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Wikipedia Releases Offline CD
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Apr 25, 2007 01:08 PM
from the vandalize-to-your-hearts-content dept.
from the vandalize-to-your-hearts-content dept.
An anonymous reader writes "WikipediaOnDVD, with cooperation with the Wikipedia community, has released its first offline test version. The articles were selected by Wikipedians and reviewed for accuracy, vandalism, and importance. Nearly 2,000 core Wikipedia articles will be sold on compact disc to give people without a net connection access to highlights of the popular web resource. The CD can be purchased or downloaded online via their site or the torrent."
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Is there a pool going yet? (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday May 18, @11:07AM)
Someone tell them (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Now that's a hefty business plan.
Intermittent connection (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://myatomic.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday November 19 2006, @12:31AM)
If somebody has 15 minutes of net connection, would he look at live versions of Wikipedia articles for those 15 minutes, or would he spend 15 minutes buying the disc to take home to use on his own computer without an Internet connection? Examples of such intermittent connection include Wi-Fi hotspots, public libraries, and (to a lesser extent) dial-up.
Re:Intermittent connection (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone tell them (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Someone tell them (Score:5, Funny)
(http://tsfraser.googlepages.com/index.html)
I wonder... (Score:1)
No net connection? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.weather.com/weather/local/46394)
The no net connection / download / torrent is a gimme, but where will they offer this CD for those without net connections? I could see this being useful for libraries or schools to have solid access. Advertising it to people without a net connection seems to be pretty pointless as the only means of acquiring said CD is via an internet connection.
Either that or we'll start seeing Wikipedia salesmen going door to door.
Re:No net connection? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No net connection? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No net connection? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
Doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.lazylightning.org/)
It's a good idea in theory but in reality it's sorta pointless.
Re:Doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose? (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a point when your random, off the shelf encyclopedia didn't have a reputation either. That's built up over time. And a cheap disc of Wikipedia can be very helpful to some people. The fact that anyone can add to it doesn't change the fact that it's still an encyclopedia.
It's biggest strength of wikipedia is also it's biggest weakness. You can't read about any software that isn't under the gpl without seeing a page that's been hijacked by GPL zealots time after time. Hell, the fact that 3DS Max is NOT under the GPL and free is somehow more important than anything else about the software, despite the fact that's it's the industry leader/standard 3d modeller and renderer. The articles about 3D software are all really about how you should be using Blender instead, because it's GPL. Just like every other software page. So much for the NPOV policy.
An article about a person in the public eye often turns into a battle gound and then a daily log of that person's life by an obssessed fan who thinks what they had for breakfast on friday is important information. Factual information that paints them in negative light is often editted out by these same people.
Then we have magazines and newspapers editors who think it's funny to write articles about how they vandalized an article. We have Stephen Colbert logging onto Wikipedia during his show, and making article edits. Even my local newspaper had an article written that detailed a spree of silly article edits along the lines of turning into a werewolf if you visit a certain country on a certain date. This is a columnist in his 50s, not a 15 year old kid.
The whole thing is overrun by GPL Zealots, anti corporate hippies, immature kids, obssessed fans, bible thumpers, etc. None of these types are competant enough to make Neutral Point Of View contributions. Not to mention the fanboys who flood serious articles with video game, comic book, and star wars|trek references.
How is a 12 year old kid, taking everything in there at face value, supposed to seperate the BS from the truth so they can get their school project done? Especially when you have older people who should know better, filling it with such facts as 'E = MC Hammer'.
The disc distribution can solve that, and users can feel confident that the information contained therein is actually worth something. The disc may be the only version that is ever really usefull as an encyclopedia. The online version could be best used as a temporary editing version, with real versions being pressed and distributed, and competantly edited.
hmmm.... (Score:2, Funny)
So... (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday January 17 2007, @09:51PM)
I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the folks behind this project just don't get what wikipedia is best used for. It sounds like they are trying to release the best fact checked copy that they can within those subjects. Um, that's not what I use wikipedia for. I use it to quickly figure out who this guy is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen [wikipedia.org] or immediate trivia that in 5 minutes I could care less about, but I just would like a vague idea of who the guy is and such. Wikipedia is great for fast trivia. I bet you most of the articles that I look up won't be on this CD because those that are making this want wikipedia to be like a book reference and all the junk that I want researched would be filtered out. Oh well, maybe it would be useful for the kids to look through.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://trollchat.org/)
shouldn't it be wikipedia on CD? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Saturday May 08 2004, @12:44AM)
Re:shouldn't it be wikipedia on CD? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:shouldn't it be wikipedia on CD? (Score:5, Funny)
no PPC? (Score:1)
Performance (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw the title of the article and initially thought : cool, that'd be nice to have a nice fast copy.
Then (in my head) I heard the sound of my cdrom spinning up to speed before reading an article and came to realize that most of what is on Wikipedia is just text and it loads fast enough for me and probably faster than the CD would.
Its a writable CD (Score:5, Funny)
The next offline CD release (Score:5, Informative)
So then... (Score:2)
Why? (Score:1)
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.roelofs.net/)
Press Release (Score:2)
(http://www.thefirsthourblog.com/ | Last Journal: Monday September 10, @04:43PM)
Guide (Score:1)
1) It is slightly cheaper.
2) The "facts" can be edited to reflect your own personal preferences.
Fact 1) Ninjas are mammals
2) Chuck Norris counted to infinity
Meager Selection (Score:1)
It's more exciting than online Wikipedia! (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://id3as.livejournal.com/)
Why so few articles? (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.rationalmind.net/)
Haha (Score:1)
(http://www.ie-ap.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday March 28 2006, @05:27AM)
Haha..
2000 ...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be much smarter if they wrote a little system to prepare those torrents automatically, say, every week, and include much larger fraction of the articles. Reviewing for vandalism is something that should happen for the online version of Wikipedia naturally by the existing editors (similar to OSS "stable" version vs "development" version).
In the 21-st Century, having enough information and always up to date is more important than accuracy. Reading an article where 20% of the info is wrong is better than no article at all. We still know it's Wikipedia and can use critical though process to check additional sources when we get to an Internet connection or the library.
Another flaw of this project, is that by handpicking the articles, it automatically means I can't download a localized version of that DVD.
And right now I really needed the localized version, to distribute to a set of computers without connection in a local school. Bummers.
Only way forward is automatization.
How big is the whole thing? (Score:1)
Here come's the spam (Score:1)
(http://www.stevekallestad.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday May 31, @03:02AM)
German version available for some time (Score:2)
Starting end of 2005 the (complete) German version of Wikipedia is distributed as a DVD. They did it in cooperation with a company called Directmedia. This company runs the label "Digitale Bibliothek", which is quite common in Germany. It provides high quality digital works from different fields of the liberal arts, like anthologies, handbooks and collections of paintings. You can downlaod this DVD from Wikipedia but also buy it in a book shop or via Amazon (for about 10 Euro).
To browse this DVD a small web server will be installed on the machine. Unfortunately there is only a Windows version. It runs on Linux using Wine, but on Mac it seems not to be a smooth thing.
OLPC (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.aerthon.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 18 2002, @12:34PM)
Elementary School Classrooms (Score:2)
(http://www.aerthon.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 18 2002, @12:34PM)
Hm. I'm off to burn a stack of these for Central Elementary!
Doesn't this sort of contradict the point? (Score:1)
(http://timcol6.freehostia.com/)
Important Info (Score:1)
New marketing idea... (Score:2)
A tablet style device with all the data pre-loaded, weather-proofed and ruggedized, and runs off solar batteries... If you crash landed on a desert island, you could use it to build a new civilization.
Give it a way to update itself over the sub-etha, ehm, wi-fi, and you've got a great device there...
great idea (Score:1)
(http://www.techtakeaway.com/)
A few good links (Score:1)
Kiwix browser [wikipedia.org] - Image of the software used for Wikipedia 0.5
Wikipedia 1.0 FAQ [wikipedia.org] - answers, well, frequently asked questions!
Wikipedia:Release Version [wikipedia.org]The next version with an incomplete list of proposed articles.
Talk page for WP 1.0 [wikipedia.org] - please leave your feedback here. What did you like about it? What can be improved?
why special software instead of browser? (Score:2)
(http://per.bothner.com/)
Oh the irony (Score:1)
(http://c0d3h4x0r.0catch.com/ | Last Journal: Friday February 03 2006, @06:21PM)
Great possession for students (Score:2)
(http://uthcode.sarovar.org/~senthil | Last Journal: Thursday December 16 2004, @02:49PM)
SOS Children used to release a version of Wikipedia on CD [wikipedia.org]. I am trying to figure out how this project is different, as both seem to be from the same wikipedia community.
Furthermore, I was looking information on redistributing the Wikipedia on CD. Wikipedia content license allows you, but can CD be downloaded and redistributed for cost of packaging to others, who might not have internet access?
Re:yet more wiki true colors appear (Score:2)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
Re:yet more wiki true colors appear (Score:2)
(http://libtom.org/)
Until they *deny* access to the non-paying public they're not really violating their stated goals. It's when articles become "members only" that you can start biting your thumb at them.
Tom
Re:yet more wiki true colors appear (Score:1)
To those of you who contributed to Wikipedia - did you expect that your work would be exploited for commercial gain - Commercial gain? They're giving away the product if you download it. $13 might cover the cost of the CD, the average shipping costs, and the labor associated with stamping/burning the disc. Even if there's some left over, who cares? Even non-profit employees have to eat.
Re:yet more wiki true colors appear (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 03 2007, @10:43AM)
I dont think there's anything sinister going on here; most of this money is probably going towards keeping the site up. There's nothing new about they're fundraising efforts, like when the server kept crashing [slashdot.org].
In any case, i think this is a step towards legitimizing wikipedia as a valuable reference. The CD represents an error-checked version of wikipedia that doubters have been bitching about for some time.
Re:yet more wiki true colors appear (Score:2)
(http://dstupid.com/geeklog/public_html/index.php)
Re:A little disappointed (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://babelfish.alt...%2F%2Fslashdot.jp%2F)
(Can you believe that there is such an in-depth article for that subject? It says something about Wikipedia, though whether it's good or not is unclear...