in-line :- On 07/03/2017, Manoj Khurana <he...@manojkhurana.com> wrote: > Hi Friends,
Hi Manoj, Excuse but would be a big longish. > Offline Wikipedia is a requirement of many for sure. More so in developing > countries, where internet can be quite unreliable. I had suggested talking > to mobile operators/manufacturers to provide preloaded offline Wikipedia. > > Seeing this information about size makes this difficult to implement. > > Solutions may be: > 1. Arrange to make separate files for 8-10 Basic categories e.g. Science, > Commerce, Personalities, Arts, etc. > Not everyone needs everything. > This actually was the way before, at least till 2013-14 it was like that IIRC but can guess what happened. > 2. I personally feel current events articles are way too much expanded. > Size vs. value ratio is far less for recent or ongoing events. e.g. try > reading US presidential campaign coverage at this time, now that elections > are over. Is there a way to shunt out/ such material from offline version? > There might be but it probably might be a longish process, why I think that will share at the bottom. > 3. I Agree that images etc. need to be checked. These may be made > available after connecting. (Maybe illustrations etc. may be kept in > offline). > Agreed. > I am working for Hindi Wiki and I believe that in order to make Wikipedia > popular, offline versions are must. If they can be preloaded in phones, > we'll surely gain millions of new contributors. > Agreed, but not just for gaining millions of contributors but sharing knowledge with millions and billions of students who should have access to the knowledge. That we believe to a basic human right along with a critical eye to understanding how that knowledge is being generated. But am going off-key here, sharing what I remember from the past about kiwix below. The problem with kiwix was always having enough curators. Just like the upcoming wikimania, kiwix was also divided into a sort of Global north and Global South which I had thought at that time to be too simplistic. The south itself has so many variances, differences in cultural outlook that it makes weighing/rating articles very difficult indeed. Sharing few simplistic examples - a. Che Guvera is a revered figure in South and Latin America but in India apart from the Goan Che Guvera T-shirts most people don't either know much or don't give a damn. So as somebody who has to make a choice which article should go into limited space, it calls for judgement call which at least I dunno should we take or not. b. Our classical dances, Kuchi Pudi, Bharat Natyam and others have a high value within India, they perhaps might not have the same import in other places and countries. c. Lastly, the most intractable are probably controversial (to some people) social science topics. For e.g. Abortion is a touchy topic for many, and if you see the history and talk page of the article in question, it has been in semi-protection since ever as people have pretty strong views on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abortion - Again this is merely an example, there probably are more than a hundred or more articles like that. Even if somehow you were able to do the compilation one time, it wouldn't suffice, it is and would be a multi-year effort. FWIW, I don't see the bandwidth issues dying out so soon. The correct way in my mind would be to have some funding and have 2-3 experienced wikipedians from India who have wide-ranging interests, get stats about most read articles from Indian IP's which show interest as well as have a non-profit or two to help/guide the whole process forward with dedicated timelines. > Regards, > U:Anamdas. <snipped> -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A 2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8 _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
