Gerard, Was this intended as a response to Lane? If so, I do not understand what point you are trying to make. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: 03 December 2019 08:39 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Remember Wikipedia Zero.. Where is the research about the effects of its demise?
Hoi, Sorry but really? Is something not good enough because "the community" did not think of it?? Really, if there is one part of our movement totally involved in what we do it IS the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. They maintain their distance and let the community do its thing.. they are to be praised for that
There are no community efforts that are focused on how to get our data to the people that truly need it. There is no attention from the community to get our data into Africa or Asia for that matter, what happened is all thanks to staff efforts.
What considers itself community is hardly cognisant of what is needed elsewhere. Thanks, GerardM
On Mon, 2 Dec 2019 at 19:20, Lane Rasberry lane@bluerasberry.com wrote:
I would be in favor of getting a Wikipedia Zero post mortem for lessons learned. The idea was inspiring, and it still sounds like a good idea, but so far as I know the discourse about what worked and what failed to work never got published or made it to wiki. One barrier in Wikipedia Zero that I felt was that it was a WMF staff project and much less a Wikimedia community project. In general, community projects require and produce documentation, and in general, WMF staff produce much less documentation. There can be tension for wiki community members to publish any documentation of projects where WMF paid staff are engaged.
In the 2018 WMF annual report the Internet in a Box project is the top listed WMF accomplishment for the year. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/2018-annual-report/ To me, it seems like Internet in a Box is the closest thing to a focus for increased LMIC wiki access that the WMF has right now.
There are lots of possible development directions and I still think the conversation is open for advancement.
On Mon, Dec 2, 2019 at 11:38 AM James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Sending on behalf of Douglas as his message did not make it through:
"Hi everyone,
James is right about South Africa. Although there is a strong appetite for Wikipedia Zero in South Africa (and surrounding countries as well I would bet) there were some unexpected hurdles encountered here. The appetite was strong enough for a class of school children in Cape Town to write an open letter calling for it that the WMF made a video about. We also go two of those school children to give a speech at Wikimania 2018. Unfortunately this was unsuccessful in getting real progress on zero rating Wikipedia in South Africa.
The back story is that the major telecoms firms in South Africa just did not see the point of zero rating Wikipedia even though it would give them a competitive advantage over other South African telecoms firms. This is mostly because the telecom sector in South Africa is a duopoly of effectively two colluding companies that practice what I would call a type of exploitative pricing.
The closest we came to getting Zero rating in South Africa was a response from one of the telecom companies (MTN) to the open letter from the school children back in 2014. MTN agreed to zero rate Wikipedia and made a video about it (now taken down I see) to get some free media off of it. However, what they did not tell people as that Wikipedia was zero rated only around schools, during school hours, and only on devices running MTN's proprietary version of the Opera browser. Since school kids are typically not allowed to us cell phones at school in South Africa this basically meant that almost no one got to get access to zero rated Wikipedia.
In South Africa's case I feel that there is still a great need and demand for zero rated Wikipedia. That is why I am supportive of another effort to push for getting local telecom companies to zero rate it. However, I also feel that the South African telecom companies are still suck in their profit-maximising oligopolic collusion orientated mind set. As such I think we need to change the narrative in South Africa around access to knowledge to get them to change their mind set which is a bigger challenge. However the high cost of data in South Africa combined with the "Data Must Fall" movement has created a friendlier environment for us. So I feel we should at the very least 'ask again' if we can get Wikipedia zero rated or at least restart the conversation to do that.
Regards,
Douglas."
On Sun, Dec 1, 2019 at 4:48 PM James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
The offline apps have also been downloaded 100 of thousands of times mostly from people in LMIC.
Wikipedia Zero faced the controversial about net neutrality. And thus we were legally banned from continuing in India.
Douglas Scott and I discussed the effects of the program in South Africa. Have cc'ed him to comment further but basically it sounded not all that great due to all the further limitations that were added by the telecoms.
James
On Sun, Dec 1, 2019 at 4:25 PM James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com
wrote:
Kul,
Would you please send a few or more paragraph description of the accomplishments and costs of the Wikipedia Zero program to the wikimedia-l list?
I also would love to see it back. The concerns about zero rating service abuse are real, but they did not apply to WZ no matter how many people implied they did at the time.
Best regards, Jim
On Sun, Dec 1, 2019 at 4:13 AM Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
Gerhard, I am also interested in what the impact of Wikipedia Zero was, but
it is not obvious to me how it would be measured.
The board members are unlikely to have personally researched this,
but might know if there is or was a project and if so what they are or
were
trying to measure. Equally, someone from WMF might be able to report on what has been or is being done in this regard. It is also possible that nothing has been done, or someone who does not read this list is working
on
it.
If anyone reads this and can enlighten us, either to whether it is
an ongoing project, has been done and the information is available somewhere, or nobody is known to be working on it, please let us know.
Anyone who has ideas on how it could be measured or why it can't is
also welcome to comment.
Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]
On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
Sent: 01 December 2019 08:19 To: Lodewijk Gelauf; Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Remember Wikipedia Zero.. Where is the
research about the effects of its demise?
Lodewijk, What I asked for is: do we understand what the impact was of the
Wikipedia
Zero project. In the answer of James, a board member of the WMF
someone who
could know, there is nothing that answers that question. All the
answer
does is deflect the question to something else. A notion that it is
"not
that bad because we have these other things". These things we had
before
Wikipedia Zero, they are not Wikipedia and they do not scale.
What I have noticed is that once consensus has been reached, we do
not want
to be confronted with the consequences of our actions. Wikipedia
Zero has
damaged our outreach and what the BBC info reminds us of is that
Internet,
the cost of Internet, is not comparable in Africa with what we are
used to.
It means that we no longer reach the girls and boys in Soweto as we
showed
in our film clip at the Erasmus award.
We do not cover Africa properly, we do not need to seek consensus
about
this, that is easily to be shown. Our focus on outreach is in
America, then
Europe, then the rest of the world and there is Africa. From the
moment we
stopped Wikipedia Zero, we have invested heavily in infrastructure
in
Africa, the organisational presence in the USA is now such that it
rivals
Wikimania and is used as an excuse by some to even dismantle
Wikimania. As
an organisation, a movement the "centre periphery" model is alive
and well.
We happily embrace Burke's peerage in Wikidata and we balk at the
fact that
covering science takes resources away from pet projects.
You tell me to be constructive and here I lay out what the
situation
is.
How can you be constructive as our movement does not support
science, the
people who need our information most are disenfranchised because we
do not
cover them, support them in an equal manner. Thanks,
On Sun, 1 Dec 2019 at 04:31, effe iets anders <
effeietsanders@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi Gerard,
It would be great if you could keep a slightly more constructive
tone in
your messages. On one hand, you seem genuinely interested to help
access to
free knowledge in Africa, but in your second email, you seem to
jump (after
one response) to conclusions already. If you like to get real
responses to
your emails, you may want to try a more constructive attitude.
For
me, it
is at least sufficiently offputting to disengage (I removed the
rest of my
response/suggestions).
-- Lodewijk
On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 9:34 PM Gerard Meijssen <
gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
> wrote:
> Hoi, > Kiwix and off line Wikipedia did exist at the start of
Wikipedia
Zero.
It > is great that you brought some to Africa but you do not scale
and it is
not > a study into the effects of what the effects are of terminating
Wikipedia
> Zero.
> No idea what "Starlink" is
https://lmgtfy.com/?q=starlink&s=l
> but it is not a reality for a few more years.. > It sounds like we have thrown all these kids under the bus but
hey, we
have > plan. A plan/action is having our own caches in Africa and
providing edit
> and read capabilities for all who care to use it... and then
measure the
> extend it helps us recover from our Wikipedia Zero public. > Thanks, > GerardM > > On Tue, 26 Nov 2019 at 02:48, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com
wrote:
> > > We have offline Wikipedia. I have shipped devices to
Kinshasa,
and
> > they arrived :-) > > > > Of course they do not at all address the need for two way communication. > > > > I am hoping Starlink will help when it comes online in a few
years.
> > > > James > > > > On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 12:19 AM Gerard Meijssen > > gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote: > > > > > > Hoi, > > > The BBC shows how dramatically expensive internet is in
Africa.. For
in > > my > > > opinion local political reasons Wikipedia Zero has
terminated. That
is > ok > > > up to a point; the point being that we understand the
consequences
from > > > this action. > > > > > > Given that our data is NOT local, people have to pay a
premium. What
> are > > we > > > going to do to compensate for expensive Wikipedia that
replaced
> Wikipedia > > > Zero? Did we study the effects or are we not interested in
the
> > consequences > > > of our actions? > > > Thanks, > > > GerardM > > > > > > https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-50516888 > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
> > > > > > > > -- > > James Heilman > > MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe:
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