We all know very well that how effectively Wikipedia Zero helped users from all over the world for free. However, now according to the latest reports, recently, the Wikimedia Foundation, the entity behind the Wikipedia Zero project, announced that it has stopped contracting with operators and will let the project finish.
BAD NEWS! Free ‘Wikipedia Zero’ Is Shutting Down
Recently the Wikimedia Foundation, the entity behind the Wikipedia Zero project, announced that it has stopped contracting with operators and will let the project finish.
The idea with which Wikipedia Zero was founded in 2012 was to contribute to access to knowledge in Third World countries. The way to do this was eliminating the costs to access the collective content of the page, so they entered into agreements with operators in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and a number of countries in this condition.
As they commented, in the six years of the program, they partnered with 97 mobile phone operators to provide access to Wikipedia to more than 800 million people without charges for mobile data. However, although the project was implemented in more than a dozen nations, they announced that it would come to an end:-
“Since 2016, we have seen a significant drop in adoption and interest in the program. This may be due, in part, to the changing mobile industry, as well as to changes in mobile data costs. At this very moment, we conducted extensive research to better understand the full spectrum of barriers to accessing and participating in Wikipedia”.
Wikimedia has stopped forming new partnerships with operators and will let existing alliances end over time. In this way, the project has its days counted, they said, by the change in the rates of the operators and also by the little interest of the nations in visiting the pages.
In any case, from Wikimedia, they commented that they have several projects in mind linked to the idea of the Zero cost.
So, what do you think about this closure? Simply share all your views and thoughts in the comment section below.
