How much funding do you think Wayne? Could we get a developer group to quote to the brief, and then put a target fundraising bar on Wikied for the rest of us to lobby for money for?
On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 7:52 AM, Wayne Mackintosh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dear Bjoern and Savithri, > > This is a challenge close to the hearts of all WikiEducators and We've been > thinking hard about how to move this forward. > > At least at a technical level -- this is solvable, but its quite > complicated and will certainly need a fair bit of funding to get this right. > > Optimising the CSS for use on low bandwidth would be relatively easy to > solve -- and in fact this may already be the case. When logged in - any > user can change their preference settings to use different skins. I've not > researched this, but it shouldn't be too hard to optimise one of the > existing skins for low bandwidth browsing. Lets hope that there are some CSS > gurus in our community that might want to give this a try. Perhaps you know > of someone who has this technical knowledge -- see if you can encourage them > to help out <smile>. > > Wiki's are unique in the sense that they are dynamic. Literally every > second someone around the world could be editing something. So this makes > replication a little more difficult. For example, if we have a local > installation of WikiEducator in Uganda -- how will the Uganda WikiEducator > synchronise with edits around the world. > > Benjamin Mako Hill of the Free Software Foundation has developed a > promising proof-of-concept for history sensitive branching and > synchronisation of wikis: > > http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:BMH1 > > So at least from a proof of concept perspective -- this would be doable. > However, is not a trival exercise and would need considerable funding to get > this operation. That said, it would be a huge advance for the free knowledge > community in widening access to knowledge. Perhaps we should collaborate on > a funding proposal to secure the funding to get this work done. I'm pretty > sure that the Wikimedia Foundation would also be very interested in solving > this challenge. > > Cheers > Wayne > > > On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 06:28 -0700, Bjoern wrote: > > Dear all, > > first post to the list - hello to you all. > > This is a post partially in reply to Wayne Mactintosh's > presentationhttp://www.wikieducator.org/Wayne_Mackintosh's_Presentation#.283:25.29_The_Big_Issue_for_Africa_.E2.80.93_How_do_you_get_Access.3F > regarding access for Africa, and your comments on "Are all Open > Educational Resources Equally Free?". > > The issues raised are very important, and I would like to make some > practical suggestions. In my view, issues like web disability access > are quite well understood, with relevant standards etc. However, low > bandwidth access really hasn't come into the mainstream yet, and > remains poorly understood. > > A good example for guidelines and recommendations are Aptivate's low > bandwidth web-design guidelines, which are available > here:http://www.aptivate.org/webguidelines/Home.html > > If you look at the top ten tips, you'll see that a maximum page size > of 25kB is recommended. Wikieducator is currently about 150KB, and > would take about one minute to load for typical user in a developing > world university. > > Quite a bit of this is due to the css and javascript of the MonoBook > skin (which is used by most mediawikis). So there's a real opportunity > here to have an impact by optimising the MonoBook skin. Perhaps even > modifying the mediawiki code, so that the javascript is only loaded > when needed. > > Unfortunately I don't have resources available to just get on with > this, but perhaps this could somehow be addressed in a community way? > > A second (more involved) area of interest is 'wiki replication', i.e. > to create a fully functional replicas (say of Wikieducator) within > local area networks. This would be a full copy of Wikieducator, that > can be read and edited on the local area network (of a university in > the south), i.e. without international bandwidth constraints. The > various 'replica' then synchronise themselves as and when permitted by > the international connection. Of course the goal would be a fully > functional copy, that allows both read/write and resolution of > conflicts etc. > > This is of course not a new idea, and it's also a complicated problem. > However, it is very relevant for low-bandwidth access, and perhaps one > could come up with some initial pragmatic solutions, that have less > than the full functionality. For instance, one could replicate the > content 'read-only', while 'edits' still take place on the main wiki, > but in a bandwidth optimised way (perhaps also with traffic shaping, > so that bandwidth is available for this). This could give many > institutions instant access to Wikieducator and Wikipedia. (In fact, > Wikipedia of course has a distributed system of servers.) > > Of course one would start with a pilot project, to see whether those > ideas really address some of the issues at hand. But if it works, it > won't just make Northern content more accessible, but it could really > make Southern content more visible, and also enable South-South > content sharing much more viable. > > I wonder whether there is critical mass to build a consortium around > some of those ideas, and to see what's needed to make this happen. > > Looking forward to your feedback! > Bjoern > > > > > > > > -- -- Leigh Blackall +64(0)21736539 skype - leigh_blackall SL - Leroy Goalpost http://learnonline.wordpress.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
