16 ms·

Wikimedia in Iraq has nearly 12M subscribers free of mobile data charges

97 points by The_ed17 10y ago

seibelj 10y ago
Wouldn't net neutrality supporters be enraged because all data is not being treated equally now? Upstart wikis will never be able to compete!
- schoen 10y ago
  Zero-rating has indeed become a big network neutrality controversy.
  - seibelj 10y ago
    I know, it's a travesty that we allow Iraqis to access Wikipedia for free. We are literally ending wiki competition. Simply awful. Iraqis must demand net neutrality and stop accessing Wikipedia for free!
    - sa1 10y ago
      Laws and regulations won't be made per site. Net neutrality regulation would be effective only if you don't leave in backdoors via exceptions. Also, Wikipedia, being text-heavy and without obtrusive ads, is not something for which zero-rating provides much relief.
      - smsm42 10y ago
        That sounds dangerously like "we have this shiny new law that sounds good in theory so we're going to ignore that it hurts actual people in practice, because the theory sounds nice". I think if the law doesn't work "per site", it should be rethought until it does.
        sa1 10y ago
        It has prevented zero-rating of video and social media services in practice.
        djrogers 10y ago
        What has, and where? All it takes is a quick trip to T-Mobile's website to see the list of video services they've zero-rated without any regulatory issues at all.
        sa1 10y ago
        Net neutrality regulation, India.
- gbl08ma 10y ago
  You kid, but as much as I like Wikimedia (and as much as I would like to access Wikipedia free of mobile data charges), I think this objectively makes it harder for projects in the same field to compete, even if just a tiny bit. I like to think I'm a net neutrality supporter, but when my mobile plan included unlimited data for the carrier's own music streaming service, I started using it and the unlimited data came in really handy. I used other streaming services much less because of that; Spotify, for example, didn't stand a chance of seeing my money. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too...
  - megalodon 10y ago
    There is a pretty big difference between a charitable non-profit organization and a proprietary music streaming service.
    - yosamino 10y ago
      Sure, but the barrier for the ISP to allowing the same thing for a proprietary music streaming service has been lowered. This is, apart from the utility that it brings, advertisement for the operator: > Wikimedia recognizes the user is on that operator's network and serves a banner on the top of the page indicating free data courtesy of their mobile operator, which reinforces a positive brand experience for the operator. [0] It's not inconceivable that the ISP would do similar deals with $music_streaming_service. Maybe for some payment. [0] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero
    - gbl08ma 10y ago
      See guelo's comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13767782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13767782 ) Just because Wikimedia is not seeking profits or even looking to somehow "stay ahead" with this deal, that doesn't mean it isn't against neutrality.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    > think this objectively makes it harder for projects in the same field to compete, even if just a tiny bit. I think this is true in theoretical sense, but not in any practical sense. Just as it's true that you breathing reduces amount of breathable oxygen around, but that's not a ground for me to sue you for air pollution and depriving me of vital oxygen ;) There are things so tiny as to consider them as if they weren't is to seriously distort the matter, and I think it's one of such things. To make it substantial, one needs to point out that a) there are viable competitors b) they are influenced by things like bandwidth costs and c) this difference is causing real and noticeable preference shift. I can believe it's true for mobile music streaming services, but I don't see it being true for Wikipedia. There's one more point - the argument against NN goes "it'd kill Wikipedia Zero". I don't think saying "well, so what, but it'd help Spotify" really a strong counter to it - if I had to choose between living without Wikipedia and living without Spotify, I'd choose Wikipedia without even pausing to think for a second. So NN proponents have to offer better answer than that, if they mean to go the utilitarian road.
- tdb7893 10y ago
  In my opinion zero rating is one of those things that is good until it is abused, and it would be much less of a problem if there was actual competition between ISPs. In my opinion net neutrality is largely to keep monopolies (either a web company or an ISP) from gaining even more power over the market. I would prefer to have no zero ratings at all because having any opens the door to abuse but practically it isn't actually bad in this situation otherwise.
- boomboomsubban 10y ago
  Other sources of information can't compete, and it's fairly easy for one source to be controlled by some person or organization. Additionally, when this has been done in the past people turn Wikipedia into the normal internet, hiding media on various pages and using it as a social media stand in. The money would be better spent lowering the normal cost, but then Wikipedia doesn't get the huge supply of editors.
  - seibelj 10y ago
    You are right, the best possible solution is to ban free access to Wikipedia. It just isn't fair.
    - boomboomsubban 10y ago
      No, the best solution is free or affordable access to the entire internet. When the majority of users can't read the sources or access new ones to change things, Wikipedia can become a dangerous tool. The English version has problems with political groups controlling what goes on various Wikipedia pages, this system ensures it will happen.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    It's easy to tell other people where their money are best spent, but the situation as it is is that in these countries, the prices of data vs. the salaries are such that 1G may cost you a month's salary. In that situation, the choice is not "listening streaming music on that or this service", it's "zero-rated sites or no internet at all". I'd rather these people had at least Wikipedia access. Even if it may put some Silicon Valley startup in a tougher spot.
    - boomboomsubban 10y ago
      >it's "zero-rated sites or no internet at all" Or the money spent providing Wikipedia data could be used to provide a limited amount of free access to the entire internet. Or on better infrastructure so service doesn't cost a months salary.
- yosamino 10y ago
  > Upstart wikis will never be able to compete! The problem is not "upstart wikis" it's upstart everything. The internet is a lot bigger than just wikipedia, or indeed the web.
- gpvos 10y ago
  Although zero-rating Wikipedia in itself is rather benign (it has already outcompeted other encyclopedias anyway), it does run the risk of creating more acceptance for zero-rating of other, possibly commercial services.
- geforce 10y ago
  You can't possibly mad for people gaining access to knowledge. For me personally, it's the single most important thing Internet gives. But as for net neutrality? Of course I'm sad. How are they going to check the sources of the articles? Wikipedia is still pretty limited in some areas of knowledge. Nothing is perfect. I'm very happy they get to browse wikipedia. It is magnitude of order better than not having access to it.
- guelo 10y ago
  I am not enraged but this is not good. We don't want ISPs to use their monopolies to pick and choose the web's winners and losers. Just because Wikipedia is a great nonprofit resource doesn't mean that competitors should be disadvantaged. ISPs don't zero-rate because of the goodness of their non-existant hearts. They do this to get people hooked on using more data to get them to buy more data. Either that or they can use it to start competing services or as blackmail to get web services to pay them.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    > Either that or they can use it to start competing services or as blackmail to get web services to pay them. Who is being blackmailed here? Can you point out somebody who is really hurt by this arrangement, not in theoretical conspiracy scenario but in real world?
    - manigandham 10y ago
      ... it would be any competing service that would probably have to pay to get same access/performance or struggle against data/price burden for users.
      - smsm42 10y ago
        Which competing service, can you name a couple?
        schoen 10y ago
        In Wikipedia history there was a famous fork of es.wiki called Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español, which split in some sense over policy disagreements. It remained larger than es.wiki for over two years following the fork. Right now there are collaboratively-edited encyclopedias in some languages (at least Chinese) that are larger than Wikipedia, like Baidu Baike, which is much larger than zh.wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enciclopedia_Libre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enciclopedia_Libre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_Baike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_Baike There were at least two famous attempts to compete with English Wikipedia over policy disputes (Citizendium, which was concerned about verifiability and anonymity, and Conservapedia, which was concerned about the neutral point of view policy). These competitors haven't been very successful, but I can easily imagine people wanting to give each of them another go. Right now there are about 100 online encyclopedias, each of which potentially competes in some degree with Wikipedia in some sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias An example that's not particularly a result of an editorial policy dispute is Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, a super-great online math encyclopedia (that competes with Wikipedia for attention in its coverage of math). Another is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a super-great online philosophy encyclopedia. Both of these encyclopedias are stronger in at least some parts of their respective areas than Wikipedia is, and perhaps better even on Wikipedia's own terms (e.g., I bet the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy manages to have a more "neutral point of view" on several philosophy controversies than Wikipedia currently does). But zero-rating probably means that people interested in these topics on some mobile carriers are more likely to look only at Wikipedia's articles, even if they're not the best online encyclopedia articles in those areas. Edit: Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics has been renamed to "Wolfram MathWorld". Although Wikipedia's coverage of most math topics is really excellent, I still think MathWorld has areas where it's likely to be even better. Edit 2: Suppose you're interested in a particular religion's official take on some religious issue. Then an encyclopedia edited by adherents of that religious tradition (like one of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias#Religion_and_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias#R...) may be more helpful to you than Wikipedia, for example because it may go into more theological or ritual detail, as well as more detail about polemics or apologetics from a particular religious view. That might actually be what you were looking for, but currently none of those religious encyclopedias is zero-rated by a mobile carrier.
- rocky1138 10y ago
  As a fan of net neutrality I have no problem with zero rating any non-profit website/service.
  - gpawl 10y ago
    non-profit just means there is no corporate owner. A non-profit can still be run in a way that enriches management and employees, and a for-profit can have a strong social contribution.
smilekzs 10y ago
Meanwhile in People's Republic of China, a peaceful (as in not troubled by war) country, People's access to Wikipedia still depends on the mood of those in power...
- handedness 10y ago
  The calm of despotism vs. the tempestuous sea of liberty.
- astrodust 10y ago
  China has been at war with its own people for generations now.
  - vkou 10y ago
    Every government (Or at least, the people they represent) is at war with its servants.
strgrd 10y ago
> Wikimedia recognizes the user is on that operator's network and serves a banner on the top of the page indicating free data courtesy of their mobile operator, which reinforces a positive brand experience for the operator. I would like to know just how different Wikipedia Zero is. Can people still make accounts and contribute articles with this service?
- yosamino 10y ago
  From the same article: > Through the Wikipedia Zero program, mobile data fees are waived for subscribers of participating mobile operators so that they may read and edit Wikipedia without using any of their mobile data.
anc84 10y ago
I would much rather see devices fitted with full dumps of the text content of Wikipedia(s). The english Wikipedia is just 60 Gigabytes for heaven's sake!
- gpvos 10y ago
  Keeping that up to date would cost huge amounts of bandwidth though, of which 99.99% would be wasted.
- The_ed17 10y ago
  That's already a thing. :-) https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/10/11/kiwix-ten-years/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/10/11/kiwix-ten-years/
- eugeniub 10y ago
  Most smartphones in Iraq probably have 4–16gb of storage, and 64gb flash storage would be prohibitively expensive for most Iraqis. The English Wikipedia is 60gb, but that's without _any_ multimedia. The total size of all media in Wikimedia Commons is 23 terabytes. We could create a minified version of the Iraq Wikipedia that could be around 40gb, but many will not want it, so we'd have to sell Wikipedia phones and non-Wikipedia phones. You could sell copies of the minified Wikipedia on microSD cards, but a 64gb microSD card still costs about $20, but that price is out of reach for most in the war torn country. Then there's the issue of updated content. One of the main uses for Wikipedia is learning about current events, current status of crises, recent elections, recent deaths, etc. You wouldn't really be able to do that with this system.
  - guaka 10y ago
    The Arabic ZIM file of February 2017 is 5.4G. http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages
- cooper12 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader was one such attempt. Though reading the limitations, it seemed to do some heavy processing that threw away data to save space.
koolba 10y ago
So how long till someone makes a VPN that uses Wikipedia edits as the underlying communication channel? The latency would be on the order of seconds but the throughput would be decent. To those of you who think I'm joking, it's already been done with DNS lookups so why not here too?
- yosamino 10y ago
  Way ahead of you https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wikipedia-zero-facebook-free-basics-angola-pirates-zero-rating https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wikipedia-zero-fa...
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Here's the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11358846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11358846
  - ju-st 10y ago
    1.8 MB background image...
  - smsm42 10y ago
    Ingenious, but probably would get one banned on Wikipedia pretty quickly. Not a scalable or long-term model.
- gpvos 10y ago
  That would get moderated out of existence really quickly.
- cooper12 10y ago
  Well in Angola they only have access to Wikipedia and Facebook, so Angolan users started to hide movies in JPEGs and PDFS, and link them in private Facebook Groups. [0] The issue with using edits for a VPN is that it will likely require a fast edit rate which would automatically get you flagged as a bot account. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-03-23/In_the_media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
yosamino 10y ago
Does this mean users of this thing will not be able to substantially edit wikipedia, because they won't be able to cite sources ? Or check sources ? Because if they get free access to wikipedia only that would be the case. If, on the other hand, only people who are already subscribers don't get their wikipedia traffic counted, then that seems a small improvement at best.
- rhcom2 10y ago
  Damn that is a good point that I hadn't thought of. This version of wikipedia puts a lot more faith in the editors because users can't check sources.
djrogers 10y ago
This is a clear violation of net neutrality principles, but it's also clearly a good thing for the Iraqi people. How do those in the hard-core NN tent square that circle? To sidestep any straw-man arguments about war zones, different country, etc; What if this were implemented in Appalachia to give access to wikipedia to the poor an uneducated there?
- sharun 10y ago
  Who cares? Why do you pay attention to hardcore supporters of anything? A hardcore supporter of Facebook or Google would say we could never run our sites like Wikipedia. Don't pay attention to them either.
- jMyles 10y ago
  The hardcore NN tent, at least on HN, isn't particularly hardcore, and especially not about NN. They are more hardcore (and, for that matter, more reasonable) about wanting to cripple (or in some cases "regulate") big communications providers who use their monopolies in the long-distance bus topology space to push their own media agenda. And NN happens to be a politically viable tool for that. But if you put it to a vote, a more anarchic internet (characterized by, inter alia, 1. wholly distributed naming and cert mechanisms, 2. final-mile mesh networking, 3. few or no blanket bans on low-power radio transmission, 4. the removal of politically-enshrined content bias from the application layer (ie, copyright law and software patents)) will, I think, win such a poll. The overwhelming majority here prefer that vision as a long-term plan, compared to barely-leashed telecoms restrained by a wink-wink-nudge-nudge "net neutrality." And so, the solution referred here, since it is pragmatic and reasonable, meets a sort of "for now" test of decency, whilst not being inconsistent with a soft, "best we can do" system of net neutrality for Comcast and Time Warner.
- wtallis 10y ago
  > but it's also clearly a good thing for the Iraqi people Wouldn't it be even better for the Iraqi people if they could also have affordable Internet access for the purposes of communicating and conducting commerce? Unless Wikimedia is footing the bill for the data usage, this is just a case of the telcos restructuring their pricing so that the lost profits of Wikimedia access are subsidized by the rest of the data usage. At least some of that other usage is probably more valuable to the Iraqi economy and general welfare (especially in the near term) than reading Wikipedia, even if it is less idealistic sounding.
redsummer 10y ago
Is invading them not enough? Does the US have to force an encyclopedia of Lord of the Rings trivia on them too?

97 points by The_ed17 10y ago

Wouldn't net neutrality supporters be enraged because all data is not being treated equally now? Upstart wikis will never be able to compete!

schoen 10y ago
Zero-rating has indeed become a big network neutrality controversy.
- seibelj 10y ago
  I know, it's a travesty that we allow Iraqis to access Wikipedia for free. We are literally ending wiki competition. Simply awful. Iraqis must demand net neutrality and stop accessing Wikipedia for free!
  - sa1 10y ago
    Laws and regulations won't be made per site. Net neutrality regulation would be effective only if you don't leave in backdoors via exceptions. Also, Wikipedia, being text-heavy and without obtrusive ads, is not something for which zero-rating provides much relief.
    - smsm42 10y ago
      That sounds dangerously like "we have this shiny new law that sounds good in theory so we're going to ignore that it hurts actual people in practice, because the theory sounds nice". I think if the law doesn't work "per site", it should be rethought until it does.
      - sa1 10y ago
        It has prevented zero-rating of video and social media services in practice.
        djrogers 10y ago
        What has, and where? All it takes is a quick trip to T-Mobile's website to see the list of video services they've zero-rated without any regulatory issues at all.
        sa1 10y ago
        Net neutrality regulation, India.
gbl08ma 10y ago
You kid, but as much as I like Wikimedia (and as much as I would like to access Wikipedia free of mobile data charges), I think this objectively makes it harder for projects in the same field to compete, even if just a tiny bit. I like to think I'm a net neutrality supporter, but when my mobile plan included unlimited data for the carrier's own music streaming service, I started using it and the unlimited data came in really handy. I used other streaming services much less because of that; Spotify, for example, didn't stand a chance of seeing my money. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too...
- megalodon 10y ago
  There is a pretty big difference between a charitable non-profit organization and a proprietary music streaming service.
  - yosamino 10y ago
    Sure, but the barrier for the ISP to allowing the same thing for a proprietary music streaming service has been lowered. This is, apart from the utility that it brings, advertisement for the operator: > Wikimedia recognizes the user is on that operator's network and serves a banner on the top of the page indicating free data courtesy of their mobile operator, which reinforces a positive brand experience for the operator. [0] It's not inconceivable that the ISP would do similar deals with $music_streaming_service. Maybe for some payment. [0] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero
  - gbl08ma 10y ago
    See guelo's comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13767782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13767782 ) Just because Wikimedia is not seeking profits or even looking to somehow "stay ahead" with this deal, that doesn't mean it isn't against neutrality.
- smsm42 10y ago
  > think this objectively makes it harder for projects in the same field to compete, even if just a tiny bit. I think this is true in theoretical sense, but not in any practical sense. Just as it's true that you breathing reduces amount of breathable oxygen around, but that's not a ground for me to sue you for air pollution and depriving me of vital oxygen ;) There are things so tiny as to consider them as if they weren't is to seriously distort the matter, and I think it's one of such things. To make it substantial, one needs to point out that a) there are viable competitors b) they are influenced by things like bandwidth costs and c) this difference is causing real and noticeable preference shift. I can believe it's true for mobile music streaming services, but I don't see it being true for Wikipedia. There's one more point - the argument against NN goes "it'd kill Wikipedia Zero". I don't think saying "well, so what, but it'd help Spotify" really a strong counter to it - if I had to choose between living without Wikipedia and living without Spotify, I'd choose Wikipedia without even pausing to think for a second. So NN proponents have to offer better answer than that, if they mean to go the utilitarian road.
tdb7893 10y ago
In my opinion zero rating is one of those things that is good until it is abused, and it would be much less of a problem if there was actual competition between ISPs. In my opinion net neutrality is largely to keep monopolies (either a web company or an ISP) from gaining even more power over the market. I would prefer to have no zero ratings at all because having any opens the door to abuse but practically it isn't actually bad in this situation otherwise.
boomboomsubban 10y ago
Other sources of information can't compete, and it's fairly easy for one source to be controlled by some person or organization. Additionally, when this has been done in the past people turn Wikipedia into the normal internet, hiding media on various pages and using it as a social media stand in. The money would be better spent lowering the normal cost, but then Wikipedia doesn't get the huge supply of editors.
- seibelj 10y ago
  You are right, the best possible solution is to ban free access to Wikipedia. It just isn't fair.
  - boomboomsubban 10y ago
    No, the best solution is free or affordable access to the entire internet. When the majority of users can't read the sources or access new ones to change things, Wikipedia can become a dangerous tool. The English version has problems with political groups controlling what goes on various Wikipedia pages, this system ensures it will happen.
- smsm42 10y ago
  It's easy to tell other people where their money are best spent, but the situation as it is is that in these countries, the prices of data vs. the salaries are such that 1G may cost you a month's salary. In that situation, the choice is not "listening streaming music on that or this service", it's "zero-rated sites or no internet at all". I'd rather these people had at least Wikipedia access. Even if it may put some Silicon Valley startup in a tougher spot.
  - boomboomsubban 10y ago
    >it's "zero-rated sites or no internet at all" Or the money spent providing Wikipedia data could be used to provide a limited amount of free access to the entire internet. Or on better infrastructure so service doesn't cost a months salary.
yosamino 10y ago
> Upstart wikis will never be able to compete! The problem is not "upstart wikis" it's upstart everything. The internet is a lot bigger than just wikipedia, or indeed the web.
gpvos 10y ago
Although zero-rating Wikipedia in itself is rather benign (it has already outcompeted other encyclopedias anyway), it does run the risk of creating more acceptance for zero-rating of other, possibly commercial services.
geforce 10y ago
You can't possibly mad for people gaining access to knowledge. For me personally, it's the single most important thing Internet gives. But as for net neutrality? Of course I'm sad. How are they going to check the sources of the articles? Wikipedia is still pretty limited in some areas of knowledge. Nothing is perfect. I'm very happy they get to browse wikipedia. It is magnitude of order better than not having access to it.
guelo 10y ago
I am not enraged but this is not good. We don't want ISPs to use their monopolies to pick and choose the web's winners and losers. Just because Wikipedia is a great nonprofit resource doesn't mean that competitors should be disadvantaged. ISPs don't zero-rate because of the goodness of their non-existant hearts. They do this to get people hooked on using more data to get them to buy more data. Either that or they can use it to start competing services or as blackmail to get web services to pay them.
- smsm42 10y ago
  > Either that or they can use it to start competing services or as blackmail to get web services to pay them. Who is being blackmailed here? Can you point out somebody who is really hurt by this arrangement, not in theoretical conspiracy scenario but in real world?
  - manigandham 10y ago
    ... it would be any competing service that would probably have to pay to get same access/performance or struggle against data/price burden for users.
    - smsm42 10y ago
      Which competing service, can you name a couple?
      - schoen 10y ago
        In Wikipedia history there was a famous fork of es.wiki called Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español, which split in some sense over policy disagreements. It remained larger than es.wiki for over two years following the fork. Right now there are collaboratively-edited encyclopedias in some languages (at least Chinese) that are larger than Wikipedia, like Baidu Baike, which is much larger than zh.wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enciclopedia_Libre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enciclopedia_Libre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_Baike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_Baike There were at least two famous attempts to compete with English Wikipedia over policy disputes (Citizendium, which was concerned about verifiability and anonymity, and Conservapedia, which was concerned about the neutral point of view policy). These competitors haven't been very successful, but I can easily imagine people wanting to give each of them another go. Right now there are about 100 online encyclopedias, each of which potentially competes in some degree with Wikipedia in some sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias An example that's not particularly a result of an editorial policy dispute is Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, a super-great online math encyclopedia (that competes with Wikipedia for attention in its coverage of math). Another is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a super-great online philosophy encyclopedia. Both of these encyclopedias are stronger in at least some parts of their respective areas than Wikipedia is, and perhaps better even on Wikipedia's own terms (e.g., I bet the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy manages to have a more "neutral point of view" on several philosophy controversies than Wikipedia currently does). But zero-rating probably means that people interested in these topics on some mobile carriers are more likely to look only at Wikipedia's articles, even if they're not the best online encyclopedia articles in those areas. Edit: Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics has been renamed to "Wolfram MathWorld". Although Wikipedia's coverage of most math topics is really excellent, I still think MathWorld has areas where it's likely to be even better. Edit 2: Suppose you're interested in a particular religion's official take on some religious issue. Then an encyclopedia edited by adherents of that religious tradition (like one of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias#Religion_and_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias#R...) may be more helpful to you than Wikipedia, for example because it may go into more theological or ritual detail, as well as more detail about polemics or apologetics from a particular religious view. That might actually be what you were looking for, but currently none of those religious encyclopedias is zero-rated by a mobile carrier.
rocky1138 10y ago
As a fan of net neutrality I have no problem with zero rating any non-profit website/service.
- gpawl 10y ago
  non-profit just means there is no corporate owner. A non-profit can still be run in a way that enriches management and employees, and a for-profit can have a strong social contribution.

smilekzs 10y ago

Meanwhile in People's Republic of China, a peaceful (as in not troubled by war) country, People's access to Wikipedia still depends on the mood of those in power...

handedness 10y ago
The calm of despotism vs. the tempestuous sea of liberty.
astrodust 10y ago
China has been at war with its own people for generations now.
- vkou 10y ago
  Every government (Or at least, the people they represent) is at war with its servants.

strgrd 10y ago

> Wikimedia recognizes the user is on that operator's network and serves a banner on the top of the page indicating free data courtesy of their mobile operator, which reinforces a positive brand experience for the operator. I would like to know just how different Wikipedia Zero is. Can people still make accounts and contribute articles with this service?

yosamino 10y ago
From the same article: > Through the Wikipedia Zero program, mobile data fees are waived for subscribers of participating mobile operators so that they may read and edit Wikipedia without using any of their mobile data.

anc84 10y ago

I would much rather see devices fitted with full dumps of the text content of Wikipedia(s). The english Wikipedia is just 60 Gigabytes for heaven's sake!

gpvos 10y ago
Keeping that up to date would cost huge amounts of bandwidth though, of which 99.99% would be wasted.
The_ed17 10y ago
That's already a thing. :-) https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/10/11/kiwix-ten-years/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/10/11/kiwix-ten-years/
eugeniub 10y ago
Most smartphones in Iraq probably have 4–16gb of storage, and 64gb flash storage would be prohibitively expensive for most Iraqis. The English Wikipedia is 60gb, but that's without _any_ multimedia. The total size of all media in Wikimedia Commons is 23 terabytes. We could create a minified version of the Iraq Wikipedia that could be around 40gb, but many will not want it, so we'd have to sell Wikipedia phones and non-Wikipedia phones. You could sell copies of the minified Wikipedia on microSD cards, but a 64gb microSD card still costs about $20, but that price is out of reach for most in the war torn country. Then there's the issue of updated content. One of the main uses for Wikipedia is learning about current events, current status of crises, recent elections, recent deaths, etc. You wouldn't really be able to do that with this system.
- guaka 10y ago
  The Arabic ZIM file of February 2017 is 5.4G. http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages http://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages
cooper12 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader was one such attempt. Though reading the limitations, it seemed to do some heavy processing that threw away data to save space.

koolba 10y ago

So how long till someone makes a VPN that uses Wikipedia edits as the underlying communication channel? The latency would be on the order of seconds but the throughput would be decent. To those of you who think I'm joking, it's already been done with DNS lookups so why not here too?

yosamino 10y ago
Way ahead of you https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wikipedia-zero-facebook-free-basics-angola-pirates-zero-rating https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wikipedia-zero-fa...
- DanBC 10y ago
  Here's the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11358846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11358846
- ju-st 10y ago
  1.8 MB background image...
- smsm42 10y ago
  Ingenious, but probably would get one banned on Wikipedia pretty quickly. Not a scalable or long-term model.
gpvos 10y ago
That would get moderated out of existence really quickly.
cooper12 10y ago
Well in Angola they only have access to Wikipedia and Facebook, so Angolan users started to hide movies in JPEGs and PDFS, and link them in private Facebook Groups. [0] The issue with using edits for a VPN is that it will likely require a fast edit rate which would automatically get you flagged as a bot account. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-03-23/In_the_media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

yosamino 10y ago

Does this mean users of this thing will not be able to substantially edit wikipedia, because they won't be able to cite sources ? Or check sources ? Because if they get free access to wikipedia only that would be the case. If, on the other hand, only people who are already subscribers don't get their wikipedia traffic counted, then that seems a small improvement at best.

rhcom2 10y ago
Damn that is a good point that I hadn't thought of. This version of wikipedia puts a lot more faith in the editors because users can't check sources.

djrogers 10y ago

This is a clear violation of net neutrality principles, but it's also clearly a good thing for the Iraqi people. How do those in the hard-core NN tent square that circle? To sidestep any straw-man arguments about war zones, different country, etc; What if this were implemented in Appalachia to give access to wikipedia to the poor an uneducated there?

sharun 10y ago
Who cares? Why do you pay attention to hardcore supporters of anything? A hardcore supporter of Facebook or Google would say we could never run our sites like Wikipedia. Don't pay attention to them either.
jMyles 10y ago
The hardcore NN tent, at least on HN, isn't particularly hardcore, and especially not about NN. They are more hardcore (and, for that matter, more reasonable) about wanting to cripple (or in some cases "regulate") big communications providers who use their monopolies in the long-distance bus topology space to push their own media agenda. And NN happens to be a politically viable tool for that. But if you put it to a vote, a more anarchic internet (characterized by, inter alia, 1. wholly distributed naming and cert mechanisms, 2. final-mile mesh networking, 3. few or no blanket bans on low-power radio transmission, 4. the removal of politically-enshrined content bias from the application layer (ie, copyright law and software patents)) will, I think, win such a poll. The overwhelming majority here prefer that vision as a long-term plan, compared to barely-leashed telecoms restrained by a wink-wink-nudge-nudge "net neutrality." And so, the solution referred here, since it is pragmatic and reasonable, meets a sort of "for now" test of decency, whilst not being inconsistent with a soft, "best we can do" system of net neutrality for Comcast and Time Warner.
wtallis 10y ago
> but it's also clearly a good thing for the Iraqi people Wouldn't it be even better for the Iraqi people if they could also have affordable Internet access for the purposes of communicating and conducting commerce? Unless Wikimedia is footing the bill for the data usage, this is just a case of the telcos restructuring their pricing so that the lost profits of Wikimedia access are subsidized by the rest of the data usage. At least some of that other usage is probably more valuable to the Iraqi economy and general welfare (especially in the near term) than reading Wikipedia, even if it is less idealistic sounding.

redsummer 10y ago

Is invading them not enough? Does the US have to force an encyclopedia of Lord of the Rings trivia on them too?