Wikipedia Gears Up For Explosion In Digital Media

jbrodkin writes "Wikipedia is gearing up for an explosion in digital content with new servers and storage designed to handle larger photo and video uploads. Until early 2008, the user-generated encyclopedia's primary media file server had just 2TB of total space, which was not enough to hold growing amounts of video, audio and picture files, says CTO Brian Vibber. 'For a long time, we just did not have the capacity [to handle very large media files],' he says. Wikipedia has raised media storage from 2TB to 48TB and the limit on file uploads from 20MB to 100MB. Ultimately, Wikipedia wants to eliminate any practical size limits on uploads, potentially allowing users to post feature length, high-quality videos. 'The limits will get bigger and bigger to where it will be relatively easy for someone who has a legitimate need to upload a two-hour video of good quality,' Vibber says."

Comments

Re:Youtube?

[A nonymous Coward]

And youtube may withdraw them or restrict their audience at any time.

Wikipedia = The Internet

[neoform]

Seriously, half the pages I view on a daily basis these days are wikipedia pages. Any time I want to learn about something, it's the first place I go.

Too much of a burden on Wikipedia

[MobyDisk]

This is out of scope for Wikipedia. It sounds like this should be an entirely separate project. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias should not have video:

I don't mean that because traditional encyclopedias did not have video, but because it doesn't fit with the type of content that an encyclopedia presents. It is similar to how newspapers should not have video. Wikipedia is not a teaching tool. It is not meant to provide functional examples. It is a starting point: a dictionary-style explanatory description.

An entry on the Hindenburg does not need a video of the Hindenburg disaster. It needs technical specifications, historically accurate statements of what happened, and a link to a museum who DOES house the video.

An entry on Calculus needs a historic description and a mathematical overview. Not a 2-hour lecture.

Now --- that doesn't mean that a video repository is not a good project. I think that would be awesome. Youtube kinda has that, but it has garbage thrown in. But maybe Wikipedia is not the place for it.

Re:Too much of a burden on Wikipedia

[JPortal]

I don't see why that's outside the scope of Wikipedia. A video of the disaster could fall under "historically accurate [depiction] of what happened."
I agree that lectures would be a bad idea, but some full-length videos are very informative and useful for research purposes.

Wikipedia Search = Sucky

[Frosty Piss]

Any time I want to learn about something, it's the first place I go.

It's the second place I go, because the Wikipedia Search "feature" sucks unless you know exactly what you're looking for. If only Wikipedia would either fix their broken "search" or simply integrate Google search into it?