for
"wikipedia" and found only two groups, one in Cambridge and one in Calgary:
Should there be more of them, did I do something wrong?
-Bennett
At 09:38 PM 7/5/2007 -0700, SJ wrote:
You might start by tracking down the wikipedian
community groups who
meet around the world, via [[meta:Meetups]] and
meetup.org and the
like, and contacting them to see if the subject is interesting to any
of them...
SJ
On 7/4/07, Bennett Haselton <bennett(a)peacefire.org> wrote:
[sent recently to WikiEN-l, but perhaps this is
the more appropriate
list
since it's more about a proposed relationship
with the Wikimedia
Foundation
than about day-to-day Wikipedia stuff]
Re-greetings,
A few months ago I was here [which, for this list, means I was on the
wrong
list, but I was here, too] for a very interesting
discussion about
Wikipedia vs. Citizendium and in particular about the idea of having
teams
of identity-verified "experts" who
could take custody of articles to
help
prevent errors and vandalism. This time I'm
asking about something
less
controversial. Well, maybe :)
Peacefire runs a network of proxy sites like
https://www.StupidCensorship.com/ for getting around Internet
filtering;
unlike most proxy sites which are widely known
and get blocked quickly,
we
encourage people to sign up to receive e-mail
updates whenever we
create
new sites, and since it usually takes a few days
for newly mailed sites
to
get blocked, most of our users are usually able
to use the latest one
we've
mailed out. One of the most frequent comments
from our users is that
they're glad that they can get on Wikipedia through the proxies. So
how
can we help get the word out to more Wikipedians
-- many of whom are
undoubtedly not aware of the easy methods for accessing Wikipedia from
censored networks? (That is, they probably know about proxies, but may
not
know how to get an unlimited supply of proxies so
the latest one is
always
unblocked.) Our organization's whole purpose
is to help people get
around
Internet blocking, so every time we help someone
gain access to
Wikipedia,
we're achieving our mission and, presumably,
helping Wikipedia achieve
theirs as well.
We're willing to spend the money on the hardware and the bandwidth for
the
proxies to help people get access, so how can we
do it in a way that
benefits Wikipedia users the most? (Disclaimer: we do get some money
back
from the ads that runs on our site, but not at a
profit; we just barely
break even on the ads right now. So there may not be quite the same
"halo"
around these services as there is around the
bandwidth and hardware
that's
donated outright to Wikipedia for free :)
However, to be constantly
setting up new dedicated sites to help people get around Internet
blocking,
requires creating new accounts with different
hosting companies all the
time, and it would be impractical to try and get each of them to agree
to
provide pro bono services each time we set up a
new site, which is why
we
have to spend money for that and why the ads help
to pay for it.)
Since Wikipedia does have articles about subjects such as sexuality
that
are often blocked in schools, I recognize there
might be a minority of
Wikipedia supporters who nonetheless feel that the site *should* be
blocked
from students, but I'm hoping that the vast
majority of Wikipedians
would
not feel that way. First of all, most blocking
programs claim not to
block
sites that deal with those subjects in an
"educational" context, which
means the vast majority of articles on Wikipedia, even those about
topics
like sex, should not be blocked, by the
companies' own stated
criteria. Second, I think most reasonable people would agree that
virtually every teenager could read almost everything on Wikipedia
without
"harm", and that the educational
benefits are enormous. (Well, they
would
be if you had experts sign off on the articles.
*ducks*)
So, what can we do to help? If we had an unlimited budget for
circumvention services, how could we best use it to help
Wikipedia? (Whatever the answer to that would be, there's probably a
way
we can achieve some part of it, even on a limited
budget.) In addition
to
just providing the sites, there might be times
when if a new Wikipedia
feature is being released, for example, we could do cross-platform
testing
to see if it's compatible with our proxies so
we can alert users to any
issues. What do you all think?
-Bennett
bennett(a)peacefire.org
http://www.peacefire.org
(425) 497 9002
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++SJ
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