Daren Welsh
| Tags | Contributors, Mobile, Offline Editing, Synchronization |
|---|---|
| Primary Session | Advancing the Contributor Experience |
| Secondary Sessions |
What technologies are necessary for embracing mobility? How and with whom should we partner to create the technologies needed to support the mission?
Multilateral, asynchronous, bidirectional synchronization of wikis: How astronauts taught the world to wiki on the go
The world is certainly transitioning their internet usage from the desk to their mobile device. Let's not limit our focus on mobile devices that always have an internet connection. Let's talk about the millions of travelers stuck in a moving vehicle with nothing better to do than look out their window. I'm talking about passengers on planes, trains, and automobiles. The easiest target here are the millions of people who fly. As a passenger onboard a plane for hours, we're lucky if we have an in-flight movie system. But what if the plane offered a local intranet with a copy of Wikipedia? What if the airlines gave promotions to those who contributed? What if each flight competed with other flights for most contributions? The same approach could be applied for passenger trains, buses, subways, and ferries.
The main limitation here is a technical one. If you have thousands of Wikipedia clones buzzing around, each collecting contributions during their offline time, how do you reconcile the changes with the master database? While tools like Kiwix already offer an offline copy of Wikipedia, there is much work needed to support thousands of wiki clones reconciling changes every few hours. This will require revolutionary branch management and revision conflict handling.
But if you pull this off, it might kick off the biggest surge in user participation in years.
With whom should you partner to accomplish this? Why not start with NASA? They use MediaWiki to train astronauts and plan for spacewalks. Begin this development by running wiki servers onboard the International Space Station. Get astronauts to contribute to the same wiki used for their training while they are putting all that knowledge to use. Once the NASA wiki synchronization between the ground and the ISS is working, expand this model to Wikipedia. Yes, have a clone of Wikipedia onboard the ISS. Astronauts love to share their experience, their story, and their photos from their 6-month stays aboard the station. These lucky few represent countries from around the world and they have a huge influence on the rest of us on the ground. Once people see astronauts contributing to Wikipedia during their journey, they will want to join the movement on their travels (albeit aboard slightly less cool vehicles).
