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Wikipedia Releases Offline CD
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Apr 25, 2007 01:08 PM
from the vandalize-to-your-hearts-content dept.
from the vandalize-to-your-hearts-content dept.
An anonymous reader writes "WikipediaOnDVD, with cooperation with the Wikipedia community, has released its first offline test version. The articles were selected by Wikipedians and reviewed for accuracy, vandalism, and importance. Nearly 2,000 core Wikipedia articles will be sold on compact disc to give people without a net connection access to highlights of the popular web resource. The CD can be purchased or downloaded online via their site or the torrent."
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Is there a pool going yet? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, Yeah come on... Oh, wait, what... number of wrong articles?
Ummm... nevermind.
Someone tell them (Score:5, Funny)
Now that's a hefty business plan.
Intermittent connection (Score:5, Insightful)
If somebody has 15 minutes of net connection, would he look at live versions of Wikipedia articles for those 15 minutes, or would he spend 15 minutes buying the disc to take home to use on his own computer without an Internet connection? Examples of such intermittent connection include Wi-Fi hotspots, public libraries, and (to a lesser extent) dial-up.
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Re:Intermittent connection (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Someone tell them (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Someone tell them (Score:5, Funny)
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No net connection? (Score:4, Insightful)
The no net connection / download / torrent is a gimme, but where will they offer this CD for those without net connections? I could see this being useful for libraries or schools to have solid access. Advertising it to people without a net connection seems to be pretty pointless as the only means of acquiring said CD is via an internet connection.
Either that or we'll start seeing Wikipedia salesmen going door to door.
Re:No net connection? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No net connection? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No net connection? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I have the perfect guy [retrojunk.com] for you.
Doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good idea in theory but in reality it's sorta pointless.
Re:Doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It seems to me that cost+breadth gives the Wikipedia CD a reason to be. If you can't afford an encyclopedia but want something available even when you can't get to the Internet, it seems to be a huge bargain.
It doesn't entirely supplant real encyclopedias, either, but it does narrow the
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Encyclopedia != news. Once most articles are "done," the rate at which they're modified should be really low. After all, "new information" about a 500-year-old event doesn't come up very often...
Re:Doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose? (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a point when your random, off the shelf encyclopedia didn't have a reputation either. That's built up over time. And a cheap disc of Wikipedia can be very helpful to some people. The fact that anyone can add to it doesn't change the fact that it's still an encyclopedia.
It's biggest strength of wikipedia is also it's biggest weakness. You can't read about any software that isn't under the gpl without seeing a page that's been hijacked by GPL zealots time after time. Hell, the fact that 3DS Max is NOT under the GPL and free is somehow more important than anything else about the software, despite the fact that's it's the industry leader/standard 3d modeller and renderer. The articles about 3D software are all really about how you should be using Blender instead, because it's GPL. Just like every other software page. So much for the NPOV policy.
An article about a person in the public eye often turns into a battle gound and then a daily log of that person's life by an obssessed fan who thinks what they had for breakfast on friday is important information. Factual information that paints them in negative light is often editted out by these same people.
Then we have magazines and newspapers editors who think it's funny to write articles about how they vandalized an article. We have Stephen Colbert logging onto Wikipedia during his show, and making article edits. Even my local newspaper had an article written that detailed a spree of silly article edits along the lines of turning into a werewolf if you visit a certain country on a certain date. This is a columnist in his 50s, not a 15 year old kid.
The whole thing is overrun by GPL Zealots, anti corporate hippies, immature kids, obssessed fans, bible thumpers, etc. None of these types are competant enough to make Neutral Point Of View contributions. Not to mention the fanboys who flood serious articles with video game, comic book, and star wars|trek references.
How is a 12 year old kid, taking everything in there at face value, supposed to seperate the BS from the truth so they can get their school project done? Especially when you have older people who should know better, filling it with such facts as 'E = MC Hammer'.
The disc distribution can solve that, and users can feel confident that the information contained therein is actually worth something. The disc may be the only version that is ever really usefull as an encyclopedia. The online version could be best used as a temporary editing version, with real versions being pressed and distributed, and competantly edited.
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Thanks for at least taking the time to explain why you think that way.
In my eyes, I don't trust it at all over any other encyclopedia and I have a low appreciation for encyclopedias of any kind as primary publication research is where it's at. Sometimes I wish that they would teach that sort of research earlier than high school -- school aged kids might actually learn to enjoy the research they do instead of considering it tedious.
The disc distribution can solve that,
hmmm.... (Score:2, Funny)
I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the folks behind this project just don't get what wikipedia is best used for. It sounds like they are trying to release the best fact checked copy that they can within those subjects. Um, that's not what I use wikipedia for. I use it to quickly figure out who this guy is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen [wikipedia.org] or immediate trivia that in 5 minutes I could care less about, but I just would like a vague idea of who the guy is and such. Wikipedia is great for fast trivia. I bet you most of the articles that I look up won't be on this CD because those that are making this want wikipedia to be like a book reference and all the junk that I want researched would be filtered out. Oh well, maybe it would be useful for the kids to look through.
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They realized they couldn't do that, so instead they picked a few hundred articles, and got the most accurate copies they could.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
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shouldn't it be wikipedia on CD? (Score:2)
Re:shouldn't it be wikipedia on CD? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:shouldn't it be wikipedia on CD? (Score:5, Funny)
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Patrick Volkerding? Is that you?
Performance (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw the title of the article and initially thought : cool, that'd be nice to have a nice fast copy.
Then (in my head) I heard the sound of my cdrom spinning up to speed before reading an article and came to realize that most of what is on Wikipedia is just text and it loads fast enough for me and probably faster than the CD would.
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As someone else said, you're probably not the target audience. Wikipedia's benefits not only include the fact that it's constantly updated, but also that it's free as in beer, and free as in speech, both of which are designed to try to spread the wealth of knowledge to places that couldn't otherwise afford many textbooks or commercial encyclopedias, including third-world countries. Wikipedia also will be distributed on the One Laptop Per Child, another way that Wikipedia hopes to distribute the knowledge
Its a writable CD (Score:5, Funny)
The next offline CD release (Score:5, Informative)
So then... (Score:2)
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
2000 ...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be much smarter if they wrote a little system to prepare those torrents automatically, say, every week, and include much larger fraction of the articles. Reviewing for vandalism is something that should happen for the online version of Wikipedia naturally by the existing editors (similar to OSS "stable" version vs "development" version).
In the 21-st Century, having enough information and always up to date is more important than accuracy. Reading an article where 20% of the info is wrong is better than no article at all. We still know it's Wikipedia and can use critical though process to check additional sources when we get to an Internet connection or the library.
Another flaw of this project, is that by handpicking the articles, it automatically means I can't download a localized version of that DVD.
And right now I really needed the localized version, to distribute to a set of computers without connection in a local school. Bummers.
Only way forward is automatization.
OLPC (Score:3, Insightful)
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Until they *deny* access to the non-paying public they're not really violating their stated goals. It's when articles become "members only" that you can start biting your thumb at them.
Tom
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In order to give people without an internet connection a chance to look at Wikipedia you can only buy or download this CD on the internet? Somebody didn't think this all the way through.
1. Many people who have no internet service don't know what Wikipedia is and will not seek it.
2. Many people who have internet service know what Wikipedia is. Some of these people see some value in Wikipedia.
3. Some of the second group may be civic-minded enough to buy or download the cd and share it with people and organizations that do not have internet service but might be interested in Wikipedia.
4. Finally, some people have internet access sometimes but would like to have access to most of Wikipedia
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(Can you believe that there is such an in-depth article for that subject? It says something about Wikipedia, though whether it's good or not is unclear...
Data compression (Score:3, Informative)
Why does this even have a compatibility list? Shouldn't it just be a bunch of HTML and images on a CD? Why do they need any programs?
To decompress the HTML perhaps? People are working on compressing Wikipedia 6 to 1 [fit.edu]. Though it's on a CD-ROM right now, the number of Good Articles will grow quickly once people become jealous that their pet WikiProject didn't get as much coverage on the disc as others. I'd guess that Wikimedia Foundation is looking to delay migration to BD-ROM or HD DVD-ROM as long as possible.
Would be useful for me (Score:3, Interesting)
Would be handy for me at my vacation/retirement house.
For about 5 years it had no network connection whatsoever. Finally needed network on a vacation so now it has a dialup line that typically connects at 28.8 kbps. That's the best available in the area other than $atellite. But using it ties up the landline.
Nearest WiMax is Cl
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