On 14 Sep 2004, at 06:34, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
Message: 3 Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 18:47:09 -0400 From: Delirium delirium@hackish.org
A minimally cheap newly built computer system these days can be easily had for under $500
Which is COMPLETELY out of reach for probably well over 90% of the world population. They just can't spare $500. Nevermind electricity (good point).
--Jens
Jens Ropers wrote:
On 14 Sep 2004, at 06:34, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
Message: 3 Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 18:47:09 -0400 From: Delirium delirium@hackish.org
A minimally cheap newly built computer system these days can be easily had for under $500
Which is COMPLETELY out of reach for probably well over 90% of the world population. They just can't spare $500. Nevermind electricity (good point).
--Jens
The logistic problems of distributing 100 M words on paper are interesting too. My best guess would be 100 BIG books, each with a printing cost of $5 each (with a large print run > 10,000), total cost $500 per encyclopedia. (Unless the printers of telephone directories can do better than that). A "best 10% of articles" version would cost a more reasonable $50, and take up 10 volumes. Tiny print could help, at the cost of usability. Still, at least there's no need for power, and more than one person can access it at a time in a library or school. Does anyone have a better guess for printing costs?
One thing which can be done, though, is to piggyback on existing charitable projects like Computer Aid (http://www.computer-aid.org/), which distribute second-hand computers to developing-country educational projects. Computer Aid's cost per PC to a recognized not-for-profit NGO is £39. The cost of installing a static copy of Wikipedia on these machines, or supplying it as a DVD, would be near zero.
There's also a U.S. university project to send cached bulk educational Web data to African universities, given that even when they have computers and electricity available, Internet access is still very expensive by the standards of the developed world. We should talk to them, so we can get Wikipedia included in their data package, but I can't remember their name,
-- Neil
Jens Ropers wrote:
A minimally cheap newly built computer system these days can be easily had for under $500
Which is COMPLETELY out of reach for probably well over 90% of the world population. They just can't spare $500. Nevermind electricity (good point).
You seem to either not be reading the email, or entirely missing the point. My point is that they CANNOT AFFORD TO BUY A 20-VOLUME ENCYCLOPEDIA SET EITHER. Bold that or underline it or something.
So, we have to buy it for them either way. My argument is that buying them computers, and mailing out periodic CD-ROM updates, is a better approach than printing up mailing out periodic encyclopedia sets. The sole caveat is that this applies to places with electricity, as I mentioned when I originally suggested the matter.
To summarize what I said 10 posts ago: In places with electricity, we ought to investigate whether it is cheaper to distribute information digitally (including distributing the means to read it) than it is to distribute information in paper form.
Does anyone have any objections to that other than the ones I already mentioned when I first proposed it?
-Mark
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Does anyone have any objections to that other than the ones I already mentioned when I first proposed it?
You mentioned electricity availability. I would add that digital distribution requires some IT skills by those receiving it; paper only requires literacy. There are financial costs with computers apart from the initial outlay, namely, maintenance. Computers develop faults -- books just get musty.
-- Matt (User:Matt Crypto)
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I think this is a good idea,but I have my reservations, my main concerns being:
1) If there is a stable edit of an article, people will revert from the latest edit to a stable version
2) If something was edited again after declared stable, the article will no longer be stable and seen as such (unless the viewer looks in the history - assuming stable tags are put on article page)
2) People might not bother looking at unstable edits at all
3) It will probably take the review board a long time to get through a substantial amount of articles, if they even agree
4) If something is considered stable people may not want to edit it for fear of ruining someone elses work, being labelled disruptive or making an otherwise 99% accurate topic non-stable (providing it is a minor change)
5) Defining something as stable is a big step and needs ideally to be done by proffessionals
6) As someone said earlier this isnt truely in the spirit of the project
7) People are fully aware that the content may not be fool-proof, users take their own risks (If it is a proffessional / academic im sure they have other places to look for information)
8) Finally, as with all systems, it is open to abuse (favouritsm, bribing, abuse of position etc)
These are of course my views and would appreciate sensible replies (if any)
Regards,
On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 17:43:13 +0100 (BST), Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Does anyone have any objections to that other than the ones I already mentioned when I first proposed it?
You mentioned electricity availability. I would add that digital distribution requires some IT skills by those receiving it; paper only requires literacy. There are financial costs with computers apart from the initial outlay, namely, maintenance. Computers develop faults -- books just get musty.
-- Matt (User:Matt Crypto)
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On 09/14/04 20:18, Matthew Larsen wrote:
- If there is a stable edit of an article, people will revert from
the latest edit to a stable version
Considering how much some people do this with favoured versions ...
- It will probably take the review board a long time to get through a
substantial amount of articles, if they even agree
That's a big worry. Mav compared the process to WP:FAC ... which is getting through more articles lately, but there's NO DAMN WAY it can be considered a model of scaling.
The review process I think would need to be more naturally a wiki or wikilike process to scale to any significant percentage of the articles.
- As someone said earlier this isnt truely in the spirit of the project
More specifically, it seems to directly repudiate the wiki concept.
- d.
Matt R wrote:
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Does anyone have any objections to that other than the ones I already mentioned when I first proposed it?
You mentioned electricity availability. I would add that digital distribution requires some IT skills by those receiving it; paper only requires literacy. There are financial costs with computers apart from the initial outlay, namely, maintenance. Computers develop faults -- books just get musty.
Perhaps the paper in the books should be treated with some kind of anti-fungal agent, or something else as well to discourage ravenous insects - especially in hot humid climates.
Ec