Top-down and Bottom-up: Wikipedia relies on volunteers and can really be considered to be a "bottom-up" encyclopedia project, where the readers can also add content and become part of the project. I consider that the Kiwix offline Wikipedia is also very democratic in that anyone can copy and share the files, install them on their own devices and really feel like they own the knowledge.
Wikipedia Zero is a top-down way of distributing the encyclopedia and users of Wikipedia zero are just that: users. They will consume the knowledge and will have no role in distributing it further except maybe by promoting one particular cell phone operator instead of another.
I have been a few times to Senegal, visiting schools and sharing Kiwix and off-line Wikipedia with the teachers and the educational community. The files that I brought on USB thumb drives have been copied and shared hundreds and hundreds of times. But I am just one guy and that is really not enough to reach the whole continent. But we can scale up...
Wikimedia Zero was never even present in Senegal, at least not when I was there: in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2019. I think that it never took off before the whole project was abandoned. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Reach/MEA#Wikipedia Zero in Senegal with Tigo [Affordability] [Private Sector]
That been said, it would be interesting to measure the effectiveness of the "Wikipedia Zero" project...
On Sun, Dec 1, 2019 at 1:13 PM 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
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