Wikimedians for offline wikis

Introduction

There have been many efforts to distribute offline snapshots to places with little connectivity, via schoolservers, wikireaders, and pocket-sized servers that run on batteries.

We created a static content initiative early on;
An offline mailing list has been around for many years;
Kiwix has provided a stable toolchain for creating and viewing offline snapshots;
At various times (2011-12, 2016-) the WMF has staffed or supported offline teams testing and developing toolchains for translation and article selection, including one simply called "Offline".
A number of community grants from WMFR, WMDE, WMF and other foundations have supported offline deployments and focused translations for that purpose.
Other chapters (like WMIT) have variously supported offline initiatives, including Kiwix and PediaPress, for about a decade.

This user group is a shared community for people using the mailing list and developing any of these related initiatives!

Objectives of the UserGroup

+ Consolidate and support offline snapshots of wiki knowledge, and deployments of them in schools, clinics, and rural communities.

+ Update and maintain the offline projects portal here on Meta.

+ Advocate for better distribution of and awareness of offline wikis, in all parts of the world where internet access is restricted, expensive, or unavailable: including schools, clinics, prisons, refugee camps, disaster areas.

Activities

Development of offline distributions with Kiwix
Support for editors compiling modern snapshots of wikipedia, such as WP 1.0
Offline distributions to rural clinics, schools, and libraries
Offline editing with WikiFundi including deployment in at least one community telecoms network (in South Africa)
Educational projects using WikiFundi, such as WikiChallenge African Schools (since 2018)
Development of synchronizing solutions
Past events: 2017 offline hackathon in NY
Future events: Offline meetup @ Wikimania, Kiwix hackathon

Discussions

Join the offline-l mailing list as main communication channel
Telegram group for events and faster-urgent discussions

History

In 2017, a retreat for offline-wiki developers, users, and deployers was organized by Martin Walker at Potsdam University. In addition, Kiwix has organized hackathons for their toolchain and related use cases for many years.

This group was formed at the WMCON in 2018, by implementers in different countries who found one another and realized that we were not coordinating efforts as well as we might -- and did not know the current status of many important offline projects, as these were not gathered in a single place.

In 2019, the group organized a Summit prior to WikiCon North America.

Contact information

sj <at> laptop.org
fdevouard <at> anthere.org

Current membership

Anyone interested in offline wiki use can join this group by adding their name below. We will send you sporadic updates.

Sj (group contact)
Anthere (group contact)
Doc James
rahuldeshmukh101
Amqui
Kiwix
Legoktm
Michaelgraaf
Abhinav Srivastava
Shani Evenstein
Fawaz Tairou
Islahaddow
Mark A. Hershberger
Daren Welsh
bluerasberry
GastelEtzwane
Wilfredor
Dang Brazal
Adam Wight - also interested in offline editing.
Maxwell Beganim
Daniel Mietchen
Rajeeb
Stephen Dakyi
Shreya (talk)
Shanluan (talk)
Martin Walker
Kunokuno (talk) 05:54, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Joy Agyepong
Ruby D-Brown
Zblace
Vahidmasrour (talk) 17:04, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
CaliBen
Gilbert Ndihokubwayo (talk) 20:09, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Gina Bennett
Din-nani1 (talk) 18:07, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ourysow92
Seddon/Seddon (WMF)
Omorodion1 (talk) 19:00, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
787IYO (talk) 21:33, 6 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Gwanki
Quiddity
Galdiz (talk)
Yamen
Ebubechukwu1
Goliv04053 (talk) 19:29, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mndetatsin
Bukky658 (talk)
Suyash Dwivedi