Be NetSquared: Year 3
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moulin Wiki - the Offline Wikipedia
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
The moulin wiki project is our attempt to improve the access to basic information and reference material in developing countries by making it possible to access Wikipedia, the world’s largest, free encylopedia, offline.
Supporting organization:
Geekcorps
URL:
http://www.moulinwiki.org
City:
Bamako
State/Region:
Bamako
Country:
Mali
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
The moulin wiki project is an attempt to improve the access to basic information and reference material in developing countries by making it possible to access Wikipedia, the world’s largest, free encylopedia, offline.
Most people in the developing world have limited or no access to the basic reference tools that can be used to enrich life. For the price of a CD-ROM and access to a computer the benefit of Wikipedia can now be shared. In many countries like Mali, computers are becoming increasingly prelavent, however, high connectivity rates will likely mean that most of these computers will remain offline for the foreseeable future. We see moulin as a powerful first step towards bridging the content gap.
Moulin's mission is three fold:
- 1. To continue to develop and make available a free offline version of Wikipedia (updated periodically) that can fit on a CD or DVD. We hope to eventually support all major languages
- To work with partners to distribute moulin widely to make Wikipedia accessible to people who do not have access to the Internet or where the content they can access is censored.
- To promote the generation of local content by developing methods to help facilitate offline contributions to Wikipedia to make it a more complete, accurate and globally representative base of knowledge.
Social Impact
People will benefit from access to a base of knowledge that was previously unavailable to them. One no longer has to be online to access Wikipedia.
Sustainability (financial) model:
At this point, the project is almost entirely volunteer based. To help cover distribution costs and to pay for continued development we intend to pursue the following strategies:
- Customization fees from organizations who which to create branded versions of moulin
- Make available a CD/DVD for sale (ala Ubuntu) for those who do not wish to download it. Profits (after paying a royalty fee to Wikipedia) will go towards supporting the project
- Grants from donor's to develop, distribute, and train users in particular markets
- Donations
Potential obstacles:
- Reliance on volunteers
- Competition - moulin is released under an open source license
- Funding gaps
Resource Needs:
- Partners to help with distribution
- Volunteer programmers
- Money for distribution (CD pressing, postage, local trainings)
- Extra computer for processing the compression of Wikipedia data
- Translators to help release moulin in other languages
Key Milestones:
- Preview release in French. 404,000+ articles fit on a 544 MB ISO. Support for Windows, Linux and OSX
- moulin spreading across West Africa (http://moulinwiki.org/moulinwiki-sites/)
- 500+ downloads to date
- Major rewrite of moulin to be completed by end of April
- Working with partner to release a Farsi version for distribution in Afganistan and Iran
- Releases in other main languages very soon: English, Portugese, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Italian, etc.
Project Summary:
The moulin wiki project is our attempt to improve the access to basic information and reference material in developing countries by making it possible to access Wikipedia, the world’s largest, free encylopedia, offline.
moulin is a fully interactive, offline version of the entire Wikipedia (without pictures) compressed to fit on a on a CD. moulin supports Windows, Linux, OSX and is optimized to run on old computers. moulin is currently available in French with other language support coming soon.
Most people in the developing world have limited or no access to the basic reference tools that can be used to enrich life. For the price of a CD-ROM and access to a computer the benefit of Wikipedia can now be shared. In many countries like Mali, computers are becoming increasingly prelavent, however, high connectivity rates will likely mean that most of these computers will remain offline for the foreseeable future. We see moulin as a powerful first step towards bridging the content gap.
Comments
I like this a lot
Wikipedia Vs. Traditional Orgs
Hey- how are you?
This seems like a cool idea- just curious...what made you choose Wikipedia? I assume there's a bulk rate for traditional CD encyclopedias that might have more relevant info than Wikipedia. Just wondering about your work- either way, congratulations on your effort.
Best,
Phil
Cauzoo.com
Re: Wikipedia Vs. Traditional Orgs
Of course there are other CD encyclopedias, but none are free ; which is very important when you plan to distribute widely.
Plus, because of the specific needs of our target users ; we needed to hack on some parts (build a simplified UI, make it fit on a single disc, etc). Thoses are stuff you can't do with a copyrighted material.
Plus, I think that Wikipedia has a lot of highly revelant articles about non-encyclopedia-correct topics which are very usefull to some people.
Finaly, we love the Wikipedia approch : from the people, to the people. We plan to set up a way for thoses offline users to insert content back into Wikiepedia.
"Finaly, we love the
"Finaly, we love the Wikipedia approch : from the people, to the people. We plan to set up a way for thoses offline users to insert content back into Wikipedia."
I love this part of your game. Sounds like a very important step to your project. Offline users inserting content back into wikipedia. Anybody with ideas about how this could be feasible for people in the rural areas, or kids, or any illiterate knowledgeable elder with untangible heritage to deliver? Great idea.