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The Wikipedia Zero Program Will End This Year (medium.com)
Wikimedia: Wikimedia 2030, the global discussion to define the future of the Wikimedia movement, created a bold vision for the future of Wikimedia and the role we want to play in the world as a movement. With this shared vision for our movement's future in mind, the Wikimedia Foundation is evolving how we work with partners to address some of the critical barriers to participating in free knowledge globally. After careful evaluation, the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to discontinue one of its partnership approaches, the Wikipedia Zero program. Wikipedia Zero was created in 2012 to address one barrier to participating in Wikipedia globally: high mobile data costs. Through the program, we partnered with mobile operators to waive mobile data fees for their customers to freely access Wikipedia on mobile devices. Over the course of this year, no additional Wikipedia Zero partnerships will be formed, and the remaining partnerships with mobile operators will expire. In the program's six year tenure, we have partnered with 97 mobile carriers in 72 countries to provide access to Wikipedia to more than 800 million people free of mobile data charges. Further reading: Medium.
Itâ(TM)s hypocritical for anyone to support Wikipedia zero and also support net neutrality.
Isn't this a blatant violation of net neutrality?
How would this not violate various net neutrality rules? Preferential treatment to one destination over another is what we're all railing against.
You want to "increase participation"? Fire all the editors and start fresh.
I have a classic book in front of me published in the year 1868, titled "GOD IN HISTORY and GOD IN SCIENCE," authored by London Pastor John Cumming (1807-1881).[1] May I say kindly, there's no such thing as an atheist! Some of the world's wealthiest celebrities have the stench of Hell on them, which is where they are all going, blaspheming the very God Who is kind to them. Luke 6:35b, "...for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil."
Legendary singer Billy Joel is a professed atheist...
"I gradually decided that just because I didn't have or couldn't find the ultimate answer didn't mean I was going to buy the religious fairytale. As an atheist you have to rationalize things." —Billy Joel
On page 139 of his book, "GOD IN HISTORY and GOD IN SCIENCE," Pastor John Cumming makes a brilliant observation concerning professed atheists...
Atheism is folly as much as wickedness. But suffer me, before I show this, to say, that it is absolutely impossible that any man can be an atheist, in the strict sense of that word. All that any can say is this: "No spot that I have searched does reveal a God; every organization I have examined does not show traces of wisdom, goodness, and design:" but that individual cannot say; "There is no God;" because he cannot say, "I have soared to the farthest star, I have descended to the deepest mines, I have swept all space, and searched all time, and in the realms of infinite space I have not detected any traces of a God." In other words, to be able to say, "There is no God," you must yourself assume to be God, which is a reductio ad absurdum, an utter and a complete absurdity.
SOURCE: "GOD IN HISTORY and GOD IN SCIENCE," p. 139; by Rev. John Cumming, D.D.; New York: Published by Carlton & Lanahan; 200 Mulberry-Street; 1868.
What a brilliant observation. How can any man claim to be an atheist unless he has traveled to the farthest place in the universe? The nearest star to the earth (after our own sun) is Alpha Centauri, which is 4.37 light-years away (28,200,000,000,000 miles away!). This is just one star, being the closest to earth besides our own sun, which is 93,000,000,000 miles away. My friend, the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered that there are at least 200,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. And each of those galaxies contains BILLIONS of stars! It is anticipated that when the James Webb Telescope is launched in 2018 from NASA, that it will discover over ONE TRILLION GALAXIES!!!
The Word of God teaches that God made the stars. I love how Genesis 1:16 is written... "HE MADE THE STARS ALSO." It's like the Bible is saying, "Oh, by the way, God also made all the stars!" Genesis 1:16, "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." God is amazing, Who knows the exact number of stars that He created, and he calls them each by their own name. Amen! Psalms 147:4, "He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names." I have just briefly discussed the stars. The world that exists under a microscope is even more amazing, complex and a mystery to mankind. How can anyone reasonably claim to be an atheist when man hasn't even discovered what's in 90% of the earth's oceans? Pastor John Cumming is so right... For anyone to say, "There is no God!," you must yourself assume to be God! No human being has traveled to the ends of the universe. In fact, no human being has ever even left the Milky Way Solar System. Psalms 145:3, "Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable."
John Cumming was a Scottish minister who was well-known for his anti-Catholic writings and preaching. Amen fo
Reads like total PR masturbation garbage, just get to the fucking point.
Wikipedia was created by some dude who used to run porn sites, funded by the CIA, not some "movements to change the world".
we have partnered with 97 mobile carriers in 72 countries to provide access to Wikipedia to more than 800 million people free of mobile data charges.
These agreements ought to be illegal, and in many countries they would be (and rightfully so).
The realization that it violates net neutrality is one reason that the article cites to wind down the program. Another is that people in the Republic of Angola were routinely uploading infringing copies of movies to Wikimedia Commons to exploit Wikipedia Zero.
Wiki used to be about facts and nothing more. Now it's like any other forum, image board, social media website.
There are countless times where I corrected articles, placed citations, but just because some guy with a bot could manipulate the page, reverted anything back to the previous accepted version.
Until a couple years ago, the Linux page was about the Linux, an operating system... obviously such thing doesn't exist. In 2017 iirc, the page remained with the same almost content, removed anything related to the kernel, placed in there more about operating systems and the linux_kernel page was created.
Facts: Linus never named his kernel "linux kernel", the kernel's name is linux, as in Mach, NT, e.t.c., there's no such thing as Linux, a family of operating systems, because Linux refers to a kernel and is a registered trademark as "Linux".
What we see here is that the general misconception, manipulates an "encyclopedia" in such way to make the mob's opinion less incorrect.
That being said, I think that Wiki and other biased, wrong and public-opinion-manipulating outlet should be constrained as much as possible. Wiki is just a super-set of sites that provide info about games, actors, movies, products. It has no value for anything beyond that.
I'd like to see it fail miserably, this is not far away with all the money they flush down the toilet, and I'd like to see a better alternative with proper data evaluation before someone puts it up there in the public domain.
That's how important it was. Stick with the website, not side-deals.
I was the principal engineer on Wikipedia Zero, and one of the top code contributors to the MediaWiki itself, first as a volunteer, and later as an employee. I think Wikipedia Zero was a great attempt at promoting open knowledge in the less developed locations. I suspect that by now it is not as critical as it once was, and it would be good for the Wikimedia foundation to focus on better allocation of funds.
That said, I do have serious concern with how WMF does its allocation and chooses its priorities. Foundation collects over $80 million a year, and employs nearly 300 people, yet the **only** team that is directly driven by the community is a tiny 10 person Community Tech team. Community tech runs community surveys, and picks just the top 10 items to work on. Think about this - foundation that was created and prospers financially due to the community's efforts only lets 3% of its work, and even less of its funds be directly driven by that same community. Instead of allocating funds based on comunity's preferences, and in the same order, WMF has choosen the order and fund allocation according to the internal goals and inside politics. The recent priority setting efforts (which took nearly a year) may change that, but the process so far has seem to be far too complex, whereas the community tech team's voting was much more straightforward and simple to follow and participate.
There is fundamentally only one reason WMF gets the $80 millions in donations -- content. People value Wikipedia's content, and wish to support that content as much as possible. Despite this, almost none of these money goes towards improvements in the content -- Wikipedia is still a wall of text with a few static images, just like it was in 2001. I am still hopeful that a more interactive content would make its way to Wikipedia pages, avoiding stagnation and keeping the whole project relevant for the future.
Facts: Linus never named his kernel "linux kernel", the kernel's name is linux, as in Mach, NT, e.t.c., there's no such thing as Linux, a family of operating systems, because Linux refers to a kernel and is a registered trademark as "Linux".
Wikipedia's policy of a neutral point of view causes editors to use the name most commonly used by third-party reliable sources and teach the controversy, as in the "GNU/Linux naming controversy" article.
My own writing style is to use "GNU/Linux" for typical desktop and server distributions to distinguish them from Android, BusyBox-based small distributions, and other specialized operating environments built around Linux that contain little or no code from the GNU project. I have found "GNU/Linux" or "X11/Linux" the most succinct way to satisfy fans of Richard Stallman while ducking some Slashdot users' insinuation that a tablet running Android with a paired keyboard or a laptop running Chrome OS can adequately substitute for a laptop running Ubuntu. But because this writing style happens not to match that of the scholarly and mainstream media that Wikipedia relies on, Wikipedia does not use it.
That said, I do have serious concern with how WMF does its allocation and chooses its priorities. Foundation collects over $80 million a year, and employs nearly 300 people, yet the **only** team that is directly driven by the community is a tiny 10 person Community Tech team.
99% of the donations goes into management fee.
Look at Red Cross, Goodwill even sell the shit you donate to them for profit.
Net Neutrality is the friend of Decentralization.
Wikipedia somehow decided to be the enemy of Net Neutrality.
Creative Commons Licensing is their only saving grace.
Wikipedia is a centralized chokepoint for those who wish to spy on people's education reading habits to go f'n nuts.
I do not trust wikipedia to protect the privacy of my intellectual journeys.
There is a better way.
Did Wikipedia pay mobile network carriers to offer Wikipedia Zero for free? Or did just they wrote letters to them asking them to offer Wikipedia Zero for free?
This goes against net neutrality!
> Just like it was in 2001. I am still hopeful that a more interactive content
And that formula has been working, and Wikipedia constantly growing, since 2001. Be VERY careful about changing what works so well.
Have a look at the world's most popular web page - the Google home page. See all the animated gifs, the dynamic content with sliders and dials for the the user to.play with? Nope. Just a logo, a text field, and a button. Just like 2001.
Contrast this with the sites that WERE super popular in 2001,with lots of animated gifs. Geocities and MySpace were on top of the world. Until animated gifs and such killed them.
In the deliberate lack of an official definition of "GNU/", I have been defining "GNU/" as GNU Coreutils combined with two of GCC, Bash, Emacs, and shared glibc.
If you call a machine with a Linux kernel and GNU userspace utilities "GNU/Linux" does that mean a Windows machine with cygwin is a "GNU\Windows"?
Correct. That in fact is what "gwin" in Cygwin and "GW" in MinGW stand for. Likewise, a complete installation of DJGPP (with the compiler, Binutils, Coreutils, Make, and Bash) is GNU/MS-DOS or GNU/FreeDOS.
And a Mac with a bunch of GNU packages installed from home brew is running "GNU/macOS/BSD"?
Probably not, unless the user has replaced the Darwin counterpart to Coreutils with GNU Coreutils.
Fork Wikipedia's CC content and replace the rest.
I mean ole Jimmy has been in it for the money since the beginning.
If you really want to see the internet encyclopedia improve, it isn't by supporting Wikipedia, but by supporting and providing word of mouth for its alternatives.
infogalactic is one of those.