Charles Matthews wrote: More to the point is a general antipathy toward advertising of any kind. Ec

On Friday 29 October 2004 00:42, Matt Brown wrote: Yes, for example in Google AdWords. -- NSK Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org

On Saturday 30 October 2004 11:33, Anthere wrote: I have extreme interesting in national development of countries in Africa, South America and Asia: I am always thinking how I could help the people living there. How have you tried to reach north Africa, what is WMF's position on bringing free knowledge in the Third World and what do you think that residents of Europe, North America and Oceania can do via the Internet for the rest of the planet? -- NSK Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org

--- NSK <nsk2(a)wikinerds.org> wrote: "Imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." "...we are pursuing grants to fund the packaging and distribution of Wikimedia content to places that do not have access to the Internet." from http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising (linked from over 2 million pages across all Wikimedia projects) At least one grant we are interested in would fund the printing of as-yet-to-be-written high school biology textbooks in both English and French that would be distributed to students in Africa. Content development for that would happen on Wikibooks. See also: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants -- mav __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

NSK a écrit: Charles gave you a very good answer, so I have little to add :-) Two additional points : ''Did I try to reach Africa ?'' I'd like to mention that "trying" to reach Africa is not a one person effort, but a collective effort. So, the point is not "me". Very personally, I think I sent possibly 70 press releases in september. I could track some, mostly through french google news. But google news do not exist in north african countries, and it just would take too much time, so I have no idea of some of my mails went through or not, or just made some journalists begin to refer to Wikipedia or not. I went to seek for the maroccan media I contacted in september. Here is the list below of media I tried to contact. A couple of mails went back. Marroco is a french speaking country. Some of those media are french speaking, and others arab speaking. For the latter, I gave the link to the arab wikipedia as well as the french one. Additionaly, I left some comments to two maroccan journalists bloggers also known in the french speaking blogging community. I may indicate that in Marocco, the website Menara published two articles in which Wikipedia was mentionned. At least one came through Jean-Michel Cornu from la FING, a french reference (www.fing.com I believe) http://www.menara.ma/infos/includes/detail.asp?lmodule=Technologie&arti… http://www.menara.ma/Infos/includes/detail.asp?article_id=9613&lmodule=… --------- Was a question essentially answered by Charles. Oceania can do via the Internet for the rest of the planet? If you ask to an agronom engineer (right, this is me :-)), what *I* could bring would be better information on agricultural techniques, food transformation and preservation and waste and water treatment. Far away from any political fight, this is what many in these countries need. This is basic, but some lack this. Possibly, this might not be through the internet, but even a brochure (booklet) explaining farmers how to better fertilise their fields to increase their yield hence reaching food sustainability, or helping moms to manage their kids diarrhea, or increase awareness of AIDS disaster and how to fight it, might be amazingly helpful. French agronomists have a tradition to do that in many African countries, and associations such as Médecins sans Frontières are not american :-) Help us get the content, the tools, the network and the money, and we will do it :-) It will take time, but we will, I am confident :-) Other people might have other opinions on how to help Africa. These are mine.

Charles Matthews wrote: Charles is right about everything, as is typical. :-) NSK, people would probably appreciate it if you spent some time learning about the community. Your input is certainly welcomed, but the problem is that you have too often of late written comments that are likely a bit frustrating to many people, because you haven't done your homework. "what is WMF's position on bringing free knowledge in the Third World?" Did you imagine that I would say "I'm against it?" --Jimbo