Draft Recommendation #7 :Wikipedia browsing kiosks in public libraries will help spread wikipedia

As there are only about 8 million broadband users end of 2009, and the broadband access is expensive, use of wikipedia kiosks in public libraries will be useful to many people.

I like this idea!

The underlying idea is that not enough Indians have access to the internet; what if we modified this recommendation to be something like this: "Find low-cost, innovative ways to create public access to Wikipedia in key venues such as public libraries."

Can we try CSC to have online or offline Wikipedia contents ? [1]. There are about 60000 CSC across India as per the site.Since it is govt it will be difficult.

I think the original idea by Arjun is not feasible. As Aprabhala mentioned change it to "Find low-cost, innovative ways to create public access to Wikipedia in key venues such as public libraries."

A further point. Whether Wikipedians should care about the offline world has long been debated, and the debate carries special significance in a country like India, where at generous estimates, between 5%-10% of its total population is online. I'd suggest considering the problem a little differently. India has approximately 80 million online [[1]]. Sure, that still leaves appr. 1 billion people offline, but the fact is, 80 million is a huge number, a number bigger than all the people in several countries in Europe.

So, given that Wikipedians like us have limited resources in terms of time and money, might it not make sense to first try and reach the low-hanging fruit - i.e. people who are online? Sure, we can encourage partnerships with people (and organisations) who can take us offline, but I'm not sure whether that should be a primary focus of ours. For instance, there are folks who are working on all sorts of devices that (with occasional online refreshment) carry all of Wikipedia - on a pen drive, or a privately manufactured device [[2]]. Additionally there are NGOs and institutions devoted to teaching, who might well be interested in utilising a print version of selected Wikipedia pages, or even something off Wikibooks [[3]] and then further spreading that physically to students.

All of this is possible without ourselves actively engaging in these processes. Wikipedians in India tend to be largely urban-based, as are the majority of Indians online. If we were to recast the recommendation inherent in Arjuna's original suggestion to reflect this, I think we are better served. For e.g.

While Indians who have access to the internet will remain the primary target of Wikimedia's work in India, organisations who wish to utilise Wikipedia and the content of sister projects offline are encouraged to do so. - Achal