Jimmy Wales wrote:
Summary: I read today that only 6% of the people on the planet have ever logged into the Internet. Only about half have ever used a telephone. So Erik's concerns about schoolchildren in India do resonate with me. I just think it's too early to settle on any particular certification scheme.
erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Last but not least, we should not forget that WP is intended to be a useful tool, not just for those who like to write, but for those who like to read, too. Be it interested adults or curious children, rich or poor, we want Wikipedia to be accessible. We may want to distribute it on CD- ROMs and on paper. Then how on Earth are the schoolchildren in India going to wade through megabytes of Middle Earth mythology and stubs, if not if we supply them with at least the option to filter articles according to criteria developed collaboratively by various teams, working together to find the sparkling gems among the ocean we are creating?
I totally agree with all of this. But I'm not sure that the time is ripe just yet. Perhaps in another year. I'm open to alternative points of view on this, but I think we're not close enough yet to "well rounded" to start seriously worrying about these issues.
The concept is intriguing, but I agree with Jimbo that we still have a long way to go before we can have any positive impact on the third world. Just sending them CDs containing "our" encyclopaedia will likely not accomplish very much. In some of these places the best use for the CDs would be as frisbees unless they have adequate hardware.
If, as some of us believe, a project like Wikipedia is to have any influence in the third world it would likely be practical to concentrate efforts in some selected community or country. We would likely need to find some co-operative arrangement with the target country, notably with its education bureaucracy. Even if there is enough hardware infrastructure simply sending CDs would not be a useful effort, and we would still have some expense in producing all those CDs. Encarta or some other large company that is now producing CD-encyclopaedias could dump its obsolete stock there much more efficiently than we can.
An interesting possibility would arise if we could transfer the "wiki way" along with the encyclopaedias. Middle Earth mythology may very well be alien to these cultures, but the wiki way could be applied in a study of local literature and mythology. I view the critical challenge for education is to communicate critical thinking skills; this has become just as important as the traditional 3 Rs. Third world countries cannot hope cannot hope to advance without that skill being present in very broad cross-sections of their populations. I believe that Wikipedia could eventually help there.
It's just something to think about. Eclecticology