While I am impressed by everyone's ability to turn this into yet another discussion of the image filter, how about if we don't do that just this once? :-) This is the blog post that the WMF published regarding the development: < http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/26/wikipedia-seeks-global-operator-partners-to-enable-free-access/>. I don't want to single out its author, but I do think you can see the problem many have complained about for years encapsulated in its opening lines:
Probably the most repeated words around the Wikimedia movement are Jimmy > Wales’ “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share > in the sum of all knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.” The Wikipedia > community are the ones creating that world, and the ubiquity of mobile > internet is what may actually enable it. > In fact, the Wikimedia community are doing that, by making free texts available for all, by writing a dictionary, maintaining a repository of free media, by writing an encyclopedia, and so on. (I'm not cherry-picking; anyone who reads the whole post should come away with the idea that Wikimedia's mobile strategy is really only about Wikipedia.) Wikimedia's mission is quite clearly not encyclopedia-specific, and its broad scope actually seems designed to encompass the other works in the Wikimedia family, and yet when it comes to issues of participation, usability, MediaWiki development, and the WMF's other top initiatives, only Wikipedia is ever really treated as mission-critical. The Foundation expends a lot of energy worrying about stagnating participation at Wikipedia, which is in the top 10 of all sites for most of its respective languages, but much less time concerned with whether the other projects get off the ground at all. A lot of work seems to have been put into trying to make Wikipedia more user-friendly, all while projects like Wiktionary and Wikisource hobble along, with incredible technical barriers to participation, trying to make do with software and an interface that was never designed with their needs at all. Note that this isn't the same as saying that Wikipedia gets too much attention. It's perfectly reasonable that the largest and most well-known project gets a lot of the attention. But the Foundation often fails to act as if the other projects are actually essential in fulfilling its mission, and is notoriously bad at ever characterizing them as essential or trying to make them feel that way. Dominic On 2 November 2011 05:19, Billinghurst <[email protected]> wrote: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Technology_report > Wikimedia proposes Wikipedia Zero > > Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I know that it is the flagship, > however, it becomes a > self-fulfilling philosophy that nothing else exists at WMF when _WMF_ > cannot even seem to > present the whole package. > > Think if we expanded our visions and our message > * Quick and easy dictionary (wiktionary) > * Read a classic, a history, from science geniuses (Wikisource), > ** or even download the work! Well only if there were resources provided > so we could > explore the Epub extension > * grab a free lecture (wikiversity) > > Different sites, different scopes, different experiences ... synergism of > knowledge. > > Regards, Andrew <- crawling back into his hole, and pulling the rock back > over the top > > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
