Wikipedia Planning a DVD Version 310
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.'"
Another reason the German version fits on CD (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD (Score:5, Funny)
p
Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD (Score:3, Funny)
> 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
Japanese... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Another reason the German version fits on CD (Score:5, Funny)
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).
Love it. (Score:2)
Whaaa? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re:Whaaa? (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.
Re:Whaaa? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Whaaa? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [thefreedictionary.com]. or answers.com [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).
Re:Whaaa? (Score:5, Funny)
What the hell's wrong with you?
Re:Whaaa? (Score:2, Informative)
Those figures are for all language versions. For just English, these are the figures (further down on the same page):
Re:Whaaa? (Score:2)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:2)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:2)
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 [wikipedia.org] archives
There are... (Score:4, Informative)
Also, the current dump is about 800 MG, gzipped. enjoy.
Re:Whaaa? (Score:2)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
a) for when you bring your laptop with you on a safari and want to know the difference between a Bengal Tiger [wikipedia.org] and a Siberian Tiger [wikipedia.org].
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 archi
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would anyone cite Wiki? (Score:3, Insightful)
Going to Wiki is a waste of time, I honestly can't understand why people do it.
Re:Why would anyone cite Wiki? (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, compare the Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] for "Lie group" with the Mathworld entry [wolfram.com]. There are many other pages of a similar, or higher, level of quality.
Of course, you have to take everything on
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
An MLA/APA auto formatter for references. [sourceforge.net]
Every teacher at my school has recommended it to me. (Although I myself have not yet gotten a chance to try it.)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
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?
But... (Score:5, Funny)
why this is good (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:why this is good (Score:3, Interesting)
Neat idea, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Neat idea, but... (Score:2)
That's a standing risk with Wikipedia anyway. So what's changed?
Re:Neat idea, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Neat idea, but... (Score:2)
Re:Neat idea, but... (Score:2)
But that's the benefit of the DVD
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
humm.. (Score:3, Interesting)
But if you remove all the useless stub articles... (Score:2, Funny)
Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes gold (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes g (Score:3, Insightful)
p
Re:Mad dash to make "corrections" before it goes g (Score:2)
Mediawiki 1.5 will solve this (Score:3, Interesting)
Dead-tree version coming soon? (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Out of date already? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Out of date already? (Score:2)
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?
Re:Out of date already? (Score:2)
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.
How fluid is Wikipedia? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:How fluid is Wikipedia? (Score:2)
School usage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:School usage (Score:2)
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.
Re:School usage (Score:2, Insightful)
I think I speak for all the nerds here... (Score:5, Interesting)
No real point for me (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:No real point for me (Score:3, Interesting)
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 kee
Re:No real point for me (Score:2)
Is this legal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is this legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this legal? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Is this legal? (Score:2)
Re:Is this legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the bottom of every single Wikipedia page, right there in plain sight, is a link to the GNU Free Documentation License [wikipedia.org], which governs everything submitted to Wikipedia.
p
wiki is going to get sued for this (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage [wikipedia.org]
Re:Wikipedia Magazine... I'd pay for it! (Score:2)
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
Unless.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Minor? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [bbc.co.uk], the official Guide project,
Re:Where is the Great Publishing House of Ursa Min (Score:3, Informative)
As you can see, I've been busy ;)
The fine print (Score:4, Informative)
It's hard to get a more friendly distribution method than that!
Vandals (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone know if they have any way of stopping this?
Another good thing about this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Or not.
A bit of history on this (Score:5, Informative)
Stupid Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The German version is smaller because... (Score:5, Funny)
Make it an appliance (Score:3, Funny)
self upgrading... and of course, based on GNU/Linux
Are you all really *that* connected? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Good, Bad, it is what it is. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Wiki* in Plucker handheld formats (Score:5, Informative)
You can see my work so far at the following links:
..and of course, my beautiful anti-alias fonts for Plucker [plkr.org], made with PalmFontConv [sourceforge.net] by Alexander Pruss [palmgear.com].
I've also converted the Creating XPCOM Components [mozilla.org] book by Doug Turner and Ian Oeschger to Plucker format [plkr.org] as well as the FreeBSD Handbook [plkr.org].
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 [mailto]
I hope they are careful about rights (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikimedia Foundation (Score:4, Informative)
Both the article and the
Re:Free? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What's their point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's their point? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Here's a question: (Score:5, Funny)
It's called "editing".
You've been reading slashdot too much.