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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.'"
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?
Because you gotta love it when people get paid while continuing to give you their stuff for free. Everybody wins.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds like an excellent legal application for BitTorrent.
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
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.
Not counting images and other media, yeah.
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.
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
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
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
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
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.
Anyone know if they have any way of stopping this?
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
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?
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
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).
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.
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.