10 ms·

Wikipedia Zero

292 points by _pius 13y ago

itcmcgrath 13y ago
I haven't looked at the details, but at initial glance - I love the direction. While Wikipedia my not be the shining-light of data accuracy, it definitely fits the bill for achieving good: "Perfect is the enemy of good" [1] I believe removing barriers to knowledge access for everyone is a step in the right direction. This tries to solve a single barrier. We still have a long way to go. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
- wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
  Yes. And the net neutrality article on wikipedia is pretty comprehensive, maybe someone from sub-saharan Africa will come up with a better implementation ;)
tmcb 13y ago
I can't help pondering about the implications this move could consequently bring to the perceptions of net neutrality. Not that I see this project as something inherently bad, it is just the contrary, but it can give rise to some bad moral precedents.
- livnev 13y ago
  Would you care to expand on these bad precedents that you are referring to?
  - tmcb 13y ago
    No, of course not. I'll try to be short, though. The first thing to ask is what differentiates Wikipedia content from the rest of the 'net so that it would be OK to break net neutrality principles towards the implementation of this project. So, even if this breakage is somewhat worth the bending of the rules, companies must support the idea. Once they do it, what would be the moral ground to rightfully deny another proposals from content providers that offer them money to do that? Well, this problem is not something really new. Net neutrality is already broken, though almost everybody agrees on its importance. There must be some kind of consistency if we want it to survive.
  - TrainedMonkey 13y ago
    If you get access to sites you care about for free, or heavily subsidized. Would you pay for access to full internet? This might give a lot of informational control to governments/internet providers. If let's say Google, and Facebook are accessible, would those companies fight for some libertarian website that was blocked?
  - kcorbitt 13y ago
    Well, presumably if carriers provide reduced- or no-cost access to Wikipedia that's a direct violation of net neutrality, aka charging the same amount of money for data moving through the pipes no matter what it is or who it comes from. Presumably the OP is concerned that this could degenerate from "breaking net neutrality is fine as long as it favors sites we like" to "breaking net neutrality is fine". Note that I don't necessarily share the belief of the OP, but it's certainly a point worth some real consideration.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      I do think there is some risk (though I'm not sure how much delta it adds to the risk either way) that it plays into normalizing the proposals for tiering, a specific kind of non-neutral net, where ISPs would give you access to different levels of "internet content" based on your subscription level, like cable TV packages for the internet. Example: a few sites are available in the Free tier, a basic whitelisted set of sites (news, webmail, popular blogs, etc.) are in the Lite tier, everything but high-bandwidth video and torrents comes with the Standard tier, and the full internet is unlocked only by the Premium tier. The free tier would be made up of "content partners" who are a mixture of nonprofits like Wikipedia, and for-profits that pay for their inclusion in the free tier (CNN, maybe).
      - 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
        Which sounds like how cable TV works (at least in the US). In the old days when city governments granted these monopolies to cable TV companies, part of the deal was community access channels (Wayne's World!). Even if these benefitted hardly anyone, they provided some moral cover and justification. If I were an old media guy, I'd see Wikimedia Zero as the germ of an idea -- maybe suggesting a way how to squeeze the genie back in the bottle and wrap the internet in a cable TV model. And, hey, in the US most people's ISP is also their cable company. So ... I don't see it as a definitely bad thing, but I see the seeds of potential bad as well as good. (In general, a lot of bad stuff flies under the flag of a good cause fighting some other bad thing -- "because terrorism", "because children", "because hyper-inflation", etc. Of course a lot of _good_ stuff also flies under good flags. I'm just saying it's not obvious either way.)
  - samuellevy 13y ago
    I can see some possible issues, too. If you want to take a hard line approach, this breaches net neutrality just as much as slowing or charging access to other sites. Sure, Wikipedia is already the defacto source of information for a lot of people, but this would cement a monopoly as such in those areas. This all sounds a bit silly when talking about Wikipedia, but it has implications for other services. What if google or bing made a similar deal? Or any large corporation, for that matter? You set up an internet where the majors can buy their way into a monopoly position, not by convincing ISPs to degrade other services, but by convincing them to charge users less to use your service. This makes it harder to impossible for new companies to enter those markets. All that being said, I think this (Wikipedia Zero) will be a net-positive thing, and I hope they succeed. I do see that this type of thing could have worrying implications for net neutrality, but ultimately they're not the first site to broker "free access" deals with mobile carriers.
    - jarek 13y ago
      > What if google or bing made a similar deal? Or any large corporation, for that matter? Facebook already does this https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/fast-and-free-facebook-mobile-access-with-0facebookcom/391295167130 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/fast-and-free-facebo... and I'm sure many others do as well
      - samuellevy 13y ago
        Oh, I'm well aware. In Australia, I remember seeing a number of the telcos advertising "mobile data with free access to facebook and twitter". One of the catchup TV services also has "unmetered access" deals with a number of ISPs. I don't think that the world is going to end here, or collapse into some dystopian nightmare, but the question was asked: "what are these bad precedents?" and I attempted to answer.
- malandrew 13y ago
  I agree. Handouts in any form other than straight cash often does more to undermine systems than improve it. Just like USAid food handouts undermine local economies, this could undermine net neutrality. Instead of paying for the bandwidth for people, what can we do instead to reduce the cost to the point where people in these regions can afford to access wikipedia? Also, what can wikipedia do to reduce the payload size of wikipedia articles so that users in those countries are downloading the least amount of data possible?
- gojomo 13y ago
  If Wikipedia Zero traffic is free, but other traffic onerously priced, other apps and sites can just tunnel through Wikipedia edits. TCP/IP-over-WZ, anyone?
- swalling 13y ago
  For me, the moral precedent is giving millions of people free access to vital educational information. People who want and need access to Wikipedia Zero are like these South African high school students, living in a slum: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/19/movement-for-free-access-to-wikipedia-south-africa/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/19/movement-for-free-acce...
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
I think this is very important step. If this works, then we will have real data to argue about providing free basic internet connectivity (Enough for text for example) for entire world population. This would allow for text only MOOC's accessible by everyone at the very least.
- 001sky 13y ago
  I think you are right to point out the value proposition to a text-only internet. But the implementation risks are probably more second-order and worth considering. The contra case is that someone will twist this into a model to charge <up> for everything else. its better to create better public goods, than bargain for special access to private assets, when the quid-pro-quo will surely be some form of reciporacal monopoly rights (ie, special interest regulation).
0x0 13y ago
So a bit like http://0.facebook.com http://0.facebook.com then :)
- stigi 13y ago
  Or http://zero.facebook.com http://zero.facebook.com :)
- hansjorg 13y ago
  Does that have ads?
jlgreco 13y ago
> "Some partner billing systems restrict the possibility of zero-rating all Wikipedia languages" What? Their billing systems can't handle a wildcard subdomain? Even so, it isn't exactly difficult to enumerate all of the wikipedias. There are less than 300 total, and only 121 with 1000+ articles.
- hansjorg 13y ago
  I suspect this might be for political, not technical reasons.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    That is my suspicion as well. It doesn't strike me as correct that technical limitations prevent them from offering all languages in Saudi Arabia or Russia, but the Democratic Replubic of Congo has it figured out. Going from wikipedia, it seems like Saudi Arabia has far more developed telecom... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Saudi_Arabia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Saudi_Ara... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_the_Democ...
rsync 13y ago
I want to love this idea. I want to love wikipedia. But before I can do that, I need to be able to use wikipedia. And by use, I don't mean consume - I mean, be a full participant in a collective online encyclopedia. This is currently not possible. Rather than explain or give examples, let me challenge you to start any new article, or make any decent sized edit to any article, and let's assume for the discussion that your facts, grammar, form, and adherence to wikipedia style are perfect. Come back and let us know how that goes.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  Wikipedia is now and always has been a giant turf war, roamed by amalgamations of insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedants and paid PR shills. There was a time something could've been done about it, but Wikipedia chose not to. I stopped editing in 2005.
  - alayne 13y ago
    What is a concrete example? Many of the Wikipedia controversies I've read about have been related to political figures and events.
    - OWaz 13y ago
      One example that comes to my mind is when author Philip Roth attempted to clarify the inspiration for his book The Human Stain. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-... The wikipedia entry for The Human Stain now contains a reference to the controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain#Anatole_Broyard_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain#Anatole_Broyard...
      - tommorris 13y ago
        Except Roth was full of shit on that. See: http://old.ironholds.org/?p=979 http://old.ironholds.org/?p=979
smn 13y ago
We built the SMS & USSD connectivity for last week's launch in Kenya with Airtel [1] using http://github.com/praekelt/vumi http://github.com/praekelt/vumi. Happy to answer any questions about this, USSD isn't used as much and as such largely unknown outside of the majority world. [1]: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/25/wikimedia-foundation-teams-airtel-provide-offline-wikipedia-access-via-text-message/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/25/wikimedia-foundatio...
- smn 13y ago
  We being Praekelt Foundation [1]. [1]: http://www.praekeltfoundation.org http://www.praekeltfoundation.org
stigi 13y ago
Reminds me of http://zero.facebook.com http://zero.facebook.com
cupcake-unicorn 13y ago
Doesn't Amazon's Whispernet already do this?
- dublinben 13y ago
  Only if you own an Amazon Kindle device. This initiative is aimed at giving every mobile user free access to the knowledge on Wikipedia.
jmerton 13y ago
I'm spare you the details, but some pages have 'Page Meisters" that you must get by to add to the content.
srollyson 13y ago
I remember hearing about the WikiReader [1] a few years back and thinking it would be great for this sort of use. It's basically a cheap handheld device with an LCD display and a local Wikipedia text-only cache that runs off of AAA batteries. Might be useful for delivering Wikipedia content to places where there's no cell phone infrastructure. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader
- indrax 13y ago
  http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page There is an android version, Full Text of Wikipedia is about 9GB. A smaller selection that includes some thumbnail images is around 3.5GB.
- sanoli 13y ago
  Right now it's under 35 bucks shipped on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-PANREADER-Pocket-Wikipedia/dp/B002N5521W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383913578&sr=8-1&keywords=pandigital+wikireader http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-PANREADER-Pocket-Wikipedia/...
nullc 13y ago
So much for net neutrality. :(
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
e12e 13y ago
Love this idea, but will it be plagued with problems stemming from the gratis-ness of the initiative? Building a wikipediafs that stores (optionally encrypted) binary data in uuencoded wikipedia articles? Because read-only access won't be nearly as useful as allowing people to commit. I suppose setting a reasonable limit to uploads might help a lot (say 10mb a day -- that's a lot of text, after all).
emilymainzer 13y ago
This is even better and i like the concept.
rohit6223 13y ago
Great initiative.. I am glad to India as blue in the map :)
- swatkat 13y ago
  Yes! Aircel provides Wikipedia Zero, here in India. Domains m.wikipedia.org or zero.wikipedia.org are not billed. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/25/aircel-partnership-brings-wikipedia-zero-to-india/ http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/25/aircel-partnership-brin...
nakedrobot2 13y ago
This is dangerous. The first reaction to such an endeavor is that it is GOOD. Not just good, but GOOD :-) But also, this is almost the textbook definition of "the thin end of the wedge". I didn't really start thinking about this until I started reading the comments here on HN (awesome!) So wikipedia should be free. What else should be free? Who should pay? Someone needs to pay. Who should? Let's start grouping content on one side or another. This is a very, very bad idea. The answer, of course, is that it should all be free. Internet access should be a basic human right. It should be, it will be, it is only a matter of time. But until it is, an endeavor like this is subverting net neutrality, disguised as something good, and that is just a terrible idea.
- chalst 13y ago
  I don't like the idea of privileging Wikipedia in this way. That said, the question Who should pay? Someone needs to pay. Who should? seems to miss the point of the proposal: the mobile operators freely choose to subsidise this service, perhaps in the hope that it encourages a group who largely don't browse the web using their mobiles to do so.

292 points by _pius 13y ago

I haven't looked at the details, but at initial glance - I love the direction. While Wikipedia my not be the shining-light of data accuracy, it definitely fits the bill for achieving good: "Perfect is the enemy of good" [1] I believe removing barriers to knowledge access for everyone is a step in the right direction. This tries to solve a single barrier. We still have a long way to go. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good

wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
Yes. And the net neutrality article on wikipedia is pretty comprehensive, maybe someone from sub-saharan Africa will come up with a better implementation ;)

tmcb 13y ago

I can't help pondering about the implications this move could consequently bring to the perceptions of net neutrality. Not that I see this project as something inherently bad, it is just the contrary, but it can give rise to some bad moral precedents.

livnev 13y ago
Would you care to expand on these bad precedents that you are referring to?
- tmcb 13y ago
  No, of course not. I'll try to be short, though. The first thing to ask is what differentiates Wikipedia content from the rest of the 'net so that it would be OK to break net neutrality principles towards the implementation of this project. So, even if this breakage is somewhat worth the bending of the rules, companies must support the idea. Once they do it, what would be the moral ground to rightfully deny another proposals from content providers that offer them money to do that? Well, this problem is not something really new. Net neutrality is already broken, though almost everybody agrees on its importance. There must be some kind of consistency if we want it to survive.
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  If you get access to sites you care about for free, or heavily subsidized. Would you pay for access to full internet? This might give a lot of informational control to governments/internet providers. If let's say Google, and Facebook are accessible, would those companies fight for some libertarian website that was blocked?
- kcorbitt 13y ago
  Well, presumably if carriers provide reduced- or no-cost access to Wikipedia that's a direct violation of net neutrality, aka charging the same amount of money for data moving through the pipes no matter what it is or who it comes from. Presumably the OP is concerned that this could degenerate from "breaking net neutrality is fine as long as it favors sites we like" to "breaking net neutrality is fine". Note that I don't necessarily share the belief of the OP, but it's certainly a point worth some real consideration.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    I do think there is some risk (though I'm not sure how much delta it adds to the risk either way) that it plays into normalizing the proposals for tiering, a specific kind of non-neutral net, where ISPs would give you access to different levels of "internet content" based on your subscription level, like cable TV packages for the internet. Example: a few sites are available in the Free tier, a basic whitelisted set of sites (news, webmail, popular blogs, etc.) are in the Lite tier, everything but high-bandwidth video and torrents comes with the Standard tier, and the full internet is unlocked only by the Premium tier. The free tier would be made up of "content partners" who are a mixture of nonprofits like Wikipedia, and for-profits that pay for their inclusion in the free tier (CNN, maybe).
    - 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
      Which sounds like how cable TV works (at least in the US). In the old days when city governments granted these monopolies to cable TV companies, part of the deal was community access channels (Wayne's World!). Even if these benefitted hardly anyone, they provided some moral cover and justification. If I were an old media guy, I'd see Wikimedia Zero as the germ of an idea -- maybe suggesting a way how to squeeze the genie back in the bottle and wrap the internet in a cable TV model. And, hey, in the US most people's ISP is also their cable company. So ... I don't see it as a definitely bad thing, but I see the seeds of potential bad as well as good. (In general, a lot of bad stuff flies under the flag of a good cause fighting some other bad thing -- "because terrorism", "because children", "because hyper-inflation", etc. Of course a lot of _good_ stuff also flies under good flags. I'm just saying it's not obvious either way.)
- samuellevy 13y ago
  I can see some possible issues, too. If you want to take a hard line approach, this breaches net neutrality just as much as slowing or charging access to other sites. Sure, Wikipedia is already the defacto source of information for a lot of people, but this would cement a monopoly as such in those areas. This all sounds a bit silly when talking about Wikipedia, but it has implications for other services. What if google or bing made a similar deal? Or any large corporation, for that matter? You set up an internet where the majors can buy their way into a monopoly position, not by convincing ISPs to degrade other services, but by convincing them to charge users less to use your service. This makes it harder to impossible for new companies to enter those markets. All that being said, I think this (Wikipedia Zero) will be a net-positive thing, and I hope they succeed. I do see that this type of thing could have worrying implications for net neutrality, but ultimately they're not the first site to broker "free access" deals with mobile carriers.
  - jarek 13y ago
    > What if google or bing made a similar deal? Or any large corporation, for that matter? Facebook already does this https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/fast-and-free-facebook-mobile-access-with-0facebookcom/391295167130 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/fast-and-free-facebo... and I'm sure many others do as well
    - samuellevy 13y ago
      Oh, I'm well aware. In Australia, I remember seeing a number of the telcos advertising "mobile data with free access to facebook and twitter". One of the catchup TV services also has "unmetered access" deals with a number of ISPs. I don't think that the world is going to end here, or collapse into some dystopian nightmare, but the question was asked: "what are these bad precedents?" and I attempted to answer.
malandrew 13y ago
I agree. Handouts in any form other than straight cash often does more to undermine systems than improve it. Just like USAid food handouts undermine local economies, this could undermine net neutrality. Instead of paying for the bandwidth for people, what can we do instead to reduce the cost to the point where people in these regions can afford to access wikipedia? Also, what can wikipedia do to reduce the payload size of wikipedia articles so that users in those countries are downloading the least amount of data possible?
gojomo 13y ago
If Wikipedia Zero traffic is free, but other traffic onerously priced, other apps and sites can just tunnel through Wikipedia edits. TCP/IP-over-WZ, anyone?
swalling 13y ago
For me, the moral precedent is giving millions of people free access to vital educational information. People who want and need access to Wikipedia Zero are like these South African high school students, living in a slum: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/19/movement-for-free-access-to-wikipedia-south-africa/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/19/movement-for-free-acce...

TrainedMonkey 13y ago

I think this is very important step. If this works, then we will have real data to argue about providing free basic internet connectivity (Enough for text for example) for entire world population. This would allow for text only MOOC's accessible by everyone at the very least.

001sky 13y ago
I think you are right to point out the value proposition to a text-only internet. But the implementation risks are probably more second-order and worth considering. The contra case is that someone will twist this into a model to charge <up> for everything else. its better to create better public goods, than bargain for special access to private assets, when the quid-pro-quo will surely be some form of reciporacal monopoly rights (ie, special interest regulation).

0x0 13y ago

So a bit like http://0.facebook.com http://0.facebook.com then :)

stigi 13y ago
Or http://zero.facebook.com http://zero.facebook.com :)
hansjorg 13y ago
Does that have ads?

jlgreco 13y ago

> "Some partner billing systems restrict the possibility of zero-rating all Wikipedia languages" What? Their billing systems can't handle a wildcard subdomain? Even so, it isn't exactly difficult to enumerate all of the wikipedias. There are less than 300 total, and only 121 with 1000+ articles.

hansjorg 13y ago
I suspect this might be for political, not technical reasons.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  That is my suspicion as well. It doesn't strike me as correct that technical limitations prevent them from offering all languages in Saudi Arabia or Russia, but the Democratic Replubic of Congo has it figured out. Going from wikipedia, it seems like Saudi Arabia has far more developed telecom... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Saudi_Arabia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Saudi_Ara... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_the_Democ...

rsync 13y ago

I want to love this idea. I want to love wikipedia. But before I can do that, I need to be able to use wikipedia. And by use, I don't mean consume - I mean, be a full participant in a collective online encyclopedia. This is currently not possible. Rather than explain or give examples, let me challenge you to start any new article, or make any decent sized edit to any article, and let's assume for the discussion that your facts, grammar, form, and adherence to wikipedia style are perfect. Come back and let us know how that goes.

cookiecaper 13y ago
Wikipedia is now and always has been a giant turf war, roamed by amalgamations of insufferable, biased, and often incorrect pedants and paid PR shills. There was a time something could've been done about it, but Wikipedia chose not to. I stopped editing in 2005.
- alayne 13y ago
  What is a concrete example? Many of the Wikipedia controversies I've read about have been related to political figures and events.
  - OWaz 13y ago
    One example that comes to my mind is when author Philip Roth attempted to clarify the inspiration for his book The Human Stain. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-... The wikipedia entry for The Human Stain now contains a reference to the controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain#Anatole_Broyard_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain#Anatole_Broyard...
    - tommorris 13y ago
      Except Roth was full of shit on that. See: http://old.ironholds.org/?p=979 http://old.ironholds.org/?p=979

smn 13y ago

We built the SMS & USSD connectivity for last week's launch in Kenya with Airtel [1] using http://github.com/praekelt/vumi http://github.com/praekelt/vumi. Happy to answer any questions about this, USSD isn't used as much and as such largely unknown outside of the majority world. [1]: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/25/wikimedia-foundation-teams-airtel-provide-offline-wikipedia-access-via-text-message/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/25/wikimedia-foundatio...

smn 13y ago
We being Praekelt Foundation [1]. [1]: http://www.praekeltfoundation.org http://www.praekeltfoundation.org

stigi 13y ago

Reminds me of http://zero.facebook.com http://zero.facebook.com

cupcake-unicorn 13y ago

Doesn't Amazon's Whispernet already do this?

dublinben 13y ago
Only if you own an Amazon Kindle device. This initiative is aimed at giving every mobile user free access to the knowledge on Wikipedia.

jmerton 13y ago

I'm spare you the details, but some pages have 'Page Meisters" that you must get by to add to the content.

srollyson 13y ago

I remember hearing about the WikiReader [1] a few years back and thinking it would be great for this sort of use. It's basically a cheap handheld device with an LCD display and a local Wikipedia text-only cache that runs off of AAA batteries. Might be useful for delivering Wikipedia content to places where there's no cell phone infrastructure. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader

indrax 13y ago
http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page There is an android version, Full Text of Wikipedia is about 9GB. A smaller selection that includes some thumbnail images is around 3.5GB.
sanoli 13y ago
Right now it's under 35 bucks shipped on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-PANREADER-Pocket-Wikipedia/dp/B002N5521W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383913578&sr=8-1&keywords=pandigital+wikireader http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-PANREADER-Pocket-Wikipedia/...

nullc 13y ago

So much for net neutrality. :(

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

e12e 13y ago

Love this idea, but will it be plagued with problems stemming from the gratis-ness of the initiative? Building a wikipediafs that stores (optionally encrypted) binary data in uuencoded wikipedia articles? Because read-only access won't be nearly as useful as allowing people to commit. I suppose setting a reasonable limit to uploads might help a lot (say 10mb a day -- that's a lot of text, after all).

emilymainzer 13y ago

This is even better and i like the concept.

rohit6223 13y ago

Great initiative.. I am glad to India as blue in the map :)

swatkat 13y ago
Yes! Aircel provides Wikipedia Zero, here in India. Domains m.wikipedia.org or zero.wikipedia.org are not billed. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/25/aircel-partnership-brings-wikipedia-zero-to-india/ http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/25/aircel-partnership-brin...

nakedrobot2 13y ago

This is dangerous. The first reaction to such an endeavor is that it is GOOD. Not just good, but GOOD :-) But also, this is almost the textbook definition of "the thin end of the wedge". I didn't really start thinking about this until I started reading the comments here on HN (awesome!) So wikipedia should be free. What else should be free? Who should pay? Someone needs to pay. Who should? Let's start grouping content on one side or another. This is a very, very bad idea. The answer, of course, is that it should all be free. Internet access should be a basic human right. It should be, it will be, it is only a matter of time. But until it is, an endeavor like this is subverting net neutrality, disguised as something good, and that is just a terrible idea.

chalst 13y ago
I don't like the idea of privileging Wikipedia in this way. That said, the question Who should pay? Someone needs to pay. Who should? seems to miss the point of the proposal: the mobile operators freely choose to subsidise this service, perhaps in the hope that it encourages a group who largely don't browse the web using their mobiles to do so.