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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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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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).