Government has an interesting scheme to give laptops to deserving students leaving secondary school (i.e., completed 10 years of education and about 15-16 year olds.) This scheme is being managed by an organisation called Amtron - who have issued a Tender for the procurement of these laptops.
There are 19,000 laptops that will be distributed in this initiative. (These are on Ubuntu Linux - and very reasonably configured.)
Assam has traditionally had a problem with infrastructure and Internet access is a problem. Someone who is supporting Amtron has asked the Foundation if we can give them an offline version of Wikipedia to pre-load onto these computers. Given that it is for 15-16 age group, it does need to be of appropriate content. They'd like it to have topics of academic interest covered (e.g., classical sciences, humanities, literature and accountancy.) Ideally we'd like them to also have articles on India (e.g. history, geography, culture, etc.) as well as other areas of general interest (e.g., music, sports, etc.) Currently, everything is required in English only.
While these laptops aren't going to necessarily be in classrooms, given that they will be with some students, it's safe to assume that other students, friends and relatives would access these. Given the context of Assam, I thank we can easily assume that 10 people would access these computers. That adds up to improving access for nearly 2,00,000 people! I'm really inspired by the potential of this partnership because because it allows us huge scale with efficiency in effort.
I understand that Wikipedia for Schools is readying for release sometime in July 2011 - and the timing couldn't be better.
Can you help us out with a) how you could help on adding the additional articles that this initiative would require? (You could also sign up on the Volunteer Page) b) how fast this can be given to Amtron? (They are looking for the inputs in July 2011.) c) any other ideas that you think might be useful?
Many thanks.
Best,
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs skype : hisham.wikimedia gtalk : hmundol@wikimedia.org twitter : @mundol
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
Hisham Mundol, 23/06/2011 11:54:
T*here are 19,000 laptops*that will be distributed in this initiative. (These are on Ubuntu Linux - and very reasonably configured.)
How much disk space do they have? It shouldn't be too difficult to add a Kiwix installation with English language (and indic languages) Wikipedias ZIMs, if there's space enough.
Assam has traditionally had a problem with infrastructure and Internet access is a problem. Someone who is supporting Amtron has asked the Foundation if we can give them an offline version of Wikipedia to pre-load onto these computers. Given that it is for 15-16 age group, it does need to be of appropriate content.
Uh? What sort of Wikipedia content could ever be unappropriate for 15-16 years old boys and girl? I can't imagine any. :-/
Nemo
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs skype : hisham.wikimedia gtalk : hmundol@wikimedia.org twitter : @mundol
On Jun 23, 2011, at 4:05 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
Hisham Mundol, 23/06/2011 11:54:
T*here are 19,000 laptops*that will be distributed in this initiative. (These are on Ubuntu Linux - and very reasonably configured.)
How much disk space do they have? It shouldn't be too difficult to add a Kiwix installation with English language (and indic languages) Wikipedias ZIMs, if there's space enough.
320GB so space isn't a problem.
Assam has traditionally had a problem with infrastructure and Internet access is a problem. Someone who is supporting Amtron has asked the Foundation if we can give them an offline version of Wikipedia to pre-load onto these computers. Given that it is for 15-16 age group, it does need to be of appropriate content.
Uh? What sort of Wikipedia content could ever be unappropriate for 15-16 years old boys and girl? I can't imagine any. :-/
:-) Would suggest we err on the side of caution. majorly on the side of caution.
Nemo
Assam has traditionally had a problem with infrastructure and Internet access is a problem. Someone who is supporting Amtron has asked the Foundation if we can give them an offline version of Wikipedia to pre-load onto these computers. Given that it is for 15-16 age group, it does need to be of appropriate content.
Uh? What sort of Wikipedia content could ever be unappropriate for 15-16 years old boys and girl? I can't imagine any. :-/
:-) Would suggest we err on the side of caution. majorly on the side of caution.
Nemo
FYI, OLPC has an offline activity called "WikiBrowse" which has been used in a Fedora-based operating system. It has already been distributed on >300,000 laptops, mostly in Peru, also in Rwanda and Uruguay (there are Spanish and English versions). http://wiki.laptop.org/go/WikiBrowse
I put together the article list (including the blacklist) for these laptops, which go out to 6-12 year olds. (I don't know whether it's been changed since May 2008.) I can tell you my general guideline was "would a bunch of children gather around the laptop to snicker at an article?" I wanted to avoid the nightmare scenario of an upset teacher and angry parent.
"Sexualidad humana", "homosexualidad", and "pedofilia" were included, but not "masturbación", "sexo anal", "sexo oral", or any porn stars. I figured children that age did not need "instructions on sex", but I did not want to censor article about sexual relations that (in my judgement) seemed to have social importance. Here's a link: http://mad.printf.net/blacklist2
I'm not aware of any complaints, and the activity is one of the favorites with children and teachers. Since you have an older age group that is becoming sexually active, I would recommend you be less strict than I was.
- Madeleine
On 6/23/11, Hisham Mundol hmundol@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs skype : hisham.wikimedia gtalk : hmundol@wikimedia.org twitter : @mundol
On Jun 23, 2011, at 4:05 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
Hisham Mundol, 23/06/2011 11:54:
T*here are 19,000 laptops*that will be distributed in this initiative. (These are on Ubuntu Linux - and very reasonably configured.)
How much disk space do they have? It shouldn't be too difficult to add a Kiwix installation with English language (and indic languages) Wikipedias ZIMs, if there's space enough.
320GB so space isn't a problem.
Assam has traditionally had a problem with infrastructure and Internet access is a problem. Someone who is supporting Amtron has asked the Foundation if we can give them an offline version of Wikipedia to pre-load onto these computers. Given that it is for 15-16 age group, it does need to be of appropriate content.
Uh? What sort of Wikipedia content could ever be unappropriate for 15-16 years old boys and girl? I can't imagine any. :-/
:-) Would suggest we err on the side of caution. majorly on the side of caution.
Nemo
FYI, OLPC has an offline activity called "WikiBrowse" which has been used in a Fedora-based operating system. It has already been distributed on >300,000 laptops, mostly in Peru, also in Rwanda and Uruguay (there are Spanish and English versions). http://wiki.laptop.org/go/WikiBrowse
I put together the article list (including the blacklist) for these laptops, which go out to 6-12 year olds. (I don't know whether it's been changed since May 2008.) I can tell you my general guideline was "would a bunch of children gather around the laptop to snicker at an article?" I wanted to avoid the nightmare scenario of an upset teacher and angry parent.
"Sexualidad humana", "homosexualidad", and "pedofilia" were included, but not "masturbación", "sexo anal", "sexo oral", or any porn stars. I figured children that age did not need "instructions on sex", but I did not want to censor article about sexual relations that (in my judgement) seemed to have social importance. Here's a link: http://mad.printf.net/blacklist2 If I recall correctly, I also quickly went through the images by hand and tried to pull any explicit photographic images (photos of genitals) -- this task wasn't too hard since we weren't able to include that many images (the final activity was 200MB total, 100MB for 20-35k articles, 100MB for 3k images).
I don't think there's been any major complaints, and the activity is one of the favorites with children and teachers. Since you have an older age group that is becoming sexually active, I would recommend you be less strict than I was.
-- Madeleine
PS - I'm reposting this from my meprice@gmail.com account, I sent earlier from mpball@gmail.com, but it got held up because my mpball address isn't the one subscribed to offline-l. I suspect it will still bounce form the wikimediaindia-l list, though.
What a great opportunity! Thanks for spear-heading, Hisham. Some notes below, which I'd love thoughts on:
On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 2:54 AM, Hisham Mundol hmundol@wikimedia.orgwrote:
I understand that Wikipedia for Schools http://schools-wikipedia.org/ is readying for release sometime in July 2011 - and the timing couldn't be better.
July 2011 was the most recent update we heard from User:BozMo, who is the lead for SOS Children's Wikipedia for Schools (WPFS) project. It would be great to get an update from him on this timing!
The list of current articles can be seen here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Content_Development/Schools The primary changes in the version pending release in July 2011 will be newer revisions of these articles.
*Can you help us out with * *a) how you could help on adding the additional articles that this initiative would require?** (You could also sign up on the **Volunteer Page* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Volunteer_Page*)*
WPFS is geared to match the UK curriculum, which is very useful but undeniably lacking in its coverage of other geographically important topics, such as history & geography of India.
To that end, if we had a list of ~200 additional articles which *should* be included in an educational encyclopedia for India, we can add these to the updated version of WPFS. Kenya is also doing a similar thing (they are recording their list on the offline projects pages of metawikihttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Content_Development/Schools/Kenyan_Topics).
* Would anyone be interested in spear-heading this for India-specific content? *I have some ideas for how this could be facilitated (namely, by leveraging the work done by the Wikipedia 1.0 team and the India WikiProject [1], so reach out to me directly!!
[[1] Toolserver: http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=India&...
This is an excellent project! If there is anything that the English Wikipedia 1.0 team can do to help, please let us know.
If you are looking for a list of important Indian topics to check through, I'd propose using a slightly amended toolserver list sorted by points rather than importance, available here: http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi??namespace=&importance=&...
For simplicity, I created a tinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/WPIndiaWorklist but this URL will be blocked as spam if you try putting it into the wiki!
Good luck! Martin (User:Walkerma)
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry SUNY College at Potsdam Potsdam, NY 13676 USA +1 (315) 267-2271
Jessie Wild wrote:
What a great opportunity! Thanks for spear-heading, Hisham. Some notes below, which I'd love thoughts on:
On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 2:54 AM, Hisham Mundol hmundol@wikimedia.orgwrote:
I understand that Wikipedia for Schools http://schools-wikipedia.org/ is readying for release sometime in July 2011 - and the timing couldn't be better.
July 2011 was the most recent update we heard from User:BozMo, who is the lead for SOS Children's Wikipedia for Schools (WPFS) project. It would be great to get an update from him on this timing!
The list of current articles can be seen here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Content_Development/Schools The primary changes in the version pending release in July 2011 will be newer revisions of these articles.
*Can you help us out with * *a) how you could help on adding the additional articles that this initiative would require?** (You could also sign up on the **Volunteer Page* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Volunteer_Page*)*
WPFS is geared to match the UK curriculum, which is very useful but undeniably lacking in its coverage of other geographically important topics, such as history & geography of India.
To that end, if we had a list of ~200 additional articles which *should* be included in an educational encyclopedia for India, we can add these to the updated version of WPFS. Kenya is also doing a similar thing (they are recording their list on the offline projects pages of metawikihttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Content_Development/Schools/Kenyan_Topics).
Would anyone be interested in spear-heading this for India-specific content? *I have some ideas for how this could be facilitated (namely, by leveraging the work done by the Wikipedia 1.0 team and the India WikiProject [1], so reach out to me directly!!
[[1] Toolserver: http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=India&...
-- *Jessie Wild Global Development, Manager Wikimedia Foundation
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 7:09 PM, Martin A. Walker walkerma@potsdam.eduwrote:
This is an excellent project! If there is anything that the English Wikipedia 1.0 team can do to help, please let us know.
If you are looking for a list of important Indian topics to check through, I'd propose using a slightly amended toolserver list sorted by points rather than importance, available here:
http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi??namespace=&importance=&...
Good suggestion, Martin.
Question about this: is there a way to "hide" those articles that are already included in the selection? That is, is there a way to filter OUT those articles which are included in the Wikipedia for Schools selection? I am not sure if that database is integrated into this selection tool or not, but it could be helpful in parsing out which articles would be additive.
- Jessie
Dear All, Thanks a lot for the great efforts. To start with, we can think of English as medium, and then slowly fill up the gaps with local language translation (say in assamese) in course of time with some local support and technical guidance from wikimedia.
Yours, MK Yadava MD, AMTRON --------------------------- Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Sending such information in other formats is at your own risk. Please be assured that non ODF formats will not be opened.
To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit http://www.openoffice.org/ --------------------------------------- Visit my blogs at http://letsbetteroursociety.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------------------------
On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 7:09 PM, Martin A. Walker walkerma@potsdam.eduwrote:
This is an excellent project! If there is anything that the English Wikipedia 1.0 team can do to help, please let us know.
If you are looking for a list of important Indian topics to check through, I'd propose using a slightly amended toolserver list sorted by points rather than importance, available here:
http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi??namespace=&importance=&...
Good suggestion, Martin.
Question about this: is there a way to "hide" those articles that are already included in the selection? That is, is there a way to filter OUT those articles which are included in the Wikipedia for Schools selection? I am not sure if that database is integrated into this selection tool or not, but it could be helpful in parsing out which articles would be additive.
- Jessie
-- *Jessie Wild Global Development, Manager Wikimedia Foundation
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
Mr Yadava
Can you let us know the timelines for this? Specifically, when is the last date by which you will need the content?
I will be in touch with separately you also on how we can help providing technical support on building capacity for translation.
Many thanks.
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs skype : hisham.wikimedia gtalk : hmundol@wikimedia.org twitter : @mundol
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
On Jul 19, 2011, at 11:57 PM, M K Yadava IFS wrote:
Dear All, Thanks a lot for the great efforts. To start with, we can think of English as medium, and then slowly fill up the gaps with local language translation (say in assamese) in course of time with some local support and technical guidance from wikimedia.
Yours, MK Yadava MD, AMTRON
Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Sending such information in other formats is at your own risk. Please be assured that non ODF formats will not be opened.
To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit http://www.openoffice.org/
Visit my blogs at http://letsbetteroursociety.blogspot.com/
On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 7:09 PM, Martin A. Walker walkerma@potsdam.eduwrote:
This is an excellent project! If there is anything that the English Wikipedia 1.0 team can do to help, please let us know.
If you are looking for a list of important Indian topics to check through, I'd propose using a slightly amended toolserver list sorted by points rather than importance, available here:
http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi??namespace=&importance=&...
Good suggestion, Martin.
Question about this: is there a way to "hide" those articles that are already included in the selection? That is, is there a way to filter OUT those articles which are included in the Wikipedia for Schools selection? I am not sure if that database is integrated into this selection tool or not, but it could be helpful in parsing out which articles would be additive.
- Jessie
-- *Jessie Wild Global Development, Manager Wikimedia Foundation
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l