Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers known as Wikipedians, began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered. It grew out of Nupedia, a more structured free encyclopedia, as a way to allow easier and faster drafting of articles and translations.
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of books or individual stories in the public domain. All files can be accessed for free under an open format layout, available on almost any computer. As of 13 February 2024, Project Gutenberg had reached 70,000 items in its collection of free eBooks.
The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie is an international organization representing countries and regions where French is a lingua franca or customary language, where a significant proportion of the population are francophones, or where there is a notable affiliation with French culture.
Electronic publishing includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the editing of books, journals, and magazines to be posted on a screen.
An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, is a digital encyclopedia accessible through the Internet. Examples include Encarta from 2000 to 2009, Wikipedia since 2001, the Encyclopædia Britannica since 2016, and Encyclopedia.com since 1998.
Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project ; multiple Wikisources make up the overall project of Wikisource. The project's aim is to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has expanded to become a general-content library. The project officially began on November 24, 2003, under the name Project Sourceberg, a play on the famous Project Gutenberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name.
Jean Ping is a Gabonese diplomat and politician who served as Chair of the African Union Commission from 2008 to 2012. Born to a Chinese father and Gabonese mother, he is the first individual of Chinese descent to lead the executive branch of the African Union.
The World Digital Library (WDL) is an international digital library operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress.
The Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. This community directly builds and administers these projects with the commitment of achieving this using open standards and software.
The Agence universitaire de la Francophonie is a global network of French-speaking higher-education and research institutions. Founded in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1961, as the Association des Universités Partiellement ou Entièrement de Langue Française (AUPELF), the AUF is a multilateral institution supporting co-operation and solidarity among French-speaking universities and institutions. It operates in French-speaking and non-speaking countries of Africa, the Arab world, Southeast Asia, North and South America, Polynesia, the Caribbean, Central, Eastern and Western Europe. As of 2020, the AUF has 1,007 members distributed throughout francophone countries on six continents. It is active in 119 countries, and represented by regional offices and information centers on campuses and in institutes. The Association receives funding from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), and its headquarters are located at the Université de Montréal, Quebec.
Widespread censorship of Wikipedia has occurred in countries including China, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. Some instances are examples of widespread internet censorship in general that includes Wikipedia content. Others are indicative of measures to prevent the viewing of specific content deemed offensive. The length of different blocks has varied from hours to years. When Wikipedia ran on the HTTP protocol, governments were able to block specific articles. However, in 2011 Wikipedia began running on both HTTP and HTTPS, and in 2015 switched over to solely HTTPS. Since then, the only censorship options have been to block the entire site for a particular language or prosecute editors, which has resulted in some countries dropping their bans and others expanding their bans to the entire site.
Kiwix is a free and open-source offline web browser created by Emmanuel Engelhart and Renaud Gaudin in 2007. It was first launched to allow offline access to Wikipedia, but has since expanded to include other projects from the Wikimedia Foundation, public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, many of the Stack Exchange sites, and many other resources. Available in more than 100 languages, Kiwix has been included in several high-profile projects, from smuggling operations in North Korea to Google Impact Challenge's recipient Bibliothèques Sans Frontières.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:
The ZIM file format is an open file format that stores wiki content for offline usage. The format is defined by the openZIM project, which also supports an open-source ZIM reader called Kiwix. The format is primarily used to store the contents of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, including articles, full-text search indices and auxiliary files.
The Directorate of Cooperation of Security and Defence is a structure belonging to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development, intended to develop international structural cooperation in the fields of defense, internal security, and civil protection.
World Possible is a non-profit organization based in California with a mission to connect offline learners to the world's knowledge. World Possible makes and distributes RACHEL, a server/router that hosts offline free educational content such as Khan Academy, Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg and others via Wi-Fi on a Raspberry Pi or Intel CAP computer. RACHEL is designed so that students or schools that do not have internet connections, but may already have devices that can receive data via wi-fi, can access educational content via RACHEL as a server. Content has been tailored to meet locally-relevant demand.
XOWA is a free and open-source application written primarily in Java by anonymous developers and is intended for users who wish to run their own copy of Wikipedia, or any other compatible Wiki, offline without an internet connection. XOWA is compatible with Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Linux and Android. Licensed under the GNU AGPLv3, XOWA is free software.
Internet-in-a-Box is a low cost digital library, consisting of a wireless access point with storage, which users nearby can connect to.
Felix Nartey is a Ghanaian social entrepreneur and open advocate. He was named the Wikimedian of the Year in August 2017 by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales at Wikimania. He is a Co-founder of Open Foundation West Africa and Creative Commons Ghana, where he is also the chapter lead.
