Talk:One Laptop per Child

OLPC Deployment statistics
Wouldn't it be a good idea to just import the deployment stats from this page in OLPCs' Wiki? --U5K0'sTalkMake WikiLove not WikiWar 16:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * +1 -- as the maintainer of that other wiki page, that would be fine by me. I think the initial idea here was to have a table that only used data sourced to a press release in a publication of note. But this has errors in both directions. Many deployments don't issue a press release for each incremental update - large programs have usually received more laptops than their latest announcement, and smaller ones may not publish statistics in their announcements.  And some potential deployments involve politicians who like to announce programs that may not happen; as is the case for some of the data that used to be included in that table.  – SJ +  13:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * #PerfectCaseStudy of what can go wrong with info from PR sources only. Zblace (talk) 14:17, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Article needs cleanup and organization
Bottom half of this article is a jumble with discussion of countries and issues seemingly randomly intermixed.

Scanlyze (talk) 19:49, 7 March 2012 (UTC) (former OLPC sysadmin)

2B1
Why does 2B1 redirect here? K. (talk) 00:11, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Fixed. The OLPC XO-1 page actually mentions the former name for the machine: 2B1. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:09, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

No sales in two years and schools adopting chromebooks
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/04/10/google-microsoft-app-office-windows-malay/2070795/ Should something be said in the intro about this? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:50, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Pathetic absence of crucial subjects covered in article
1) Maybe I'm just missing it, but nowhere in the article do I find any clear explanation of what this project is intended to accomplish.

2) Even more pathetic is the (as far as I can tell) complete absence of any mention of the project's effectiveness.

Of course, if you don't say what the project is intended to accomplish, it makes no sense to discuss how effective it is at reaching that goal.

But Canada's eminent psychologist Susan Pinker has written in the New York Times here that the project seems to not just be ineffective at improving students' reading and math scores. Even worse, the project appears to lower them.

If someone is knowledgeable — and preferably unbiased — regarding this project, perhaps they will please add to the article a mention of 1) and if possible 2) above. Thanks.Daqu (talk) 21:07, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The NYT article isn't discussing OLPC except in passing. The paper it references (abstract) might make a good source for the article. § Criticism discusses a number of issues raised about the project, but it is true that this article does not contain much in terms of followup analysis. Keep in mind that OLPC as an organisation is at this point, sadly, defunct. L Faraone  06:26, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Deployment
Moved here from the deployment section of the article -- John of Reading (talk) 19:03, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I would like to propose that any deployment statistics which are not confirmed by third party source be considered as unreliable. As such, they should removed from this section until proven reliable by other sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tenason (talk • contribs) 17:38, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks John of Reading I have only used the deletion proposal template for proposing deletions of entire page that are out of date or do not warrant their own page. I was not sure how to propose modifying an entire section. Is it reasonable to wait a week and then make the proposed change? Tenason (talk) 02:01, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, a week should be enough for any interested editors to see this talk page section and raise objections. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:20, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Why would you consider deployment numbers unreliable if provided by OLPC, but not if republished by a third party? Have you found some evidence suggesting a reason to doubt that the numbers provided by the organization?

Any news organization, be it The New York Times or Business Wire, will provide numbers as reported by the OLPC organization, unless they mention explicitly the existence of an independent project dedicated to measure such numbers as an external process. Barring such independent studies, I can't see how the media were the data has been provided will affect its reliability, as the source will ultimately be the OLPC project itself. Can you please explain what is the motivation after your proposal? Diego (talk) 12:46, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, It appears that OLPC and related organization are trying to put the best spin on the situation. To prevent that situation, it is common to use independent and third party numbers to verify market statistics.

The most noticeable occurrence is in Peru. OLPC Frequency states that 900,000 laptops were deployed in Peru. While it is true that Peru ordered 900,000 laptops. Due to numerous logistical, political, and financial issues the number of laptops that were actually used by students was actually in the 10's or low 100's of thousands.

The irony of the situation is that several organizations quote Wikipedia's numbers. Thus implying that those numbers have be properly fact checked. Tenason (talk) 14:20, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

References archived
I'm copying here the references that removed with this edit because they are no longer used in the article, to preserve them for a possible future usage. Diego (talk) 13:50, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Archiving additional references no longer used in article cleanup to preserve them for a possible future usage. Tenason (talk) 09:41, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Article needs work
This article could use some wikilove. It would benefit from noting who the current officers of the corporation are. When I worked for OLPC(2008-2009) I believe there were two OLPC organizations, one a 501(c)(3) and one a LLC. Are there still two OLPC organizations today?

Parts of the article appear like a promotion for OLPC, having apparently been taken directly from the OLPC website. Scanlyze (talk) 17:10, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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German Version
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:DB:1F15:5700:21DC:28FE:8DF7:DD71 (talk) 14:48, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 05:01, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Very first sentence correct tense
Shouldn't "One Laptop per Child (OLPC) was a non-profit" be "One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit" ? Because the program still exists today Poopykibble (talk) 04:26, 8 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Wait bruh my bad I read the second paragraph and it shut down in 2014, sorry. Poopykibble (talk) 04:29, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't see that they've shut down? The site is still up with a 2023 copyright date: https://laptop.org/ 24.230.161.142 (talk) 20:30, 10 July 2024 (UTC)


 * It looks like this is all nuanced and our article doesn't do justice to it. The original OLTP initiative appears to have been the OLTP Foundation, which shut down in 2014.  The current group probably came out of a spinoff called the OLTP Association.  It isn't clear from their website what they do now, but it definitely isn't making laptops for children. Based on this, I think "was a non-profit initiative [... to create and distribute educational devices]" is accurate. Dan Bloch (talk) 21:56, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Uruguay....
The depiction of the deployment of the project in Uruguay on this article is, I must say, a bit negative. Let me explain: I am Uruguayan, and I live in Uruguay. For context, I'm 33 years old. The plan rolled out when I was already finishing high school, so I'm not one of those kids, I was around 20 already by then. Way too old. But check this out: I know people who are now around 25 or so, and have heard them (or rather read them, on social media posts, to be specific), talking about how this project ended up changing their lives; plunging them from isolation and poverty right into the computer age. From "obscurity" to the 21st century, so to speak. So, this should probably be updated. To further illustrate this, let me share the following: This plan was, at the time, a display of major risk taking, from a Left-Wing and so-called "Progressive" party, that ruled the country for 15 years here. Those days have now passed. Now a right wing party has took over, and has ruled the country for the last 4 years. However, there is not one politician on the right saying anything negative or even talking about the project anymore because, everyone agrees, and it is understood that, it was very successful. Now, Im not going to even pretend that it was not used "recreationally", as the article suggests. Of course it was. But that was only a part of it. On the whole, it had a huge impact. - Joaquin89uy (talk) 03:41, 30 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The thing is, to add that content to Wikipedia, you'd need a reliable source. Can you point to, say, a news article (ideally from a major publication, ideally in English) that reports all this? IAmNitpicking (talk) 11:20, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Listen. Why, though, would it need to be written in english, and be so "major"-type? I probably could find a dozen of them, but written in spanish, and from official uruguayan sources, and, maybe, even from many other spanish-speaking countries, speaking about the uruguayan success. Did it reach the mainstream english speaking journals? Maybe yes, maybe not. But, around here, that's how it is regarded. As a groundbreaking and progressive project from a progressive country which is my country, which, in turn, is now regarded as being one of the two most progressive, educated, and richest countries in the whole of Latam, right along with Chile and Costa Rica. Could that do? That, I can do. - Joaquin89uy (talk) 11:41, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I wrote "preferably" because most editors of English Wikipedia don't read Spanish. (If you want to first publish it in Spanish Wikipedia, then get it translated for the English edition, you certainly can.) As it happens, I can (with a great deal of effort) read some Spanish, but you're more likely to get consensus with English-language sources. Why a major publication? Read Reliable Sources IAmNitpicking (talk) 01:16, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
 * English sources are preferred, but Wikipedia's policy (WP:NONENG) does allow non-English sources. Dan Bloch (talk) 01:26, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Found 2 major sources. It was quite quick and simple. It was the second result on a google search, in which I typed in the following: "uruguay el exito del plan ceibal", which, in english, would be akin to "uruguay plan ceibal's success".
 * Check 'em out (one of them is in PDF format):
 * https://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/working-groups/SchoolConnectivity_report.pdf (page 130 and 131)
 * https://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/estudio-internacional-recoge-la-experiencia-del-plan-ceibal-como-caso-de-exito
 * The second one (from El País (Uruguay)) is the actual one which came up in my search. The first one, is the article that the 2nd one is referring to.
 * For any questions feel free to ask.
 * - Joaquin89uy (talk) 16:07, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you misunderstood. No one expressed any doubt that your assertion was correct. The point was, when you add a new bit of information to Wikipedia, you have to include a source. Depending on the next editor's judgement, your addition will be either reverted or marked "Citation Needed". If I had been asked, I would have said that what you wrote was completely believable and probably correct. Posting links here is not the solution, it's to post your original text and list those articles as references. You might still get arguments (Wikipedia has lots of arguments), but not "unsourced". IAmNitpicking (talk) 10:26, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * No problem. I was just checking to know what u two thought about these sources, being that one of them is a PDF, which is not what is usually used here on wiki for sources, and the other one is in spanish, but still from the biggest, most official, major news source here in Uruguay. - Joaquin89uy (talk) 23:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)