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

[Anthony]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/5/31 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Edit conflicts with live editing aren't an issue, manual resolution is
> >> trivial. Edit conflicts with significant delays are a much bigger
> >> problem and require automated merging, which isn't always possible,
> >> and is often very difficult.
> >
> >
> > Why do edit conflicts with significant delays require automated merging?
> > What's wrong with sending back a message that "your edit failed due to an
> > edit conflict", or even better "there was an conflict with your edit - it
> > has been sent to a queue for manual processing"?  Sure, third worlders
> won't
> > be able to get into an edit war on the English Wikipedia version of
> [[George
> > W. Bush]], but that doesn't mean they can't contribute to one of the
> > millions of lower traffic articles.
>
> There would be an extremely large number of conflicts that never got
> resolved, since the message that got sent back would be sent some time
> after the person had lost interest in the edit.


1) there would be more that got through than that caused a conflict.
2) it wouldn't have to be the original person who resolved the conflict.


> I don't see why we're
> discussing these people editing, the important thing is that they can
> read it.


Fair enough.  I pointed it out as a possibility.  You're the one who turned
it into a long discussion.


> If they don't have access to Wikipedia chances are they don't
> have access to reliable sources to edit using anyway.


Who is the "they" we're talking about here.  Google Wave won't help everyone
in every situation, but it does have potential to help the WMF meet its
goals.


> >> That would be pretty easy to
> >> program compared to rewriting the whole of MediaWiki to function via
> >> Waves.
> >
> >
> > Google has already done that, except it's not MediaWiki, it's something
> much
> > much more powerful and easy to use.
>
> And if we were starting Wikipedia in a few months time, perhaps we
> would base it around Waves, but we aren't, so that's irrelevant. It
> would need a massive amount of work to convert everything over.


I'm sure you can import html into a Wave.

The WMF might not do it, but someone will.


> Even
> if we did that work, it wouldn't make any difference to the 5.2
> billion people this thread is about. Until you start making sense, I'm
> out - have a good day.


Adios, don't let the door hit, et. al.