participation is another aspect. wp zero allows free reading. it does not allow free participation. write emails, search for references, download and adjust code. just as a side note, the oxford university stated: until 2012, europe, i.e. 10% of the worlds population, produced 50%+ of wikipedias geotagged contents [1].
imo it is not necessary to terminate wikipedia zero, it "just" needs to be negotiated differently: if a telco wants to support our case, give every person 200mb free internet access. unrestricted. or, if we need to break some law like now or be in the grey area, we could support additionally a viral model, like: if somebody is a wikipedia contributor (as defined in election criteria, or like in ghana, 3 edits per week), give them 2 GB free internet traffic for free, unrestricted.
if the WMF legal department would be able to negotiate _this_ e.g. in nigeria or india, i would have _big_ respect for them, and with pleasure say in future: you guys are worth every cent of the 5 million we pay you a year.
[1] http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/?page=the-geographically-uneven-coverage-of-wi...
On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jens Best jens.best@wikimedia.de wrote:
"Giving access to educational resources" isn't the same statement as "zero-rating wikipedia" - If the mobile providers are willing to give more open educational ressources (incl. video) a zero-rated access to the people THEN you can say "giving access to educational ressources for free" - right now it 'only' means "giving free access to wikipedia" (which is great and awesome for the wikipedia and the people).
Let's not be naive on the point that mobile providers have different motivations for zero-rating services as the movement has for fighting for free knowledge around the globe.
In the beginning it was mainly zero.wikipedia (text-only), now more and more providers giving access to m.wikipedia (some-pictures), but where are their restrictions and what will these restrictions mean for further development on free knowledge and free education? - And above that what will be our argument when other free knowledge/free education organisations don't get zero-rated? When it becomes clear that the marketing scoop of giving "free wikipedia" wasn't at all meant as the start of giving free access to free knowledge around the world?
I'm all in to make all open knowledge and all open educational ressources zero-rated available around the globe - but I'm also quite sure that this is not the deal the mobile providers are looking forward to. I prefer to stay critical and not giving up an important principle like net neutrality just because some mobile providers made a nice marketing deal with us which seemed to serve our own goals in short-term, but isn't reflected enough on its deeper implications on a free web and its liberated use.
best regards
Jens Best
2014-05-29 23:31 GMT+02:00 Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org:
On 05/29/2014 05:24 PM, Jens Best wrote:
A noble cause doesn't necessarily make breaking an important principle unproblematic.
In my opinion, if the definition of the principle makes the obviously perverse conclusion that a beneficial thing like giving access to educational resources for free to the world's least economically fortunate people "a bad thing", then the definition is obviously broken.
It could be the time to start talking globally about an in-the-future exit strategy on the surely noble initiative e.g. when certain milestones are reached in participating countries/regions.
So you're telling me that there is a point where we can say "Oh, you can't afford access? Too bad." and it's not a bad thing because some /other/ metric has been reached?
-- Marc
-- Jens Best Präsidium Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. web: http://www.wikimedia.de mail: jens.best http://goog_17221883@wikimedia.de