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Printing Wikipedia

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the where-have-i-heard-that-idea-before dept.

rtnair writes "Entries from Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia written and edited by Internet users, may soon be available in print for readers in the developing world, founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday."

9 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Mis-information? by phase_9 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Great, so now people in developing countries will learn the truth... or just read lots of entires which have been "vandalized" with the word "boobies!"

    1. Re:Mis-information? by PornMaster · · Score: 5, Funny

      Haven't you ever read National Geographic? They already have boobies there!

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  2. Another problem solved by LaughingCoder · · Score: 5, Funny

    So now we have someplace to send all of those out of work encyclopedia salesmen! They can hawk wikipedia in the third world! I can see them trapsing about, lugging a satchel full of CDs. "You don't want to deprive your children from having access to these wonderful volumes!"

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  3. Printed Wiki by Pointdexter · · Score: 5, Funny

    Presumaby each copy will be written in pencil and supplied with an eraser?

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  4. It must be true... by ladybugfi · · Score: 5, Funny

    First we had "it must be true, I read it in a book somewhere", then we had "it must be true, I read it in the internet somewhere". Now we have come a full circle - it must be true since it is in a printed encyclopedia.

    I'm not a great supporter of disclaimers, but here I think it would serve well.

  5. Re:800,000 English articles by b100dian · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's like printing the Internet!
    wget -R . > /dev/lp0

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    gtkaml.org
  6. Wouldn't it make more sense.... by teewurstmann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... to invest in the development of that $100 computer that the MIT is developing (http://news.com.com/The+100+laptop+moves+closer+t o+reality/2100-1044_3-5884683.html)? By the time Wikipedia is printed, it will already be out of date. Maybe investing in cheap internet terminals and a couple of printers would make more sense...

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  7. Re:800,000 English articles by Pichu0102 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're right, it is considerably large for an English printed version of Wikipedia.
    However, most likely the printed Wikipedias will be in the other Wikipedia languages, which contain considerably less articles than the English version.
    It'll still be a large book no matter what language it's in, but it will be considerably smaller than the English version of Wikipedia.

  8. Re:A better idea... by David+Gerard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The least-worst idea I've seen is a massively distributed article rating system — an editorial committee can't possibly scale (we've currently got about two Britannicas of text), but lots of people clicking "Rate this page" has a chance. Particularly as our readers currently outnumber our editors 50:1 or so.

    See Article validation feature and En validation topics - which would put a "Rate this page" tab at the top of every page. The feature is currently waiting on a version of the code that won't overload the database if it's put into production ;-)

    See also my plan for 1.0 (I dashed this off about a year ago and it's still the best working plan we have) and Category:Wikipedia 1.0 (a bunch of writings on producing a stable version).

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