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Wikipedia Planning a DVD Version

daria42 writes "The Wikipedia Foundation hopes to sell an English version of Wikipedia on CD-ROM and DVD before the end of the year. A boxed set of the German language version of Wikipedia has been available since last year. An updated version of the German Wikipedia was launched on Amazon.de this week, and the e-commerce site has received 8,000 pre-orders, according to Wikipedia Foundation president Jimmy Wales. Wales said it was easier to put the German version of Wikipedia onto CD as there are significantly less pages than there are for the English language version. He said that English Wikipedia would 'barely fit on 2 DVDs.'"

310 comments

  1. Another reason the German version fits on CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Frequent mentions of David Hassellhoff compress really well.

    1. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Stevyn · · Score: 5, Funny

      AndbecauseGermansdonotwastebytesonspaces

    2. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I for one, eagerly await to see the legendary Hassellhoff compression routine in operation...

    3. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by the+pickle · · Score: 5, Funny

      I believe what you meant was "Onderspacen Der Deutschennobegewastenderbytesen."

      p

    4. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously, this is probably the one reason I quit German class, because it was actually kinda' fun.

      I couldn't figure out (okay, I probably could if I studied it for a minute) how to pronounce a word because I couldn't see where one syllable and another intersected!

    5. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by nbert · · Score: 4, Informative

      well, we just hate redundant information :D

      There is no way to turn AndbecauseGermansdonotwastebytesonspaces into one single German word btw.

      It is true that the German language allows combinations of nouns of arbitrary length, but in the English language constructs like this exist as well (e.g. railway consists of two nouns). The only difference is that those speaking English are not free to make up new ones.

      And as a general rule of thumb most combinations in English are limited to two words. While it wouldn't make sense to combine more than 5 words, because it would get to hard to read and understand the term, there are rare examples in German which consist of 3 or even 4 words.

    6. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Surye · · Score: 1

      I have the same problem in Japanese at times. Imagine that with an entirely foriegn alphabet. Then make it 3, only 2 of them phonetic. Lots of fun. However, the kanji makes it much easier to read, no real question on word flow.

    7. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by arodland · · Score: 5, Informative

      You could if you studied it for a minute. The rules are actually relatively simples. For example, let's look at everyone's favorite word: "Aktiengesellschaft", meaning a public corporation, and usually abbreviated "AG".

      Semantically, it can be broken into Aktien / Gesell / -schaft; taken at this decomposed level it means something a little bit like "stock fellowship".

      Orthographically, well, you're in luck; as usual (always?), it breaks down along the same lines, according to the rules. What are the rules? I couldn't tell you exactly, but they're simple, and they're similar to Latin's. Anyway, it breaks down to Ak/tien/ge/sell/schaft. Breaks occur between consonants that don't form clusters, between vowels that don't form diphthongs, and otherwise before consonants.

    8. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      > You could if you studied it for a minute. The rules are actually relatively simples.
      > For example, let's look at everyone's favorite word: "Aktiengesellschaft", meaning a public corporation, and usually abbreviated "AG".
      >
      >... Anyway, it breaks down to Ak/tien/ge/sell/schaft.

      It's even easier if you break it down into:
      A/k/t/i/e/n/g/e/s/e/l/l/s/c/h/a/f/t

    9. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny
      in the English language constructs like this exist as well (e.g. railway consists of two nouns). The only difference is that those speaking English are not free to make up new ones.

      That's right. "Railway", for example, derives from "railuswayus" and was not concatenated by English speakers. We also didn't coin "email", "Internet", or "loudspeaker" - we borrowed those from Swahili.

      I'd go into more detail, but I'm off to check my voicemail and weblog (Spanish).

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    10. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right, like I said I could break the word down, but as a beginner it's difficult (not knowing the nouns) to know where to begin. I can usually do a good job of figuring out exactly what something means if I can associate it with some real world thing. For example, I can make sense out of the names for most car parts on a German car.

      Maybe I'm just trying to dive too deep too quick, but I get pretty frustrated trying to read even simple texts.

    11. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've always wondered about this. In Japanese, even the phonetic alphabets don't have spaces, correct? How the hell do you tell when one word ends and the next starts?

    12. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Surye · · Score: 1

      Particles and Kanji. It's very uncommon to write in all kana(phonetics), so you create alot of seperation that way. Plus, the parts of speech hold more structure (verbs ending in u or ru in short form, with very specific conjugations) than say, English. And particles like wo are hardly ever used in words, but is a very common particle (direct object marker). But then again, I'm only a second semester Japanese student at college. =P

    13. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > I've always wondered about this. In Japanese, even the phonetic alphabets don't have spaces, correct? How the hell do you tell when one word ends and the next starts?

      It's a lot easier if you know all the words! :)

      Actually, youcanansweryourownquestion. HowcanyoutellwhereoneEnglishwordends andthenextstarts?

    14. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Surye · · Score: 1

      Now replace about 70% of those with well defined symbols, use more (non-existant)punctuation (particals to mark parts of speech), and have perdictable word forms. Even easier then English.

    15. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Quobobo · · Score: 1

      Right on. I find Japanese very easy to read at a glance, unless it's all in kana. It's a weird situation because it makes childrens' books a bit difficult to read. Also, if you've played Katamari Damacy in Japanese, you'll agree with me that reading the king's dialogue (all in katakana) is painful as hell.

    16. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Perdo · · Score: 0, Redundant

      I think you mean

      DavidHassellhoffbeharrt, daßDeutschenichtRaumauf Räumenvergeudensollten

      --

      If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

    17. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Freeform · · Score: 0

      English speakers will have to settle for using nonetheless and ne'erdowells in order to save bytes.

    18. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Angostura · · Score: 1

      "significantly less pages"

      No, NO! It's "fewer pages, boy, FEWER".

    19. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but can the english beat

      "Schifffahrtsgesellschaftsdirektor"

      ? :)

      OTOH, only in Englisch you can verb anything - that doesn't work in German.

      Grettings from Germany.

    20. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by koreaman · · Score: 1

      What does that mean?

    21. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Zoxed · · Score: 1

      > but in the English language constructs like this exist as well (e.g. railway consists of two nouns)

      But the English ones are usually short. The problem I have (as an Englishmen stuggling to learn German in order to understand those who I now live amongst) is that the German ones can get so damn long.

      (If I had one vote for a German grammer rule change I would struggle to choose between compulsory use of spaces and the dropping of the sexing of objects (der/die/das, aus, aus, aus :-)

    22. Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you really as good as you think? And what are aou talkin about David Hasselhoff???!?

      The reason why the german wikipedia fitted on one cd was, that the german one was not as old as the english (oiriginal) one. Now, the second part was published, and this one fits on one DVD, so you can see the increase of data in only less than half a year ;)

  2. Love it. by PakProtector · · Score: 1

    I love it when /. posts an article only for me to see 'Nothing to see here.' for a minute. On the Other Hand, Only TWO DVDS? I better get to Wiki and start writing pages all about the writing Fan Fiction!

    --

    Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
    man: no entry for woman in the manual.
    "Qua!?"

    1. Re:Love it. by Jonny_eh · · Score: 1

      2 DVDs? So how many library of congresses is that?

    2. Re:Love it. by Squalish · · Score: 1

      1 library of congress is about 5.6 terabytes.
      So about 0.00164, assuming they're talking single layered, single sided disks.

      --
      People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
    3. Re:Love it. by Squalish · · Score: 1

      ref: http://www.wisegeek.com/how-much-text-is-in-a-kilo byte-or-megabyte.htm
      This was the first hit I got, but there appear to be several varying estimates for how big a library of congress (LoCbyte) is - I've seen 8 terabytes and 10 terabytes as well.

      --
      People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
  3. Whaaa? by Zone-MR · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Last time I checked, the current version of the English wikipedia dump, is around 585MB. It should comfortably fit on one CD. Where did this figure of two DVDs come from?

    1. Re:Whaaa? by amliebsch · · Score: 5, Funny
      Where did this figure of two DVDs come from?

      Well, when you add in the theatrical trailers, "making of" featurette, production stills, and commentary tracks... What I want to know is, will it be in Dolby Digital 7.1?

      --
      If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
    2. Re:Whaaa? by Servants · · Score: 5, Informative
      I followed your link:
      Last dump made: 2005-03-09 (30 days ago)
      Total size 50503MB (1460MB for just current revisions)

      These are SQL dumps of the current and old article revision databases for each wiki. They can be read into a local database and directly used with the MediaWiki software (MySQL, PHP, Apache required).

      These dumps are not suitable for viewing in a web browser or text editor unless you do a little preprocessing on them first.
    3. Re:Whaaa? by crypto55 · · Score: 1

      Actually, Wikipedia currently lists their dump at around 50 GB... The current data is about 1.5 GB.

      --
      Due to financial difficulties, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.
    4. Re:Whaaa? by Lu+Xun · · Score: 1

      Probably accounts for the multimedia content referenced by wikipedia pages. Add up all the images and sounds, and you'd fill two DVDs easily.

      --
      That's not a soda... it's a caffeine delivery device!
    5. Re:Whaaa? by F13 · · Score: 1
      Yes but as it states on that page:

      Raw database dumps

      Last dump made: 2005-03-09 (30 days ago) Total size 50503MB (1460MB for just current revisions)

      Unless you are refering to the TomeRaider archives

    6. Re:Whaaa? by mat1t · · Score: 1

      Not to mention you kind of need to have the pages generated, as no home user's going to configure a server to host it! :P

    7. Re:Whaaa? by Zone-MR · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah, I know, but...

      1.5GB for current revisions would still fit on one DVD.

      Also, that 1.5GB is for all languages. The English version only uses 0.5GB of that.

    8. Re:Whaaa? by pHatidic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sounds like an excellent legal application for BitTorrent.

    9. Re:Whaaa? by teslatug · · Score: 1

      Uncompress it, and add media

    10. Re:Whaaa? by remahl · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not counting images and other media, yeah.

    11. Re:Whaaa? by Knightmare · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I bet people would like to be able to read it or even search it off of the DVDs, which means storing it in bz2 format on the DVD is probably a BAD idea... So yes it's only 585 megs when bzip2'd but that isn't a very friendly format to deal with.

    12. Re:Whaaa? by Rylz · · Score: 2, Informative

      Those figures are for all language versions. For just English, these are the figures (further down on the same page):

      en.wikipedia.org
      cur - 585MB- md5 ec31110459e3d9680074bfaeddb8bfc9
      old - 26269MB- md5 94c2a48a0f68e17d0fd38c5b2e4c4ec3
      --
      Sometimes you've gotta roll the hard six.
    13. Re:Whaaa? by Matilda+the+Hun · · Score: 1

      Raw database dumps

      Last dump made: 2005-03-09 (30 days ago)
      Total size 50503MB (1460MB for just current revisions) ...585MB? When's the last time you checked?

      --
      Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
    14. Re:Whaaa? by joebp · · Score: 1

      what makes you think they need to store the articles on the cd/dvd uncompressed? since it's all text, it will compress extremely well

    15. Re:Whaaa? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NOBODY HERE CAN READ. If you spent 1 minute looking down the page until you get to en.wikipedia.org, it quite clearly does state that the current dump of the English version is 585MB for the current version. Argh.

    16. Re:Whaaa? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be new here.

    17. Re:Whaaa? by RaffiRai · · Score: 0

      Most wikipedia articles have pictures.

    18. Re:Whaaa? by jacksonj04 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nope. Wikipedia is available over HTTP in a much more up-to-date, interactive and dynamic format than DVDs. The whole purpose of the DVD sets is... I don't know. I really don't. but why BitTorrent it when you can just point your browser at wikipedia.com?

      --
      How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
    19. Re:Whaaa? by relluf · · Score: 1

      Yea, all the extra pictures and other media will be in the dump i'm sure.... either that or they'll take up practically no space at all. GET SOMe SKILLS.

    20. Re:Whaaa? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 0, Redundant

      You forgot about the images.

    21. Re:Whaaa? by arodland · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Still, I don't understand this. They must be doing something in the most simplistic way possible, or including all of the media (not just Commons). I've been working on a project recently, to create wikipedia CDs, and I've been able to get the full text of the English wikipedia, in a browsable format, into under 450MB. Searching isn't implemented yet, but I think it should be possible to fit a search index, plus all of the images from Commons, onto a single CD.

    22. Re:Whaaa? by saforrest · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wikipedia is available over HTTP in a much more up-to-date, interactive and dynamic format than DVDs.

      Well, yes, if you want to read it you're probably not going to download the entire bloody encyclopedia to your local machine via bittorrent.

      But some people would have valid reasons for wanting this. A lot of places resyndicate Wikipedia content, e.g. www.thefreedictionary.com. or answers.com; I'm exactly sure why these sites do it, but I can think or many valid reasons.

      Maybe data miners or researchers want to run scripts on Wikipedia and make all kinds of conclusions (such things are entirely legal and above board, since the content is free).

      The whole purpose of the DVD sets is... I don't know. I really don't.

      Well, not all of us are connected to the Internet 24/7. Some of us have laptops without wireless Internet, and even computers without network cards at all.

      Lastly, there are many places in the world where you can't get a reliable net connection at all (e.g. various places in Africa, Asia).

    23. Re:Whaaa? by Daravon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While the above posts mentioned the images used in the articles, there's also formatting for a searchable dvd. There would probably be some sort of formatting of the data for an easily searchable archive.

      --
      I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
    24. Re:Whaaa? by isny · · Score: 3, Funny

      Everybody knows that Wikipedia is best read in the original Klingon.

    25. Re:Whaaa? by Quietust · · Score: 1

      That's 585MB for the raw page data.
      Don't forget, all of the Wikipedia pages are enclosed in in nice pretty HTML documents. A quick test (by taking an HTML snapshot of an article and then removing the article content and all "dynamic" content such as edit/history/etc. links) indicates around 4KB of overhead per page (possibly less given further optimization).
      Multiply that by 520794 articles, and that up to around 2 gigabytes.
      That's still not including the overhead from cross-wiki links or multimedia...

      --
      * Q
      P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
    26. Re:Whaaa? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, not all of us are connected to the Internet 24/7.

      What the hell's wrong with you?

    27. Re:Whaaa? by nc_yori · · Score: 4, Funny

      The best part will be that the 7.1 sound will be put together from contributions by users just like you and me from all over the world!

      The levels will be mostly ok, except for the sections where people have entries for themselves in which the dB level will be upped by 10 +-5. Also, the encoding will be completely and totally correct, except for a very small flaw which will cause the center right speaker to output everything in Latin.

    28. Re:Whaaa? by FLEB · · Score: 1

      You could probably get around a lot of that overhead, though, if you somehow generated the extra on the fly. For a consumer-grade application, it could be either a dedicated viewer, or a mini-server that built the pages on the fly somewhere on localhost.

      --
      Information wants to be free.
      Entertainment wants to be paid.
      You just want to be cheap.
    29. Re:Whaaa? by Servants · · Score: 1

      Wikipedia is available over HTTP in a much more up-to-date, interactive and dynamic format than DVDs.

      Unfortunately, in Wikipedia's case "dynamic" sometimes means repeated back-and-forth edits and disputes over an article. Presumably, the DVD will represent a somewhat stable and agreed-upon version, rather than just a snapshot at an arbitrary moment.

    30. Re:Whaaa? by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 1

      They must be doing something in the most simplistic way possible, or including all of the media (not just Commons).

      I'm sure Wales' comment was talking about including all the media (at least all the images). But it was just a vague comment, not something that is actually being done.

      I've got the full text in a semi-browsable format with a search index down to 250 megs. I say semi-browsable because I use compression, but it's dictionary-based compression so it scales on a per-article basis.

    31. Re:Whaaa? by xcfx · · Score: 0

      Don't you think it may be useful to use the DVD on computers that doesn't have Internet access?

      --
      WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR!
    32. Re:Whaaa? by swillden · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, in Wikipedia's case "dynamic" sometimes means repeated back-and-forth edits and disputes over an article.

      While true, this problem is overstated. In practice, unless you're looking up current events, it's very rare to stumble across an edit war. They exist, but in such a miniscule percentage of articles that they're really not an obstacle to use.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    33. Re:Whaaa? by arodland · · Score: 1

      Interesting. I was looking into dictionary compression, but I hadn't gotten there yet; in the meantime, I was using an algorithm based on bzip2, arranged in such a way as to keep the compression benefits of a larger block size, but to still allow (mostly) random access; the full 'en' archive weighs in at 440MB with a 128k blocksize, or about 400MB if the block size is bumped up some more.

    34. Re:Whaaa? by dextroz · · Score: 0

      Nah... I just like to "hold" things...

      --
      Where's my free iPod!? Until then, I'll settle for a kiss...
    35. Re:Whaaa? by R.Caley · · Score: 1
      Some of us have laptops without wireless Internet, and even computers without network cards at all.

      Only on /. would you find people who get into the habit of thinking that internet access requires a network card.:-)

      I wouldn't think there are many people for which the price of a wikipedia DVD would be noticably less than the price of the phone calls to look things up in a given year.

      I think the best argument for producing a DVD is that it would give people a nice way to contribute to the wikipedia foundation. I think I would buy one for the same reason my company has a subscription to get every FreeBSD release on CD, even though we use hardly any of them. Getting so,mething which might be useful/interesting in exchange for a donation feels good.

      --
      _O_
      .|<
      The named which can be named is not the true named
    36. Re:Whaaa? by Raul654 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Exactly right - the media take up BY FAR the largest amount of space. Being that I do a lot of work putting full length songs onto Wikipedia (and I'm pretty much the only one who does), I've put well over 2 gigabytes onto commons in the last 6 weeks alone. See the list of songs I've put up :)

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    37. Re:Whaaa? by elgaard · · Score: 1

      Or a Firefox extension that would understand the wikiformat.

    38. Re:Whaaa? by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 1

      I should probably mention that this is just the articles themselves. No talk pages, no administrative pages, etc. So maybe my compression is only about equivalent to yours anyway. But one nice thing is once you're done the search index is already most of the way built.

      Anyway, see here and here for my inspiration. I had to adapt things somewhat, though.

      The real fun is going to come when I try to compress the history database. My idea is in addition to the dictionary for the entire database, I'll have an additional dictionary per article (and compress the article dictionary itself using the master dictionary). Who knows if this will work or not, but I'm hoping to achieve results on the order of compressing each article separately but with the advantage of random access capability.

    39. Re:Whaaa? by Adelbert · · Score: 1
      See the list of songs I've put up :)

      Actually, you didn't put all those on. Just looking at the "original submitter" column, there are at least 4 or 5 people submitting a large number of files.

      However, if you Raul654 (like you're /. name), that's still an impressive number of submissions.

    40. Re:Whaaa? by saforrest · · Score: 1

      Only on /. would you find people who get into the habit of thinking that internet access requires a network card.:-)

      Well, I hadn't forgotten about dialup entirely. I was lumping it in with computers disconnected from the Internet for a reason: I figure if you're browsing Wikipedia a lot, especially with its images and other media files, that you'll probably prefer a DVD if you don't have high-speed.

      I confess it's been quite a while since I used dialup, however, so you're probably correct that my prejudice is asserting itself.

      I wouldn't think there are many people for which the price of a wikipedia DVD would be noticably less than the price of the phone calls to look things up in a given year.

      Maybe. I wouldn't be surprised if there were (remote) places where dialup was expensive, because it required long-distance calls if nothing else.

      I think the best argument for producing a DVD is that it would give people a nice way to contribute to the wikipedia foundation.

      Agreed, like buying a copy of Linux from the FSF, it's mostly a gesture. Of course one can already donate directly, but getting something back is good encouragement. I was happy to receive a copy of Lessig's Free Culture when I became an associate member of the FSF, even though it would have been far cheaper just to buy the book from Amazon (or, cheapest of all, to simply read it online).

    41. Re:Whaaa? by arodland · · Score: 1

      I was including everything in namespaces (default), category, wikipedia, and template. Maybe a little more than you, but probably not much. In any case, I'm working on some dictionary compression of my own; it looks pretty effective so far.

    42. Re:Whaaa? by Raul654 · · Score: 0

      I consider Whyami's and OldakQuill's work to be mine -- Whyami I a prof at Witchita state U who I talked into putting up his music (basically I spent 4 weeks walking him through the process); OldakQuill offered to help me uploading so I gave him a couple websites I found to plunder :)

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    43. Re:Whaaa? by GraemeDonaldson · · Score: 1

      1. The FSF sells Linux? When did that happen?
      2. It's GNU/Linux, you insensitive clod!

      </tongue-in-cheek>

      --
      I think, therefore I am. I think?
  4. Why? by KingSkippus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not that I hope multitudes don't buy this, because any support of such and effort is good, but why would anyone buy it when you can just look it up and possibly get better updated results online?

    1. Re:Why? by -kertrats- · · Score: 1

      I was going to say for old comps without internet access, but they probably won't have a DVD-ROM drive....hmm....

      --
      The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
    2. Re:Why? by DarkFencer · · Score: 1

      Well they said DVD, not DVD-ROM. Perhaps these will be playable on normal DVD players?

      The two DVD figure mentioned may be because there is menu overhead, and the data would be displayed as image files rather then text.

      Just a thought.

    3. Re:Why? by Archon · · Score: 1

      Umm... for when you're offline?

    4. Re:Why? by DavidLeblond · · Score: 1

      That would take quite a bit more than 2 DVDs I'd say.

      Not to mention, without being able to type in a search term, you'd have to scroll through... how many topics do they have on Wikipedia?

    5. Re:Why? by pmazer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It makes sense for laptops which aren't always online. If you're writing a paper on your laptop and want to look something up, but can't easily get to a hotspot.

    6. Re:Why? by Chemical · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Because their site is slow, and the search engine always seems to be disabled for "performance reasons". I would consider it if the DVD included an enhanced search feature.

    7. Re:Why? by sinclair44 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wikipedia's servers are often overloaded. My net connection can go offline somtimes. It's 100% positivly available for a research paper, and will 100% be around to back you up. You can run complex searches on an offline version much better/nicer/faster than an online version (if you can run it online at all). You can show it off to friends. Or a multitude of other reasons.

      --
      Omnes stulti sunt.
    8. Re:Why? by acm · · Score: 1
      Not that I hope multitudes don't buy this, because any support of such and effort is good, but why would anyone buy it when you can just look it up and possibly get better updated results online?

      a) for when you bring your laptop with you on a safari and want to know the difference between a Bengal Tiger and a Siberian Tiger.

      b) you work somewhere without an Internet connection at your desk (like I do), but would value Wikipedia as a handy resource to have available.

      I would love to have the usenet archives available to me on DVD, preferrably with the ability to custom order DVDs based on specific groups and timespans. Oh and of course a powerful search engine. Hear that Google??

    9. Re:Why? by amliebsch · · Score: 5, Interesting

      First, to "lock in" decent versions of controversial articles. But second and more importantly, to be able to produce a stable, constant "edition" that can be referenced and cited to. How do you cite Wikipedia, when the content is always changing? Now you could write a paper and cite something like Person, Random, "Wikipedia Article," Wikipedia 2d ed. (2006). Very, very, important if WP is to become a legitimate source of information.

      --
      If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
    10. Re:Why? by prezninja · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wouldn't expect the "multitudes" to buy this.

      At least one example of usefulness for this product would be low-cost educational computer labs. I purchased 4 X-terms each with 21" displays for $1.00 on eBay, and picked them up in person to save shipping. My thought was that with a medium power PC serving them, it would make a great low-cost computer lab for a local, under-funded school.

      Not needing an internet connection to access this massive amount of information means reduced cost to the previously mentioned under funded schools, for which a connection might not even be available at a reasonable price.

      As well, despite it being outdated quite soon in many cases, local-server searches and content could be lightning fast compared to the bogged down Wikipedia servers, or slow Internet connections.

    11. Re:Why? by dvdeug · · Score: 1

      How do you cite Wikipedia, when the content is always changing?

      Every thing I've ever read about citing Internet sources said to include the date of download.

    12. Re:Why? by hawaiian717 · · Score: 1
      Every thing I've ever read about citing Internet sources said to include the date of download.

      Here's an example of MLA's citation style for web sites:

      http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/legacylib/mlahcc.html%2 3internet

      --
      End of Line.
    13. Re:Why? by earthbound+kid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. If you're out of high school, you never need to cite an encyclopedia, because everything in it qualifies as common knowledge. About the only reason to cite Wikipedia is because they have a particularly interesting way to say something.

      B) Wikipedia keeps revert logs, meaning that you can cite a particular version of a page. For example, here's what "Mr. Spock" looked like in October of 2002: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mr._Spoc k&oldid=332169

      Compare that to Mr. Spock from March: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mr._Spoc k&oldid=11993073

      C) As another user pointed out, you should always put the date of access in your internet citations.

    14. Re:Why? by amliebsch · · Score: 1

      Well, suppose I want to write a law review article about Wikipedia, or something like that. There are plenty of reasons to want to cite to it besides using it as an authoritative source. I forgot about point B, that's a useful feature, and I don't see why that couldn't be used for citation, though it is still a bit cumbersome, I think. By using volumes or editions, you wouldn't need the url at all, which I think would be a more robust form of citation. But date alone is not good enough, I disagree with some of the standards on this. If it changes at a future time, and I don't have access to the logs, how can I prove that my citation was accurate?

      --
      If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
    15. Re:Why? by rgmoore · · Score: 1

      I'd think that it would be great for people who still have unreliable, slow, or expensive network connections. That might include home users who are still on flaky dialup, people who live in countries where dialup is still paid for by the minute, organizations that have overloaded connections, and the like. Many public schools, for instance, still don't have really good network connectivity, but they may have large numbers of students who want to read encyclopedia articles. It might be a lot easier for them to buy a couple of DVDs and install Wikipedia on several computers than to have students try to do everything on-line.

      --

      There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.

    16. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
      It's 100% positivly available for a research paper.

      You'd use Wikipedia as a source for a research paper? God have mercy on our souls. How do you footnote an article? "I3_Sexy_gal_xxxx_1313 Wikipedia.org "All about the President" 2005" lol. What a buffoon.

    17. Re:Why? by mr_jrt · · Score: 1

      You could always just reference to the specific revision uri. That should retrieve the exact information you used yourself.

      Problem solved. :)

      --
      Boo.
    18. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kids these days can't use non-electronic source material...if it's not on the web, it doesn't exist for them...

    19. Re:Why? by ikkonoishi · · Score: 4, Informative

      And for those who care...

      An MLA/APA auto formatter for references.

      Every teacher at my school has recommended it to me. (Although I myself have not yet gotten a chance to try it.)

    20. Re:Why? by ottothecow · · Score: 1

      but google seems to do a pretty good job indexing wikipedia :)

      --
      Bottles.
    21. Re:Why? by Hadlock · · Score: 1

      the search engine works, it's just called "wikiwax.com" :)

      ok it's more of a hybrid index/search engine, but it works better in this case than a straight out search engine

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    22. Re:Why? by FLEB · · Score: 1

      Holy crap!
      I wish I knew about that in college.

      --
      Information wants to be free.
      Entertainment wants to be paid.
      You just want to be cheap.
    23. Re:Why? by FLEB · · Score: 1

      It's probably a perfectly good idea, but it's bringing back all those bad memories of those awful, underpowered, amber-screened, functionally useless monstrosities that were my junior-high school's CD-ROM-based InfoTrac machines. ..shudder..

      --
      Information wants to be free.
      Entertainment wants to be paid.
      You just want to be cheap.
    24. Re:Why? by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 1

      Wikipedia's servers are often overloaded.

      Of course, Yahoo just agreed to host Wikipedia, so this might be changing in the near future.

      http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2 005/04/04/daily39.html. Hmm, apparently this support is based on servers in Asia. So maybe not.

    25. Re:Why? by earthbound+kid · · Score: 1

      Writing a law review article about Wikipedia qualifies under my statement that "About the only reason to cite Wikipedia is because they have a particularly interesting way to say something." Legally, the interesting thing is that they're publishing it with a particular GNU license, not the factual content of a particular article. My point is that the factual content of the article shouldn't be worth citing, since it should all either be common knowledge or itself cited within the Wikipedia article on the topic at hand.

      Of course, as I think of it more, it might be worth citing Wikipedia if you were writing a research paper about Slashdot culture, since they do have a lot of information about various trolls and running jokes that pop up here...

    26. Re:Why? by LuYu · · Score: 1

      But second and more importantly, to be able to produce a stable, constant "edition" that can be referenced and cited to. How do you cite Wikipedia, when the content is always changing?
      Why not just include the file in your paper as an attachment or something. As long as the work is not printed, it is trivial to include Wikipedia pages with what you have written. It is also perfectly legal to do so.

      Alternatively, you could include the exact revision date and time in the citation and a link to that revision since all revisions are persistent.

      --
      All data is speech. All speech is Free.
    27. Re:Why? by kamapuaa · · Score: 1

      While you mention it, I'm writing a report and would like to cite a rumor I overheard on the bus, and the hearsay of small children. Any suggestions?

      --
      Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
    28. Re:Why? by hhghghghh · · Score: 1
      While you mention it, I'm writing a report and would like to cite a rumor I overheard on the bus, and the hearsay of small children. Any suggestions?

      "The word on the streets", J. Doe jr. et al., Municipal Schoolbus Co. of Littetown, 2005

    29. Re:Why? by hhghghghh · · Score: 1

      TeX also takes care of citations for you in a straightforward manner. Just install the correct style, and copy+paste entire citations from handy dandy precompiled bibliographies; some scientific publishers (like sciencedirect) even offer a generate TeX-citation button on their websites. Citeseer includes BibTeX entries for each publication (though often not as nice as bibliographies maintained by people in the field).

    30. Re:Why? by elgaard · · Score: 1

      >How do you cite Wikipedia, when the content is always changing?

      Like this:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Person&o ldid=11135846

    31. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE?

  5. Free? by Raelus · · Score: 1, Troll

    Why pay for what you can get free?

    --
    "It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world."
    1. Re:Free? by Omnieiunium · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That was what I thought of as well. Why would you buy the information when you can get it for free. I figured that maybe for computers that are not connected to the net. Also, you could buy it to support wiki.

    2. Re:Free? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Yeah!

      Anyone got a torrent link?

      I kid I kid!

    3. Re:Free? by FuzzzyLogik · · Score: 1

      Because it's kind cool to have it available even if you don't have net access? Because it's nice to support a good cause? Because it might just be cool to have a cheap dvd of the first publicly made encyclopedia to show your kids in 15 years, "hey look at this encyclopedia" which in 15 years time might be common place? There's a ton of reasons, I'd do it just to give a little money to the fund and have something cool to show for it.

    4. Re:Free? by Twisted64 · · Score: 1

      Let's ask Bill Gates why people pay for his OS when they could use linux. Ah, yes, ease of use. And oh, how I wish the internet were free.

      --
      Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
  6. But... by over_exposed · · Score: 4, Funny

    How will the trolls deface a read-only version of it?

    --
    "The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
    1. Re:But... by magicRob · · Score: 0

      Don't worry, the defaced / incorrect / spammed versions will make their way onto the disc by simple being a part of the site.

      Wouldn't they have to check every article for correctness / spam etc before it made it onto the disc?

      --
      Join the Digital TV discussion @ http://forums.dvbowners.com
    2. Re:But... by Raul654 · · Score: 1

      I know this is a joke, but I answered this elsewhere on this thread.

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    3. Re:But... by Ours · · Score: 1

      DVD-RW/DVD+RW versions will also be available for sell for those. I'm all for defacing-trolls "wasting" their online time on that.

      --
      "You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
    4. Re:But... by Alsee · · Score: 1

      Umm, with magic markers?
      I wanted to say crayons, but crayon won't really stick on the plastic.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  7. why this is good by izzo+nizzo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because you gotta love it when people get paid while continuing to give you their stuff for free. Everybody wins.

    1. Re:why this is good by game+kid · · Score: 1

      people get paid while continuing to give you their stuff for free

      Am I the only one here whose brain hurts from this post? I doubt the DVD itself es gratis but the 'net version is obviously free. Besides, we can always donate (though obviously sans the DVD incentive).

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    2. Re:why this is good by izzo+nizzo · · Score: 1

      I didn't imply that the DVD was available for free, just that I'm not going to buy it. And I also didn't imply that we can't donate. Maybe your brain was hurting for some other reason, silly goose.

    3. Re:why this is good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because you gotta love it when the people running the site get paid while the people who contribute don't.

    4. Re:why this is good by FLEB · · Score: 1

      Face it. Even if they were to try, the logistical problems of paying contributors would make any fair "payoff" laughable at best, and impossible at worst, without radically commercializing the whole operation.

      So, it can be said that a contributor's chance... ability, even... to be paid is zero. So, when the choice is between nobody being paid and the site-owners being paid, what's your point in griping about not being paid.

      Since they can't go Gracenote, and you've still got your copy, no matter what, stop complaining.

      --
      Information wants to be free.
      Entertainment wants to be paid.
      You just want to be cheap.
    5. Re:why this is good by DerekLyons · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Because you gotta love it when people get paid while continuing to give you their stuff for free. Everybody wins.
      The problem is, the people making money off the DVD aren't the people creating the content. Nobody wins.
    6. Re:why this is good by Dan+Ost · · Score: 1

      If the money generated by the DVD helps offset the overhead costs of the
      project, then that's still a good thing. I might not make a cent for the
      work I've done on Wikipedia, but I support anything that will help ensure
      the existance of Wikipedia.

      Just the way I see it.

      --

      *sigh* back to work...
    7. Re:why this is good by youknowmewell · · Score: 1

      The only people who win are those who got their DVD, those that got the money, and those that post on or read from wikipedia, since the money will likely be used to help wikipedia.

    8. Re:why this is good by stonecypher · · Score: 1

      It's going to support the bandwidth and servers, actually; the amount that Amazon makes off of the process is far offset by the extra amount generated by the more broadly available shopping.

      I mean, you might as well call the US Mail profiteers in the scheme, too. But the real profitters by a huge margin are the people who will continue to use the service for free online.

      Bandwidth doesn't grow on trees.

      --
      StoneCypher is Full of BS
  8. 2 DVDs? by civman2 · · Score: 1

    Surely text compresses well. Not to mention that most of the linking between different articles could be handled in such a way as to reduce wiki-markup overhead.

    Then again, there are a heck of a lot of articles in the Wikipedia...

    1. Re:2 DVDs? by chachob · · Score: 1

      Don't forget about the image(s) in most articles...

  9. Neat idea, but... by kyle90 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think it's a good idea to have wikipedia available in other formats than just online, but isn't the whole point of it that anyone can come and edit the articles to make them more correct? You couldn't do that with a DVD version. And unless someone is going to go through every article before putting it on a disc, you'd run the risk of buying an encyclopedia with some things blatantly wrong. I could envision pranksters trying to sneak in false information just before the DVD release...

    --
    Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
    1. Re:Neat idea, but... by SamSim · · Score: 1
      you'd run the risk of buying an encyclopedia with some things blatantly wrong

      That's a standing risk with Wikipedia anyway. So what's changed?

    2. Re:Neat idea, but... by GroovinWithMrBloe · · Score: 2

      I could envision pranksters trying to sneak in false information just before the DVD release...
      But that's the benefit of the DVD ... you can do some better quality checking before the publication which ensures that (less) silly/false articles make it in.

      It also means that organisations don't waste bandwidth visiting Wikipedia all the time. Imagine a school of several thousand students, and the bandwidth used if they use the Wikipedia heaps. The school won't like it. Alternatively, the school can for the same price as a movie ticket get a complete copy for local use.

    3. Re:Neat idea, but... by sponga · · Score: 0

      How about a cd-rw than? Ok, atleast i tried.

    4. Re:Neat idea, but... by kyle90 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, wikipedia now is free. If I'm spending money on an encyclopedia, I'd rather it be factual. If it's free, though, I don't mind the occassional error.

      --
      Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
    5. Re:Neat idea, but... by timeOday · · Score: 1

      It does seem like it might be wise not to put anything brand new on the DVD. Perhaps use the most recent version of each article that lasted for 2 weeks or more?

  10. humm.. by thundercatslair · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I thought the whole idea behind wikipedia was that it is constantly changing. Will updated dvds be sold? And if so, will previous buyers get a discount?

    1. Re:humm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought the whole idea behind wikipedia was that it is constantly changing.

      In this case you can have it both ways.

      Will updated dvds be sold? And if so, will previous buyers get a discount?

      The encyclopedia is released under the GNU Free Documentation License. It is legal to download it for free, or to copy your neighbor's DVD.

    2. Re:humm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like it's nice and convenient to have some dead trees in your hands when there's a wealth of up to date info on the net, having a semi-dated copy of Wikipedia on two 5 inch platters is nice to have if you don't have a constant network connection, (dialup, network outages, etc.)

      It's 9.9 euros (about $13, American,) hardly a huge investment. And for the most part, the online changes aren't going to affect you a whole lot, assuming whatever you decide to look up was actually changed.

      Perhaps it'll include a feature to notify if the entry has been updated since the disc's publication if you reeeeeeally need up to the minute information.
      -gko

  11. What's their point? by HadesInjustice · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    "German version of Wikipedia onto CD as there are significantly less pages than there are for the English language version. He said that English Wikipedia would 'barely fit on 2 DVDs."

    Is German smaller in code than English, it not, then what is causing the extra space??? Also, if it can't fit on 2 DVDs, then fit it on 3 then. Its common for digital information to use multiple CD/DVD. Look at Half-Life 2, that is like 4 CDs right there.

    1. Re:What's their point? by MarthaStewart32 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      German people dont necessarily speak english and vice versa. And two DVD's is a lot of space. And 4 cd's isnt even a DVD. And just because other people use multiple disks doesnt mean its a good idea. I remember playing riven and having to switch disks way way to often. And for a Encyclopedia there would be a 50% chance that you would have to switch disks everytime you looked something up. That would be rather annoying when trying to do any research.

    2. Re:What's their point? by Zonnald · · Score: 0

      Perhaps a lot of the multimedia links are in English have been omitted?

    3. Re:What's their point? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Is German smaller in code than English, it not, then what is causing the extra space???

      The English version is more comprehensive with more articles, largely because it has more people working on it.

    4. Re:What's their point? by slavemowgli · · Score: 2, Informative

      1. The code is the same size, but it doesn't matter since the space the software would take up on a CD/DVD/... is dwarfed by the size of the data.

      2. The English Wikipedia has (roughly) about 2,5 times as many articles as the German Wikipedia. Mean article size (in bytes) is roughly equivalent.

      3. The English Wikipedia uses many more images etc. than the German Wikipedia.

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
  12. But if you remove all the useless stub articles... by merreborn · · Score: 2, Funny

    The footprint of the english version fits on a floppy!

  13. Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes gold by FunWithHeadlines · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know how controversial subjects in the Wikipedia get fights over entries. Back and forth it goes, with one person putting their "truth" and then the opposite side removing or replacing it with their version of the "truth." Now, just picture it: The deadline for the gold master version to be put on disc is announced, and like people pouncing on an EBay auction at the last second, the warring factions will rapidly replace each other's versions of an article, hoping that their version is the one to be immortalized on disc.

  14. Dead-tree version coming soon? by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 4, Interesting
    With Wikipedia taking up so much space on DVD, I certainly hope they compress the text. It should actually compress quite nicely, I think.

    I wonder... does this 2-DVD set include all articles from Wikipedia? (As opposed to some just selected somehow...) Also, I wonder if the DVD version will include all the version changes to the articles. If not, then perhaps the best version was picked out somehow?

    Hmmm... This is what I think needs to happen: Wait a few more years for Wikipedia to gain even more information, and then put some kind of button on pages that allows users to "vote" for that page to be included in a dead-tree encyclopedia version of Wikipedia. The idea is to put only those articles that have the highest votes into a traditional-style encyclopedia that can rival the likes of commercially made ones. Of course, there would need to be ways to cite sources, to make the encyclopedia worthy of academic research and the like, and preferably there should also be a way for people who want to do other stuff than write articles to submit photographs or whatever kind of artwork, of their own creation and released under the free license of Wikipedia, for inclusion in the articles. For the print version, people might be able to vote for the "best" photographs and artwork for inclusion. At that point, it should be a matter of running some perl script or something to typeset the whole darn thing. This might find its way into libraries and into peoples' homes. Imagine that!

    1. Re:Dead-tree version coming soon? by Raul654 · · Score: 1

      I wonder... does this 2-DVD set include all articles from Wikipedia?

      Well, since it doesn't exist yet, there's no answer to this. But as far as what *might* happen, mediawiki 1.5 will containg a versioning system that will eventually be used to mark 'good' versions of an article, which can them be used to generate a DVD/printed version. On the other hand, it'll be a couple of months before it is deployed, then add another 2 weeks for bug fixes, and at the same time, we wikipedia users have to figure out how the community should actually employ it (e.g., who-does-what with it). This means that the DVD will probably be ready long before the versioning is, and as such, I suspect it's going to be a raw database dump.

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    2. Re:Dead-tree version coming soon? by arodland · · Score: 1

      What you're saying is more-or-less in line with what the "Wikipedia 1.0" project has been talking about; maybe you could chime in there.

    3. Re:Dead-tree version coming soon? by rednip · · Score: 1
      then put some kind of button on pages that allows users to "vote" for that page to be included in a dead-tree encyclopedia version of Wikipedia
      Finally, a good use for my horde of Wikipedia usernames!
      --
      The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
    4. Re:Dead-tree version coming soon? by metasj · · Score: 1
      If the German DVD-production efforts are any indication, this would not include all articles, but a significant fraction of them; and only one version per article, generally the latest one at the time of the snapshot.

      As for contributing your ideas to a discussion of "Wikipedia 1.0", here is a discussion about that project on the Wikimedia Meta-wiki. Deciding which photographs and artwork to include, and how much text to include for each article, will be some of the interesting subprojects.

      --
      SJ on en:
    5. Re:Dead-tree version coming soon? by RealAlaskan · · Score: 1
      ... put some kind of button on pages that allows users to "vote" for that page to be included in a dead-tree encyclopedia version of Wikipedia.

      Users? You want to let users vote? The people who know so little about the topic that they've gone to Wikipedia to learn more?

      Users should vote on readability, and informativeness, and such, because they can make accurate, useful judgements on those things. They should never be allowed to vote on correctness, because they cannot make accurate, useful judgements on that.

      If the Wiki-folk are going to make a for-sale version, the votes for correctness and inclusion should come from experts in the various fields.

  15. Out of date already? by toddbu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I like the fact that Wikipedia is always current, so I don't know why I'd ever want this on DVD. For example, they had a great article on the pope the other day which was current right up through his death. Since I can just look this up online, why would I want stale information stored on my computer? I have a set of World Books on the shelf, and we keep them around for when you want to do research when "otherwise occupied" (i.e. sitting on the can). Of course now that I have a Zaurus with wireless networking then I don't need the hardcopy any more since I can surf from any room in the house.

    --
    If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
    1. Re:Out of date already? by SamSim · · Score: 1

      If you have access to all that information online, why do you even need the books?

      If you don't have access to all that information online, why would you say no source of information which is probably more up-to-date than the books? And, at ten euros for the German version, almost certainly WAY cheaper?

    2. Re:Out of date already? by amliebsch · · Score: 1
      why would I want stale information stored on my computer?

      Because they only things you can cite to in legitimate academic or scholarly work are volumes or editions that do not change, so that anybody can use your citiation to verify your source.

      --
      If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
    3. Re:Out of date already? by koreaman · · Score: 1

      Well, you can cite a certain revision of wikipedia. The software stores all previous versions...

  16. How fluid is Wikipedia? by spagthorpe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How often do existing pages change? Maybe in a case where people catch errors.

    I have a spare 20GB lying around that I would install this on, if there was some way to sync it with the current state and have it download new pages and update current ones.

    --

    WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
    (Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)

    1. Re:How fluid is Wikipedia? by jb.hl.com · · Score: 1

      IIRC, there is an rsync feed here which should do you quite nicely.

      --
      By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
    2. Re:How fluid is Wikipedia? by GulagMoosh · · Score: 1

      It would be interesting to see how fluid it actually is. A disk release would allow one to make a comparison against a point single point in time. With some study, you could determine portions that could be deemed accurate using an appropriate reason ing algorithm. Measuring the shift of the data over time over time might provide insight on what topics are relatively static and potentially accurate. That would require a large amount of information not within the release structure. It would provide a great reasoning problem for a thesis, however.

  17. There are... by NumbThumb · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...no images in the dump. Just text. And not reader software.

    Also, the current dump is about 800 MG, gzipped. enjoy.

    --
    I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
  18. School usage by under_R_run · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This would be great for schools. They could buy the DVD set and set up a local "mirror" of Wikipedia to increase access speed and decrease Wikipedia bandwidth usage.

    1. Re:School usage by LiNKz · · Score: 1

      Actually, some schools would frown upon the use of Wikipedia. I note an instructor at the college explaining to his students the evil of the internet, and all content void.

      --
      Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
    2. Re:School usage by kent_eh · · Score: 1

      And not have to worry that something might get defaced or vandalised.

      Can you imagine the uproar if lil' Johnny's parents saw "disgusting language" in printouts he was using for a school project on baseball?

      Having research material in a known state should reduce the school's administration's collective anxiety level.

      --

      ---
      "I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
    3. Re:School usage by Horrortaxi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No no no. One of the reasons you do research papers in school is so you can learn to evaluate sources of information--basically so you can tell shit from shinola. Wikipedia would never make it into the reference page of anybody who was taking their assignment seriously. I'm sure as teachers get hip to Wikipedia they'll start explicitly telling students not to use it.

    4. Re:School usage by be-fan · · Score: 1

      While I wouldn't use Wikipedia as a definitive reference, most of it's articles are fairly accurate. Certainly, I'd have no qualms about using it as a starting point for further research, and many of the articles have their own bibliographies that can point you to good books.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    5. Re:School usage by patio11 · · Score: 1
      Why? Access to short text-only articles is almost instantaneous and andwidth is cheap, unless your students are doing linguistics research and wgetting 10,000 articles at a time to develop corpora.

      Not that I've done that, or anything. Please don't ban my IP, WikiGods.

    6. Re:School usage by lachlan76 · · Score: 1

      You haven't seen the kind of internet connections schools have. It seems that they are sent through a handful of proxies shared between the entire state.

      I have spent *MINUTES* waiting for a *STUB* to load.

  19. I think I speak for all the nerds here... by Phexro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...when I say, "two single-layer DVDs, or dual-layer?"

    1. Re:I think I speak for all the nerds here... by rmcii · · Score: 1

      I agree.

      Its the same as when you're in the store trying to buy some USB device and all it says is "USB ready"... 1.0, 1.1 or 2.0?

      Even my SATA dvdr didn't specify the SATA type anywhere on the box (or on the spec sheet from the company site). Turns out to be SATA-II

      Be specific and maybe we'll buy in!

  20. No real point for me by Altima(BoB) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Say what you will about Wikipedia's well know flaws (revert wars, submitters with thinly veiled political agendas and other various sub-vices) but part of the appeal of Wikipedia is simply the form of its current incarnation.

    Right now, if I wanted background information on something, I just load up the (usually speedy) bookmark, enter the search and within seconds I have my answer. Why should it then become a more laborious to use resource? 2 DVDs? No only would constantly inserting and removing discs and launching extra applications provide more hassle (not too much more, but enough to make its value as an ultra speedy information center reduced) how would the information be sorted? Imagine half the links on any page requiring you to switch discs? For me, one of the great ways to use Wikipedia is to wander from article to article following the various text links. A multi-disc setup like this would only discourage that method.

    Finally, I don't really think Wikipedia is ready to be put onto physical media for distribution. I certainly wouldn't trust it for more than satiating my curiosity, for instance I'd never cite it in an essay as a source. Articles with heavy disputes in their comments abound and many have no easy answers with how to solve an article's problems. So putting it on DVDs is a two fold problem, you don't get the advantage of having your data updated constantly by other users, but you'll also be working with a lot of flawed data that will be flawed forever on the disc. Perhaps I'm exagerating the problems a little, but really, who needs this? It's not like it's a cheapr printed encyclopedia alternativ to Brittanica, and since it'll be in electronic form anyway, why NOT use the web for it, you don't have to store any of it yourself.

    The only audiance I can think of that would need this are Wikipedia addicts who spend a lot of time without internet access.

    Sorry for being overly negative, I really love using Wikipedia, but I think this move kind of messes up the point...

    --
    Yup...
    1. Re:No real point for me by Anne+Honime · · Score: 2, Interesting
      "I certainly wouldn't trust it for more than satiating my curiosity, for instance I'd never cite it in an essay as a source. Articles with heavy disputes in their comments abound and many have no easy answers with how to solve an article's problems."

      Because, of course, authors of printed materials are always objectives, have no hidden agenda of any sort, and don't get lost in holy wars. Yeah. Sure.

      Having been all the way into university, I can swear to you that absolutely no reference whatsoever ever keeps balance and seek truth. They are all opinions, and wiki (at least in my view) is no more slanted than any other reference text, all the better, it's in fact easier to spot the controversial points because of the revisions of articles. That's what any scholar would dream to find everywhere else.

    2. Re:No real point for me by Stalyn · · Score: 1

      I totally couldn't agree more. Wikipedia is not a definitive source but most of the time just out of interest you can learn a lot. In reality citing any encyclopedia for serious research is unheard of. The last time I used an encyclopedia for a project and cited it was in elementary school.

      --
      The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
  21. Is this legal? by nebaz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In order to publish and SELL this information on CD/DVD, does the Wikipedia Foundation have to get the permission of all the article writers, or is there, perhaps, a clause on the website that says something like 'we own all the stuff put on here'. What would happen if Slashdot sold versions of article comments on DVD?

    --
    Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
    1. Re:Is this legal? by teslatug · · Score: 5, Informative

      Have a read.

    2. Re:Is this legal? by aoe2bug · · Score: 1, Interesting

      [quote]What would happen if Slashdot sold versions of article comments on DVD?[/quote]

      noone would buy it.

      but seriously on-topic: I would buy a dvd of wikipedia. so what if its not 100% up-to-date.

      1) your supporting a good cause
      2) you cant always connect to the internet, atleast not on a laptop (like me)

      I dont agree with other posters saying that its pointless because you can't modify the articles, because you can still go to the online version and update it. (you'll have an outdated version on dvd obviously, but you already know the stuff you contributed)

      --
      -Dan
    3. Re:Is this legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's under the GNU Free Documentation License.

    4. Re:Is this legal? by remahl · · Score: 5, Informative

      Text content contributed to Wikipedia must be GFDL, so the foundation can sell it as long as they respect the authors' copyright and the terms of the license. Although the Wikimedia Foundation is not-for-profit, even commercial distribution would have been acceptable under the terms of the GFDL. But the content copyrights still belong to those who created it.

      On the other hand, it happens that people contribute material copyrighted by other people, without their consent. According to U.S. law, Wikipedia cannot be held responsible for that, as long as they act quickly to remove infringing material. When physical media is distributed, that protection is no longer valid.

    5. Re:Is this legal? by SirTalon42 · · Score: 1

      I believe the license Wikipedia's content is under is equivalent to the GPL (meaning you can sell it, modify, etc all you want).

    6. Re:Is this legal? by the+pickle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wow, what a karma whore.

      On the bottom of every single Wikipedia page, right there in plain sight, is a link to the GNU Free Documentation License, which governs everything submitted to Wikipedia.

      p

    7. Re:Is this legal? by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 1

      In order to publish and SELL this information on CD/DVD, does the Wikipedia Foundation have to get the permission of all the article writers, or is there, perhaps, a clause on the website that says something like 'we own all the stuff put on here'.

      No, and no.

    8. Re:Is this legal? by sydneyfong · · Score: 1

      The question is rather, is the content legal?

      Regardless of the GFDL, there are many articles that are plagiarized from the web by various "contributors" -- i.e. those content is not eligible to be put under GFDL in the first place.

      Not that it isn't a problem now, but it's going to be a bigger problem when Wikipedia tries to profit from the stuff.

      IANAL.

      --
      Don't quote me on this.
    9. Re:Is this legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please report problems rather than moaning about them on Slashdot. Wikipedia's volunteers and staff take allegations of plagiarism very seriously and are always looking for instances of copyright infringement.

  22. wiki is going to get sued for this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    A lot of vandals copy/paste text from copyrighted websites onto Wikipedia, usually they get found and deleted but some are missed. If they sell copies of Wikipedia then they are going to get tons of copyright infringement lawsuits.

    1. Re:wiki is going to get sued for this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      from
      http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=145398&cid=121 71852

      Text content contributed to Wikipedia must be GFDL, so the foundation can sell it as long as they respect the authors' copyright and the terms of the license. Although the Wikimedia Foundation is not-for-profit, even commercial distribution would have been acceptable under the terms of the GFDL. But the content copyrights still belong to those who created it.

      On the other hand, it happens that people contribute material copyrighted by other people, without their consent. According to U.S. law, Wikipedia cannot be held responsible for that, as long as they act quickly to remove infringing material. When physical media is distributed, that protection is no longer valid.

    2. Re:wiki is going to get sued for this by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 1

      Which is probably the real reason the German Wikipedia was a lot easier to put on CD. Much of the English Wikipedia, especially the images, consists of copyright infringements. I believe the German Wikipedia is much more conservative on this issue.

    3. Re:wiki is going to get sued for this by slavemowgli · · Score: 1

      How much is "much of"? And how would you know how much of Wikipedia's content is "copyright infringements", anyway?

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    4. Re:wiki is going to get sued for this by swiftstream · · Score: 1

      He put it all there, duh!

      --
      Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
    5. Re:wiki is going to get sued for this by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 1

      I'd say about 10% of the images. Probably less of the text. And I never said I knew how much. I just know that it's a lot. And I know this because I've seen it.

  23. Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Here's an idea I just dreamed up... It shouldn't be too hard or costly to do, but it might make the Wikipedia folks quite a lot of money, if it works:

    On each Wikipedia article, there should be a button where users can vote an article as being "worthy" for academic research and the like. Articles that receive high votes would actually get published in a monthly (or even by-weekly) magazine... So, for example, each month, subscribers would receive the magazine in the mail, and it would contain, in addition to paid advertising like any other magazine, something like ten or fifteen articles randomly chosen from Wikipedia. These would cover a broad range of topics. One month, you might receive a magazine with articles about Argentina, transaxles, grep, electromagnetism, George Washington, the Berlin wall, Apollo 9, goldfish, ballpoint pens, and cow manure. Some subscribers will already be familiar with some of the topics; others might not be interested in some of the topics; but chances are that if you pick up this magazine and read it, even for a few minutes a month, you'll learn some interesting new facts here and there, usually about topics that you'd never consider reading about in any serious manner, but which you're reading because the Wikipedia Magazine happens to be there.

    Links at the bottom of articles would direct the reader to the article online. This would serve an additional purpose: People who find something missing or something that could be improved in an article would perhaps be more likely to find out about it and then go online and fix it, thereby improving the quality of the entire Wikipedia.

    Money from subscriptions; money from advertisers in all fields (not just technical, and perhaps based on the content of that month's magazine) would finance the magazine and help finance Wikipedia. I see this as an opportunity to make quite a profit on something that is free, while mainly benefiting the community by doing so.

    1. Re:Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! by Raelus · · Score: 3, Informative

      Want to learn random stuff for free?
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage

      --
      "It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world."
    2. Re:Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! by civman2 · · Score: 1

      Wikipedia already does something like this with their "featured articles". They tend to be of much higher quality than your usual Wikipedia article, and are usually interesting (who wants to read something boring like some obscure biomedical article).

      I wonder how much additional work it would be to transfer these to a printed medium and mail them out? It seems like the perfect way to get people educated a little bit about a whole lot of different things, and I would probably subscribe to such a publication as well.

    3. Re:Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! by the+pickle · · Score: 1

      I hate "me too" posts, but...

      Me too.

      I would definitely pay twenty bucks a year or so for a twenty- or thirty-page newsletter-type thing full of Wikipedia articles. That would rock.

      p

    4. Re:Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or more likely, you'd get a magazine with half a dozen articles about topics related to goatse. Sorry about the pessimism.

    5. Re:Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! by Aerion · · Score: 1

      This already exists in some sense with the daily featured article by e-mail. I get an article every night around midnight GMT. If it looks interesting, I read it, and if it only kind of looks interesting, I kind of read it (exactly the same way I read magazines).

      A big advantage to having an electronic version is that, unlike printed encyclopedias, cross-references are very easy to follow. I open tabs upon tabs, creating queues of related articles to read, spawned by [[links]]. A print format can't do this.

    6. Re:Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! by eggsome · · Score: 1

      Great for when your stuck waiting in a doctors office...

      --
      If they made a movie of your life, would anybody buy a ticket?
    7. Re:Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! by Flyboy+Connor · · Score: 1
      Issue #1:
      • Star Wars
      • George Lucas
      • Star Trek
      • Seven of Nine
      • Wil Wheaton
      • Porn
      • Jenna Jameson
      • Spider-Man
      • Programming
      • Perl

      The variety of the articles might not be so high as you think...

  24. Unless.. by Teja · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Honestly, I'm wondering how the CD will be like. Will they include an option for you to have the ability to update the content at your setting? Or will it be so that you have to buy a new version everytime? I'm thinking that they will include an option to update but you can also buy newer versions so that you don't have to spend time updating (I hope)

    --
    - Teja
  25. Hmm by pHatidic · · Score: 1

    How much will it cost? If it is more then ten bucks then I'll probably just warez it.

    1. Re:Hmm by pluke · · Score: 1, Informative

      from the amazon site http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3898530205/q id=1112923136/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/302-436 0157-7192803 it's 9,90 euro which is about $6-7.

      --
      "all through my house i set up traps, it seems like the rats have a map, so now i feed the rats crack" - Donald D
  26. Nice one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So all this time I was writing Wikipedia's articles so someone could get rich?

    1. Re:Nice one by koreaman · · Score: 1

      Hey, you implicitly agreed to this when you decided to contribute to Wikipedia, fully agreeing that your work was licensed under the GNU FDL.

    2. Re:Nice one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Hey, you implicitly agreed to this when you decided to contribute to Wikipedia, fully agreeing that your work was licensed under the GNU FDL.

      Yes, but that was a click-thru EULA, surely! You won't find anything with my signature on it agreeing to that! ;-)

  27. See wikioncd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://developer.berlios.de/projects/wikioncd/

    WikiOnCD is dedicated to producing software for converting Wikipedia and other Mediwiki databases to a browsable CD format, and, as licensing permits, to produce these CDs.

    It uses on the fly compression trickery to fit more than 800 meg of text onto a cd.

    1. Re:See wikioncd by arodland · · Score: 1

      Indeed; this is what I mentioned up above. It can be done, and it can be done reasonably well in a cross-platform app.

  28. Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Minor? by AeonOfReason · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You know, Wikipedia is ripe for a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy treatment.

    Put it in a little handheld, stick an Ipod hard drive in it, give it a usb port so it can grab updates, and presto.

    As for Wiki itself, "At least where it is inaccurate, it is definitively inaccurate." -Douglas Adams

  29. Re:Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes g by the+pickle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Better idea: let the Wikipedia admins pick a version of the page they like, and don't mention the gold master date to anyone. If the deadline isn't known, the factions -- and let's be honest, this might be a problem on ten or fifteen major pages at most -- can't go edit-warring right up to the deadline.

    p

  30. I don't think so by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wouldn't want any of my students citing Wikipedia, and if they did, I'd fail them. It's just not a good source.

    1. Re:I don't think so by yorkpaddy · · Score: 1

      I could see it beeing useful for schools just the way current encyclopedias are. I wouldn't cite the wikipedia in a paper, but I would use it as a starting point for research. It has been understood for papers that I have written since 8th grade, that you get more advanced sources than an encyclopedia.

      --
      "brxref .k.p ,.by xprt. gbe.p.oycmaycbi yd. cby.nci.bj. ru yd. am.pcjab lgxlcj" don'
    2. Re:I don't think so by Jorrit · · Score: 1

      I think wikipedia is a lot more thrustworthy then most other sources on the internet. At least you know that many people are looking at wikipedia and making corrections.

      And as other people have noted. Wikipedia can at least be a good source to start further research from.

      Greetings,

      --
      Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
  31. Re:Quality and Completeness? by anonymous+lion · · Score: 0

    How is this flamebait? Many of the articles I see in wikipedia are either very incomplete or have errors/bias in them. So how does my comment qualify as flamebait because of their poor quality?

    --
    GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
  32. subscription by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The obvious step is to offer periodic DVDs as part of a subscription program. I'm not sure what the period of time would be that would best capture the constant flux of information while not being ridiculous (a DVD a week is just silly).

  33. The fine print by Bifurcati · · Score: 3, Informative
    Just so we're clear, the article says that the majority of the price is going towards production costs and paying amazon. But if you're cheap, and really want a DVD set, then you can just download the images off "various websites", presumably to burn at your leisure.

    It's hard to get a more friendly distribution method than that!

  34. Excellent plan by zippthorne · · Score: 1

    I would like to ammend: reset the counter (or lower it or something) for each rewrite. I'd expect the pages in "edit wars" would also get a lot of votes.

    --
    Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  35. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by Raelus · · Score: 3, Funny

    And instead of a "DONT PANIC" sticker, they'll put on a "DONT EDIT" one.

    --
    "It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world."
  36. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by enigmathegreat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've always considered Wikipedia the closest thing Earth has to a Hitchhiker's Guide. If I need to know about anything quickly, that's the first place I look. I'd be a bit interested in something like what the parent mentioned.

  37. Possible updates? by LokiSnake · · Score: 1

    Maybe the whole encyclopedia can be installed onto the hard drive, so the user can just choose to update topics as they view them, and also updates when they search for the topic. And such a system can be used online and offline. Oh, and they can also throw in local editing and uploading your updates.

    1. Re:Possible updates? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      my browser cache has most of those features

  38. Vandals by Bifurcati · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Although vandals are rare, it's not inconceivable that across their entire page set there would be at least one vandalised page. Kind of unfortunate if that gets included in the DVDs!

    Anyone know if they have any way of stopping this?

    1. Re:Vandals by magickalhack · · Score: 1
      Vandalism of Wikipedia pages is hardly rare. It is usually spotted very quickly (< 5min) and then delt with. So yeah, they've got a pretty amazing system for dealing with it.

      In any case, vandalism happens, but it's not a problem for this DVD project. The purpose of putting Wikipedia on a static medium isn't to just make a random copy of the current state of the project. The point of publishing a DVD is to have a frozen version containing (relatively) verified content. As other commenters have mentioned, this has many benefits, including ability to cite a specific frozen version of Wikipedia as a reference, as well as being able to place certain level of trust in the accuracy of the information contained therein.

      --
      This Sig Kills Fascists
    2. Re:Vandals by burns210 · · Score: 1

      Wikipedia should have "1.0" pages... Specifically locking accurate versions as milestones for certain versions. While they would allow for new versions to be made, they could sell dvd's of the most recent milestone (a version of the article specifically checked by a real person for accuracy). I would buy a set of those.

      Since this will likely be a html-based directory structure. A

    3. Re:Vandals by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      looks like they need a wikidictionary, too

    4. Re:Vandals by ashot · · Score: 1

      Taking this further, I wish they had a more authoritative and systematic versioning and voting system. Voting rights could be distributed based on your contributions and how others have voted your contributions, etc. A sort of PageRank idea. They have a semi informal system like this set up, but it would just be nice if it was all automated. Think slashdot moderation on steroids and recursively applied to all of wikipedia.

      This would really help articles that are hotly disputed.

      I've also been trying to push the idea (along with others) of getting some sort of rich client interface for editing which would allow you to edit in place without reloading the page as well, but thats another topic.

      --
      -ashot
  39. Re:Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes g by bersl2 · · Score: 1

    I should hope that they would check each page for trolling before going gold. Even if this is an enormous number.

  40. Re:Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes g by keesh · · Score: 1

    Simple. Don't publish the exact snapshot date.

  41. Another good thing about this... by bombadier_beetle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... maybe the zealots who use Wikipedia as their ideological battleground (e.g. this, this, or this) can host their own wikipediae, with their own versions of The Truth, and thus the revision wars on the original Wikipedia will stop.

    Or not.

    --

    If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
  42. The problem with voting for articles by Mikito · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The problem with voting for the best articles is the same problem that other elections can face--ballot stuffing. What is to stop people with some sort of agenda from voting many times to promote certain articles or coordinating groups of people to vote?

    This would probably be a factor only with ideologically divisive topics. The problem is that the votes engendered by the controversial articles might end up dwarfing the numbers for interesting but obscure subjects. I for one wouldn't want a hypothetical Wikipedia magazine reduced to a compendium of hot-button articles.

    I know that this is a pessimistic view of how article voting might work. Don't get me wrong, I like Wikipedia and I enjoy it a lot. I just don't quite trust it.

    --
    Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
    1. Re:The problem with voting for articles by Kermalius · · Score: 1

      Why not? We can take trolling to new highs.

      Why not write an article about how [blacks|women|geeks etc.] suck and vote it in.

      Try to get an entire issue full of goatse and tub girl article

      --
      -- include std.sig
    2. Re:The problem with voting for articles by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      Y'know, there is an easy solution.. unique user id. Make it so you require verification of who the users are so that the results can't be faked other than by plain old human stupidity.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    3. Re:The problem with voting for articles by Mikito · · Score: 1

      A unique user id is just a partial solution as it only addresses the issue of someone voting multiple times. It doesn't deal with the other question of coordinating groups of people to vote.

      How would that hypothetical coordination work? It's something that is seen all the time with non-scientific polls. Think of the daily polls on news websites, or maybe even American Idol. For example:

      1. Hot topic is on Wikipedia.

      2. User thinks "OMG! Everyone should read this! I'll tell all my friends to vote for this, even if they don't know what Wikipedia is. I'll just call/e-mail/IM them with the website address, and tell them to spread the word!"

      This starts to fall into a gray area of whether it's right or wrong. It strikes me as wrong for people who wouldn't otherwise read Wikipedia to possibly have such a large role in what would be featured. On the other hand, there is the principle of free speech, and who knows? Maybe some of the people who didn't know about Wikipedia before would start to read it.

      Perhaps I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but this does interest me.

      Something that would probably help is a rule that once an article is featured, it couldn't be considered again for a period of time so as to allow a healthy turnover of subjects.

      --
      Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
    4. Re:The problem with voting for articles by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      If you want a democracy that is void of human emotion and stupidity then you're looking for the holy grail of government. It pretty much doesn't exist.

      The best you could do is build a reputation system that lets people vote for other people, using short circuiting to keep reputations from getting stuffed in this same way, such as to adjust their reputation up or down slightly. The higher your reputation the more your votes count both for adjusting other's reputations as well as for making decisions. (It's /. karma on steroids.)

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    5. Re:The problem with voting for articles by Mikito · · Score: 1

      If I could mod that reputation system message up, I would. That's a pretty good idea.

      --
      Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
  43. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by zephc · · Score: 1

    Well you could have a seperate mp3 on an iPod for every entry, but try getting Peter Jones (or Stephen Fry) to read every page on wikipedia. I don't think they'd be up to it, nor would there be room on any current iPod, methinks (not sure).

    --
    "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
  44. BONUS FEATURES! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    Like any good DVD, expect the Wikipedia to be chock-full of bonus features. Among the highlights:
    • Dolby Digital Surround Sound
    • 1337 5u8717135
    • EBG13 Fhogvgyrf
    • TourettesMOTHERFUCKINGBITCHCOCK subSHITMONGERtitles
    • A short music video in which Jimbo breaks into his famous freestyle diss of Brittannica
    • Re-enactments of some of the best NPOV disputes... with puppets!
    • And BJAODN, of course
    And expect a 25-disc Collector's Edition in about 6 months, with the addition of:
    • The complete article talk pages of articles on touchy subjects like abortion, Iraq, circumcision, George W. Bush, homosexuality, and Why Canada Sucks. Invariably, the amount of text generated by the endless bickering over article content is an order of magnitude greater than the article itself... hence the 23 extra DVDs
    1. Re:BONUS FEATURES! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eh... the parent was a troll? I found it rather amusing, myself. Mods: please actually read posts before modding.

  45. Moddendasenterteilherauf! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ist gesfunnicht!

  46. Guide by PKPerson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They should publish this in the form of a mobile device with the cover saying "DONT PANIC". It would be as cool as hell, and quite useful on certain ocasions when a laptop is too large, or you dont want to risk it being stolen. Anyone thought of making their iPod (mabey its too small) into The Guide?

  47. waiting at the door by nighty5 · · Score: 1

    I'm *still* waiting for the encyclopedia guy to come around to my house.... he hasnt been around for a good 15 years!

    1. Re:waiting at the door by MiKM · · Score: 1

      You wanted to see him? I thought when I killed him I would be doing a service to humanity. Sorry about that. Won't happen again.

  48. Blue Ray by essreenim · · Score: 0, Redundant
    discs are the way to go here, no?

    1. Re:Blue Ray by fodi · · Score: 1

      NO! How many people do you know with Blue Ray drives?

  49. "less pages" ... should be "fewer" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Fewer" is used for countable things; "less" for non-discrete measures.

    One description:
    here.

  50. For the mods who don't get the joke, apparently: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's GFDL - you can't warez it because it's copylefted...

    -J

    p.s. there's nothing stopping them including something non-copyleft on the disc and making it illegal to share, but that would make them asses so lets hope they don't.

  51. A bit of history on this by Raul654 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I first heard about this back in July of 2004. The people at Mandrake had already approached some of our people, and told us they wanted to put Wikipedia on DVD. The stumbling block was, of course, copyright issues. We launched a copyright tagging project in August - basically, they did an sql dump of the list of all uploaded files that had no copyright tag and tagged them. In January, Angela sent them an email, telling them it was done, and that's when the DVD project actually started.

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
  52. Mediawiki 1.5 will solve this by Raul654 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Mediawiki 1.5 (which should be out soon - a couple of months, probably) will include a versioning system. Someone can mark a version as 'good', which in theory means no vandalism and no POV (point of view) issues. (who this is has not yet been determined - I suspect it will probably an admin)

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
    1. Re:Mediawiki 1.5 will solve this by Vitriolix · · Score: 1

      a good idea, but there is no way an admin will be able to go over every page in wikipedia and mark a good version, i would take years :) i'm thinking there needs to be a script which runs over the pagesa and waits until there is no edit activity for 24 hours or so, if the page reaches a level of stability, you can fairly assume that it is no point of view enough for hte cd. this issue of never being able to trust an article *at any point in time* is a really interesting conundrum, definitely the biggest obstacle to wikipedia. i've been thinking that every article should have a slow moving "front page" that changes according to a script like i mention above, and the actual editing happens on another tab out of site... this way you can have more trust that the article isnt being edited right as you see it.

    2. Re:Mediawiki 1.5 will solve this by Raul654 · · Score: 1

      a good idea, but there is no way an admin will be able to go over every page in wikipedia and mark a good version, i would take years - perhaps I should have beem more clear - it would not be a single person doing it, it would be *all* admins who would be able to do it (400 or so last time I checked). This would be akin to the image tagging project which recently completed.

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
  53. Stupid Idea by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's the point? Wikipedia is an inherently online medium. The articles change daily, new ones are created, etc. This cannot be reasonably placed on a static medium.

    --
    Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
    1. Re:Stupid Idea by Jorrit · · Score: 1

      At least two Points:
      1. You can have wikipedia on a computer that is not 100% connected to the internet (laptop or other).
      2. You don't have to depend on slow internet to do searches on the contents.

      Greetings,

      --
      Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
    2. Re:Stupid Idea by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 1

      The search slowness is a problem with Wikipedia's servers being overloaded, not the internet connection.

      --
      Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
    3. Re:Stupid Idea by Jorrit · · Score: 1

      Depends on the internet connection. Not everyone has cable or fast internet yet.

      Greetings,

      --
      Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
  54. Re:Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes g by mikael · · Score: 1

    Now there's a new buzzword: war-editing

    I've so many wikipedia word-wars, where different factions couldn't agree on the correct meaning.

    --
    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  55. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by Calroth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are already mobile versions that you can get for Palms and Pocket PCs. The database files are over 500MB, so you need an expansion card with that much room. Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TomeRaider_ database

    Personally, I'm hanging out for someone to find a way to only retrieve the top 50% of articles by relevance/importance/popularity and put that on a 256MB or even 128MB database, so that mere mortals can also have Wikipedia on our Palms.

    Meanwhile, h2g2, the official Guide project, was contemplating a mobile version, but broadcasting regulations meant that the BBC couldn't follow through on it.

  56. The German version is smaller because... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Funny
    Deutche has an amazing built-in fractal encoding scheme. For example, the German version may say:
    Gerflugenichterschweitzenbaggen.
    whereas the English version has to write out:
    Shortly after September 11, 2001, the United States attempted to rally its allies for a strike against the presumed Al-Queda stronghold in Afghanistan.
    Unfortunately, the RAR algorithm averages a 3% compression ratio on German text, in comparison to 82% for English and 94% for French - it's like bzipping a .gz file. On the other hand, there are significant savings due to the lack of entries on "sweet nothings", "pillow talk", and "Bavarian romantic verse".
    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  57. Make it an appliance by andrew71 · · Score: 3, Funny


    self upgrading... and of course, based on GNU/Linux :)

    --
    13-4=54/6
  58. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > And instead of a "DONT PANIC" sticker, they'll put on a "DONT EDIT" one.

    Or possibly "DON'T REVERT!"

  59. No page with that title exists by Rebar · · Score: 1

    Aw, man! You had me goin' there for a minute. I was really hoping to read an informative essay on the topic of cow manure, but you just pulled that out of ... your... ass... figuratively speaking.

    1. Re:No page with that title exists by danila · · Score: 1

      Wikipedia sincirelly apologizes for this oversight. The relevant article existed under a different title and the page you visited was missing a redirect. The error was fixed and the people responsible have been reprimanded.

      Rebar, you are welcome to our article on Cow manure. Please, enjoy this informative read. You might also be interested in the article on manure in general and the article on bullshit in the more figurative meaning.

      Wikipedia appreciates your interest.

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
  60. 1 gig by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've parsed it up (stripping comments, html, wikicode, some meta data) and there's about a gig or so of uncompressed plain text content.

  61. Are you all really *that* connected? by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 2, Informative
    I think you're all missing the point. I'd love to kick back with Wikipedia during a long plane trip and depth-first traverse myself into oblivion. I have friends who live in rural areas with bad phone lines who might still like to read a few articles. A lot of restaurants in my town still don't have wifi, so I can't browse during lunch.

    I can think of a million and one reasons why having a fixed version that is instantly available would be a very handy thing indeed. I have all the Internet connectivity I could want (short of a neural interface), but I'd still probably shell out a few bucks for a copy.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  62. Why would anyone cite Wiki? by Banner · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Really? WHY? It's not factual, often more farcicle. Wiki is based on consensus and not facts, and reality (nor the facts) change because a large number or people believe something is so.

    Going to Wiki is a waste of time, I honestly can't understand why people do it.

    1. Re:Why would anyone cite Wiki? by Lehk228 · · Score: 0, Troll

      wiki may or may not be a waste of time, but trolling is Never a waste of time eh?

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    2. Re:Why would anyone cite Wiki? by Catullus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I probably HBT, but anyway - your "waste of time" statement is just not true. Many, many articles on Wikipedia are excellent: informative, detailed, and well-written. In particular, I often have occasion to look up information about mathematical topics, and have usually found the maths articles to be highly useful.

      For example, compare the Wikipedia entry for "Lie group" with the Mathworld entry. There are many other pages of a similar, or higher, level of quality.

      Of course, you have to take everything on Wikipedia with a pinch of salt - but that applies to every online resource! And, in fact, every source of information in the world.

    3. Re:Why would anyone cite Wiki? by Dr.+Weird · · Score: 1
      Right on! And those 50 textbooks I had to read in college, complete waste of time. I mean, reality does not change because some professors who wrote those textbooks believe something is so.

      Even if it develops the logic in the text and gives references to the starting assumptions so is easily verifiable... Oh, wait. No. I guess that is the complete opposite of waste of time. ***cancel post***

    4. Re:Why would anyone cite Wiki? by sylvandb · · Score: 1

      Wiki is based on consensus and not facts, and reality (nor the facts) change because a large number or people believe something is so.

      Totally correct.

      And the same is true of the Encyclopedia Brittanica or World Book Encyclopedia or whatever text or reference of any kind which you care to reference.

      At least with Wiki you can see how that consensous develops and depending on whether or not you agree, your input can be heard. Try that with Brittanica.

      sdb

    5. Re:Why would anyone cite Wiki? by Banner · · Score: 1

      No.

      Any fool can post on Wiki (And often does). To be a researcher for the Encyclopedia Brittanica or World Book Encyclopedia takes credentials, and even then they just don't let you stick anything in it, they have editors and reviewers.

      Comparing Wiki to those things show that you really have no clue at all about references, encyclopedia, or other research texts. Yes mistakes can happen in them, but not to the high level you get on Wiki. It's pretty obvious to me you've never done any serious research or scientific work in your life.

      If it's consensous it's NOT SCIENCE.

  63. How to help out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The main problem facing Wikipedia at the moment is lack of development resource. At FOSDEM last month Wales urged the assembled audience of open source developers to get involved with the work of the foundation.

    The article doesn't mention how you can help out. Maybe might want to check this out:
    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents%23For _MediaWiki_hackers

  64. Re:Quality and Completeness? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > How is this flamebait? Many of the articles I see in wikipedia are either very incomplete or have errors/bias in them. So how does my comment qualify as flamebait because of their poor quality?

    It's flamebait because you dissed the content without qualification, and didn't offer any explanations as to why. It looks you're goading people who disagree with you, pouring lighter fluid on the debate.

    If you need information on why completed articles don't suffer from the traits you speak of, see: any other frigging Slashdot article on Wikipedia.

  65. Good, Bad, it is what it is. by cbreaker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Althought I think actually USING the DVD set for normal use when you have broadband kinda defeats the purpose, I can think of a few reasons why it could be a good thing.

    A) Archival. Average users will be able to get a working, usable snapshot of Wikipedia, with media.

    B) Preservation. If Wikipedia were to shut down, you'd have a copy of it.

    C) Faster access. If you have a slow connection, you can still access Wikipedia at fast speeds. This benefit dwindles over time as articles are updated.

    D) Offline access. If you're on the road with no net connection, you can still access Wikipedia. This benefit also dwindles over time as articles are updated.

    E) Although backed by Google now which helps with the financials, if it brings in some cash to help support itself it's likely to stay around for much longer.

    --
    - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
    1. Re:Good, Bad, it is what it is. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      > E) Although backed by Google now which helps with the financials, if it brings in some cash to help
      > support itself it's likely to stay around for much longer.

      I don't think Wikipedia's "backed by Google now." There was some kind of announcement involving Yahoo! today, though...

    2. Re:Good, Bad, it is what it is. by christoph_s · · Score: 1

      especially B) is very valid. we (well, google) only has a lot of early usenet postings because archive cds were made and sold at that time.

  66. Here's a question: by Headcase88 · · Score: 1

    How are they going to get a Snapshot of Wikipedia in which there is no vandalism in any of the articles? It's ok to let people download Wikipedia when a few articles have been been vandalized, but to sell it in stores like that? They might have to work out a system where they copy the whole thing, put it on another page, and allow access only to admins, who will revert any vandalism they see, before having the whole thing ready for sale.

    --
    "When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
    1. Re:Here's a question: by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Funny

      How are they going to get a Snapshot of Wikipedia in which there is no vandalism in any of the articles?

      It's called "editing".
      You've been reading slashdot too much.

      --

      You can't take the sky from me...

  67. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by hacker · · Score: 2, Informative
    You mean something exactly like this? Or perhaps Wikiquote in Plucker format? Or maybe the full Wiktionary in Plucker format?

    As you can see, I've been busy ;)

  68. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by FleaPlus · · Score: 1

    A Treo 600 or 650 with iPedia works nicely for this and has a well-designed interface. It's shareware, but IMHO well worth it -- I find myself using it quite regularly.

  69. Wiki* in Plucker handheld formats by hacker · · Score: 4, Informative
    I've been working on the Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wiktionary and other similar works to convert them to Palm handheld formats (primarily Plucker format, but now iSilo for those users as well, with less functionality in iSilo, of course). I did a lot of work to the core Mediawiki software that drives it, to make it more usable on handheld devices.

    You can see my work so far at the following links:

    Wikipedia in Plucker format
    Wikiquote in Plucker format
    Wikitionary in Plucker format

    ..and of course, my beautiful anti-alias fonts for Plucker, made with PalmFontConv by Alexander Pruss.

    I've also converted the Creating XPCOM Components book by Doug Turner and Ian Oeschger to Plucker format as well as the FreeBSD Handbook.

    I have literally hundreds of similar-quality works I'll be releasing over the next few months to the community on an ongoing basis.

    If there's something you'd like to see, just let me know

  70. I hope they are careful about rights by blonde+rser · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope the take the history of Mathworld as a warning as what can happen in the publishing world.

  71. Worried about updates? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    DON'T PANIC.

  72. DVD? Pffft... by plasticsquirrel · · Score: 1

    Recursive wget's are soooo much easier.

    --
    Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
  73. Freezing Medical Info On DVD Bad Idea by cannuck · · Score: 0

    As it stands now - if I had a serious dis-ease - the Wikipedia would be the last place I would go to get info on how to get well again. Why freeze a work in progress on a DVD? I am hoping that over time more eloquent people than myself - will radically change what appears in Wikipedia relating to dis-ease and wellness.

  74. Attitudes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "If they sell copies of Wikipedia then they are going to get tons of copyright infringement lawsuits."

    This is one advantage that commercial references have over open source references. We all know the open source communities attitude towards copyright, and licenses. That would mean that open-source reference material wouldn't have as rigerous a check on what was OK, and what wasn't. Commercial references wouldn't have the luxery of such indifference, and would be more completely checked.

  75. Re:Quality and Completeness? by anonymous+lion · · Score: 0

    As for accuracy, check out The Faith-Based Encyclopedia's analysis of Wikipedia's page on Alexander Hamilton.

    As for completeness, check out Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism. I have to agree with the anti-elitism "problem". And while the optimist in me hopes that the collaborative democratic approach succeeds, what I have seen on Wikipedia is that (a) White, male, USian, geeky topics are covered extremely well, both in depth and quality that (b) controversial topics are fought over and that (c) anything else is somebody's pet-project and at best lacks depth at worst it horribly misrepresents the topic.

    As for the controversial topics most of them are undeniably biased, and if you have any doubt just check the discussion page for the topic. (An example would be Pope John Paul II's discussion page)

    So, why are we heralding the possibility of articles of questionable quality and completeness being burned on CDs? It seems completely ridiculous to me. At least the topics can grow and evolve on the web. On a CD, any inaccuracy, incompleteness, or bias is maintained and perpetuated as long as that CD is used.

    --
    GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
  76. Japanese... by Cryptnotic · · Score: 2, Informative

    The only Japanese texts that are written all in phoenetics (hiragana or katakana) are children's books. Those will have spaces in between words. Text that is written for literate adult readers is written with kanji (alphabet from China). Most nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are written using one, two, or three kanji. Sometimes nouns are strung together to make longer nouns (sort of like compound nouns, e.g., "All-Japan Kendo Federation" is "zen nihon kendou renmei" and is written using 7 kanji strung together). Hiragana is used for particles (which mark parts of speech and join words together) and also for adjective and verb conjugations. There are also some words which are written in hiragana, however they are mostly common and easily understandable, so there is no problem. Foreign words are usually transliterated using katakana (another purely phoenetic script). Because they're written in katakana, they are automatically differentiated from the surrounding kanji and hiragana. Differentiating words isn't all that hard. The problem is really learning all the vocabulary and kanji.

    --
    My other first post is car post.
  77. English is really destroying language here... by Kjella · · Score: 1

    ...I'm from Norway, where we typically also create long words. Railroad conductor's assistant should be translated as "jernbanekonduktørassistent" (jernbane-konduktør-assistent).

    Because we're very English oriented (lots of US series on TV etc.) we've gotten this word splitting syndrome. "Lamb thighs" = "Lammelår" , not "Lamme lår" = "Lame thighs". "Hospital" = "Sykehus", mot "Syke hus" = "Sick houses".

    Most of the time it can't be misunderstood though, but it is still plain wrong. But ah well, the biggest rampant destruction now is irc/im/sms language leaking into everything, even school work. I can speak TLAs as well as anyone, but I also know how to write proper Norwegian (and English, and German...).

    Kjella

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  78. 9,90 EUR = 12,44 USD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Actuallym 9,90 euro is around $12

  79. partioning for two DVDs by erikkemperman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If the content would only fit on 2 DVDs (mostly due to media other than text I suppose) I wonder how will they solve the problem of minimizing the number of times users have to change DVDs? Do algorithms exist that will solve this, in reasonable time on reasonable hardware, for something the size of en.wikipedia?

    I know I for one would find it incredibly annoying if it turns out I would need to play DJ a lot to go from "Gautama" to "India" to "Bhopal", say, which is precisely the kind of loosely coupled chain I find myself browsing for the fun of it. The links go everywhere, and I would argue the topology is at least as valuable as the content itself..

    I expect you could isolate some "clouds" of articles mostly referring to each other, but anyone want to guess as to the percentage of "cross-DVD" links?

    --
    Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
    1. Re:partioning for two DVDs by erikkemperman · · Score: 1

      Reply to self, bad form, I know.

      It just occurred to me, they will probably just go with volumes A-M and N-Z, and so I fear that I stand a good chance I would have to change DVDs every two links, on average - under the assumption Murphy was wrong.

      --
      Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
  80. New and improved whine. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Lastly, there are many places in the world where you can't get a reliable net connection at all (e.g. various places in Africa, Asia)."

    Well darn it. There goes my "new and improved" business model, for distributing movies, and music. Guess "old, and busted" are going to be with us for awhile.

  81. 26 Gigabytes.. by Perdo · · Score: 1

    Make that 26269 MB or 26 Gigabytes, 585 mb is just the changes since the last dump.

    --

    If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

  82. Nothing wrong with him per se. by Perdo · · Score: 1

    Even if he is not online 24/7

    The real blasphemy is that he has any computers at all without ethernet cards.

    I mean they want to be online even if he doesn't

    A computer without the internet is a football bat.

    Might as well hide with a pad of paper and pencil in the closet.

    --

    If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

  83. For PC without net access? by cheesemp · · Score: 1

    I've setup a PC for a youth group I help out at and as no telephone lines are available and no wifi is around - It would be really nice to put wikipeida on it.

    --
    To Slashdot or not to Slashdot. That is the question (that will cause me to fail an interview)
  84. Wikipedia is just another con by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Firstly: it is touted as a collaborative effort. In fact, unlike a traditional encyclopaedia, where it is clear that the writers are employed/contracted by the publishers, in this case the writers do the work without remuneration under the "foundation" whose controllers get the fame and fortune. This DVD would just be another example of fortune collection.

    Secondly: if I want information of varying quality and disparate authorship I will use... the Web. Wikipedia combines the lack of authoritativeness of the Web with the lack of individual control of traditional centralised media. There is little in the way of references, yet articles summarising scholarship are rarely if ever complete enough to be self-contained, making for just another high school summary essay that one has to filter out when doing research. That is fine, of course, until people start thinking its editing method makes it valid to refer to it, or write for it, thus wasting scholarly effort.

    Where wikipedia really shines, according to many, is that it provides a brief introduction to many topics as a springboard to further reading. Yes, so do half a million other web pages. None of these other pages pretend to be sufficiently accurate as to try to seduce you into not checking your facts, however.

    I think its success is similar to that of Linux -- people can use the excuse of "freeing information for the masses" to further their name/fortune, when in fact they have not produced anything that was not already available, let alone innovative.

  85. bavarian romantic verse by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

    trust me, it is very good, that there is no such entry. bavarian poetry is nearly always worse than vogon poetry and in the written form you can even understand it.

    in the spoken form the things are different, though, because nobody understands bavarians.

    --
    Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
  86. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by imipak · · Score: 1

    Stuff that, I want the eBook of Oolon Colluphid's trio of philosophical blockbusters.

  87. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by ironhide · · Score: 1

    already done, check out tomeraider wikipedia editions on a gig sd card and pocketpc.

  88. Wikipedia is one of the best human 'inventions' by master_p · · Score: 1

    More and more I caught myself finding the answer I need in Wikipedia. I think that all human knowledge can be finally encoded in the medium called 'internet', in Wikipedia form...thus allowing unlimited access from schools and other institutions. It would really be a very helpful tool for teaching, along with the classic ways.

  89. Wrong question by Kjella · · Score: 1

    What the hell's wrong with you?

    What the hell's wrong with your telecommunications provider. Prime offender: Telenor. In 2000 I was going to get ADSL. I got it in 2003. In 2004 I moved, again to an area where they claim you can get ADSL, but I'm still waiting. Oh yeah, the former place didn't have cable (too many people on the street with satellite), the latter hasn't upgraded the cable network to do Internet. WOHOO!!!!

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  90. Re:Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes g by Peldor · · Score: 1
    The simple solution is not to announce the 'gold' date. No mad dash to sneak in a last bias under the deadline.

    The more devious (and therefore preferable) solution is to announce that the gold date has already passed and let the WikiPedia continue to ooze forward as it does. Then take the master version whenever they bloody well want to.

  91. Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min by Yer+Mom · · Score: 1

    Well, Peter Jones certainly wouldn't be up to it, considering he died in 2000...

    --
    Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
  92. Wikimedia Foundation by dolmen.fr · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is about the Wikimedia Foundation , not Wikipedia Foundation which doesn't exist.
    Both the article and the /. post are wrong.

  93. Re:Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes g by gg3po · · Score: 1

    I think a possible solution would be for Wikimedia to maintain secrecy regarding the "gold master" deadline. They would only be able to announce an actual release.

    --
    ---
  94. HI BONCH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  95. Wikipedia DVD? Where's "Beers Criteria" Revised by cannuck · · Score: 0

    As mentioned before - info on dis-ease and how to get well and/or keep well is so "immature" in Wikipedia - one should think twice before going to that web site for accurate, complete, up-to-date information . For example there is no listing for "Beers Criteria Revised 2003" - which is tragic if you have an elderly parent!!