[Foundation-l] getting Wikipedia to the 5.2 billion people who can't access it

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:
>
>> How does Google Wave help the WMF achieve its goals?
>
>
> Not sure, it doesn't really exist yet.  I'm sure there will be numerous ways
> in which it can do it, though.

While we could move this mailing list over to Waves and get access to
fancy games of su-doku while we flame each other, I can't see any
great ways it can help, at least directly. I'm open to being
surprised, though.

> Wikipedia has already become a dominant information source for the 1.5
>> billion people with Internet access thanks to Google.
>>
>
> How does being a dominant information source for people help the WMF achieve
> its goals?

I don't think being dominant helps in any way, but being an
information source for people basically *is* the WMF's goal.

> We need to focus on getting Wikipedia to the 5.2 billion people who can't
>> access it.
>>
>
> Indeed.  What languages do these 5.2 billion people speak?  Are they
> connected to the Internet?  If not, what's stopping them?  Do they have a
> telephone, a computer, electricity, television, running water?  If not, what
> is stopping them from being able to get these things?  Are the problems
> things that are well geared toward the expertise of the WMF, or are we
> better off letting other non-profits with more specialized expertise fix
> them?
>
> Personally, I didn't even know the number was 5.2 billion.  Should I do this
> further research myself, or can someone answer these questions for me?

Wikipedia [1] tells me there are 1.58 billion internet users world
wide. It also tells me [2] there are 6.78 billion people in the world.
That leaves 5.20 billion non-internet users.

If we look at [1] we see the countries with the lowest percentage of
people with internet access are North Korea (well, actually that's
unknown, but I think we can safely assume it is as close to zero as
makes no odds) and Myanmar - there probably isn't a great deal we can
do to help them. Countries a little higher up the list we might be
able to help with OLPC-style schemes. Printed versions of Wikibooks
might be useful. While we can't directly help with things like getting
people access to clean water, education is a very important part of
any long term scheme to get people out of poverty, and we can
certainly help there.


1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population