The Signpost

Technology report

Wikipedia Zero announced; New Orleans successfully hacked

Wikimedia proposes Wikipedia Zero

In an effort to increase its mobile presence, the Wikimedia Foundation has reached out to mobile carriers, who it hopes will see value in allowing free access to a "lite" version of the encyclopedia (Wikimedia blog, paidContent article).

The lite version will contain all of Wikipedia's textual content, but no images or other media, reducing the cost to a mobile carrier of supplying the service to users. In return, mobile carriers will hope to "lure in" potential web users with tasters such as Wikipedia. The WMF is following in the footsteps of Facebook, who unveiled a similar plan eighteen months ago. In addition to Wikipedia Zero, the WMF is also taking the opportunity to push for inclusion of "links to Wikipedia in [carrier's] WAP portals and basic browser bookmarks [and] use Wikipedia logos and other branding material in their own marketing efforts" paidContent reported. WMF Senior Manager Amit Kapoor added that the WMF was also "exploring ways to develop feature phone access to Wikipedia through SMS and USSD".

The efforts are forming part of a wider programme of delivering Wikimedia wikis to the developing world, where the mobile-to-desktop browsing ratio is far greater than in developed nations. Even in countries where that ratio is relatively low at the moment, readers are increasingly switching their Internet usage to mobile devices. Whilst in the West smartphones are generally the primary mobile access point for the Internet, the WMF's actions show it is also reaching out to users of older phones, as is common in the developing world.

Originally outlined as a top priority in the five year strategic plan published in 2010, more recently the focus on mobile browsing has prompted the launch of a new mobile site in September (see previous Signpost coverage) and the creation of an Android app set to debut shortly. Users of the new mobile site will be able to "Opt in" to receive beta features as soon as they are available, it was also reported this week on the Wikimedia blog.

New Orleans hackathon explored

Chad Horohoe teaching developers unit testing

Volunteer Development Coordinator Sumana Harihareswara published a writeup of the New Orleans hackathon (which was held in the American city on 14–16 October) this week on the Wikimedia blog (which was also summarised in a wikitech-l post). The two day event, aimed enticing more and more productive volunteer MediaWiki developing as well as allowing developers with different backgrounds to meet in person, included talks from a number of longtime MediaWiki developers such as Chad Horohoe (pictured) and Brion Vibber.

Reporting "broad progress", Harihareswara described the event as specifically helping to further work on "the SwiftMedia extension, Wikimedia Labs, continuous integration, ArchiveLinks, user scripts, Max's API Query Sandbox, Puppetization, Git migration, and more". She also reported how a "volunteer came in on Friday night knowing nothing about developing for MediaWiki, and by the end of the weekend had a working development environment on her laptop and had some ideas about how to contribute".

Future hackathons are scheduled for the Indian city of Mumbai (18–20 November; full details are available) and the British seaside resort of Brighton (19–20 November; full details). The former has been designed to coincide with WikiConference India 2011, and the timing and the proximity of its venue should allow potential contributors to attend both.

In brief

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.


















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