Comment Re:Cool idea with a problem (Score 2) 226
It's OK -- the guy who wrote the article doesn't seem to understand that a "high speed rail" system is a type of train, not a road....
they also had been led to believe that they had researched by drinking from the unerring fountain of all human knowledge.
Anyone who still believes that needs help.
Yes, and that help is called "education". The problem with Wikipedia Zero is that it's a walled garden. You can climb over the walls, but it's easier to stay inside -- that's the problem with Wikipedia Zero.
In fact, Wikipedia Zero's own publicity video says "students will do their homework and research careers", which is horrendously bad, because everyone who's been through a degree in a developed country in the last 15 years knows that Wikipedia should only be used as a jumping off point, and that you need to go elsewhere to verify the sources... but if you can only access Wikipedia, there's no way of verifying those sources.
Forget the Internet - find some folks in the area who graduated from this school, and ask them directly how useful their degree is. Seems pretty effing simple, doesn't it? Even if you have to travel a little or call long distance to do it, a little money spent now saves a ton of cash spent later.
India:
Surface area 3,287,590 km2
Population 1,210,193,422
[Source]
If a young university/school teaches 1000 students a year and has been going (for example) for 10 years, that's around 10,000 alumni in total. In a country of over a billion people, that's just over 0.0008% of the population. One in every 121,019 people. What are the chances of finding people who graduated from the school?
Imagine you're sitting in Guin, Alabama, and you want to know about the reputation of Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. Are you going to just "find some folks in the area who graduated from this school"? That's what you're talking about here.
because you further victimize the victim
We also teach the victim ways to avoid the issue in the future.
Except the victims in this case aren't reading this thread so aren't learning anything from the people so "generously" calling them fools.
In this case a little more research could have avoided the issue.
In this case a little more reading of TFS could have explained why that wasn't possible:
"India is one of the countries where tens of millions of Internet users have free access to Wikipedia Zero"
Considering WMF's hyperbolic promotional materials, it's fair to say that not only had many of the victims done all the research they could, but they also had been led to believe that they had researched by drinking from the unerring fountain of all human knowledge.
S
Wikipedia made the lazy choice of not bothering to verify its contents,
...and then advertise themselves as the source of all knowledge to people with no other internet access. Jimmy Wales ego, 1 : truth, nil.
The problem with your perspective is that you want one party to carry all the blame. Pointing out that someone made a stupid decision (your label of "blaming the victim") does not mean that the other parties do not have responsibility.
Spread the blame to everyone that made poor choices: Indian Institute of Planning and Management, Wikipedia and those that enrolled without verifying their expectations.
Victim idolizing has got to stop.
We know that Wikipedia is unreliable. When we grow to about 3 or 4 years old, we start to develop what is called "theory of mind", when we start to recognise that other people might not know things that we know, and that they might know things that we don't. E.G. a two year doesn't know what's in the box, and when asked if mummy knows what's in the box says "no". A five year old would say "maybe" or "I don't know".
It is not "victim idolizing" to apply theory of mind to facts such as "Wikipedia is unreliable". We have ample evidence that people don't know this in our own part of the world. We can reason that people who have just acquired their first internet access device are unlikely to know as much about the internet as we do. I mean, you wouldn't expect someone from out of town to know which neighbourhoods to stay out of at night, would you?
Furthermore, in this case, you are ignoring the fact that Wikipedia was actively marketed to them. Have you seen the adverts? I haven't, but I'm assuming they talk about "the world's greatest information bank" or somesuch. This sort of hyperbole comes naturally to the Wikimedia Foundation. (Well, it's actually true, but still misleading.) Do you remember some of the glowing, noncritical press coverage of the early years of Wikipedia? Don't you think that India will be getting the same "lovebombing" right now from their press? You cannot blame people for believing if all the information they have says Wikipedia is the greatest thing ever.
Competitors gonna compete! I built my app for a competitor first and now they won't talk to me? Oh noes!
That's some grade-A whining right there.
Most devs build our apps for our customers, not for OS manufacturers.
Seriously? No one is forced to release shovelware for mobile. The devs choose to. They're mostly kids and amateurs, professionals expect to be paid for work. Slave labor, sheesh, you're just a racist!
The waters are muddied by the "Apple as the gatekeeper" thing. An app developer only gets to sell if Apple says so, which makes things tricky.
Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
