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157 Comments
- Haohmaru, on 10/10/2007, -9/+389Kinda under-whelming. I was expecting a pic of it wrapping around the earth or something. And not next to some fruit-cake waving at me.
- burstaneurysm, on 10/10/2007, -2/+150But to think that an entire volume of that is dedicated to Goatse...
- iViper, on 10/10/2007, -9/+156Awful Submission, Awesome Image
- Typhoon2009, on 10/10/2007, -0/+145I thought he actually printed it out.
- nevetando, on 10/10/2007, -3/+114Underwhelming??? seriously? are any of you old enough to remember actual encyclopedias? there is a 1000 times more info here than a full set, WITHOUT pictures. that is pure text.
really if you just sit and think about single line text printing that pages that is on a 6 foot by 10 foot or whatever shelf that is a poop load of data. remember no pictures, just text. - Jugalator, on 10/10/2007, -1/+84"Note that this is a conservative estimate, as it doesn't include images, tables etc. which take up more surface than the text which describes them."
- tsaxer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+70You changed the results by measuring them!
- DrivebyGroper, on 10/10/2007, -0/+49I'm printing it out now on the laser printers at work to verify. I'll get back to you guys in a few months with my results.
- SpectralSounds, on 10/10/2007, -1/+47Bah, I was expecting a picture of some dumbass who actually tried to print out all of wikipedia... and his house filled with paper.
dissapointed. - drumpat01, on 10/10/2007, -1/+42to bad this is from October of LAST YEAR. I'd like to see how much its grown since then.
- oneoverzero, on 10/10/2007, -1/+39It would have been a lot bigger if it included tables and pictures.
Probably even larger if it contained the cross-referencing that wikipedia is so good at. - kh99, on 10/10/2007, -2/+32On conservapedia, it just shows a burning pile of books.
- peaches017, on 10/10/2007, -1/+30Using volumes 25cm high and 5cm thick (some 400 pages), each page having two columns, each columns having 80 rows, and each row having 50 characters, ≈ 6MB per volume. As English Wikipedia has 4.4GB of text (October 2006) ≈ 750 volumes. Note that this is a conservative estimate, as it doesn't include images, tables etc. which take up more surface than the text which describes them.
And maybe that blue guy is Shaq's height. - BlackPhantom, on 10/10/2007, -2/+29I'm betting inaccurate. There's no way it's that small.
"Note that this is a conservative estimate, as it doesn't include images, tables etc. which take up more surface than the text which describes them." - indyGuy, on 10/10/2007, -3/+27Compare this to the traditional encyclopedia set. That's a lot of books, people. Just because you think Wikipedia has every gem of knowledge known to man doesn't mean it should "encircle the globe".
- sabach, on 10/10/2007, -1/+25You know, if you just change the size of the font to 48 or 72. That would give it a boost. :)
- jeffeb3, on 10/10/2007, -0/+23They don't consider whitespace either. If it was formatted the way wikipedia is, then it would take quite a bit more space.
- UglieJosh, on 10/10/2007, -2/+24It was a conservative estimate.
Even still, this estimate would make it the single largest resource (and proven one of the most factual, despite it's detractors) that our world has ever known. No picture could ever do it justice, anyhow. - peacebyanymeans, on 10/10/2007, -1/+23But they don't tell you that each piece of paper is 8 in. x 10,000.5 feet.
- chiefbandit2200, on 10/10/2007, -1/+20...next to a burning pile of homosexuals
- dbr_onix, on 10/10/2007, -2/+20What the image doesn't make clear is that the person standing next to the bookcase is actually 8 meters tall.
- wynbennett, on 10/10/2007, -0/+18Thats what she said...(sorry...I had to)
- chicoer2001, on 10/10/2007, -3/+20320,000 pages. How much of that is useful and how much are lists of god knows what?
- saifatlast, on 10/10/2007, -0/+17Yeah, pictures and tables don't convey information.
- fadetoone, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16There's apparently been almost a year since it's been updated, too.
- ChileanGoD, on 10/10/2007, -2/+18arrgg... I just want to point out... I ***** HATE THE COMMENT SYSTEM!!!!!.... alright.. i'm cool now.
- awfulgrace, on 10/10/2007, -0/+15Is there an retard echo in here?
- crazypantsbone, on 10/10/2007, -1/+16Where do I buy one of these?
- yikiad, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13if the pages were laid out flat, singled sided, it would be around 1118 miles long.
- sigafoo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13It does go around the world! If you put it on 72pt font...
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11dugg up for following up poop with load!
also for being right. - rgodfrey, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12Hmm. I was expecting it to be at least as big as an iPhone data bill.
- MOJIRA, on 05/17/2008, -0/+10Ahh, well, then it's unfair if we're just counting text.
I think people are comparing this image, to say, a regular encyclopedia which is maybe half of one row in that image. Regular encyclopedias have plenty of images and diagrams in them.
Plus, this is Wikipedia ENGLISH, don't forget there are articles in other languages that aren't in English.
So if we counted all articles with images/diagrams, in all languages, but exclude repeat information in other languages, I bet you wouldn't be so underwhelmed. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11I can represent the all the english words contained in wikipedia with only 26 letters. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ I mean, yeah, it's leaving out tables, numbers, pictures, graphs and context but you could potentially represent anything you needed from this.
- Hayaemsay, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER
- manitoba98xp, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10Let's see here:
This page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia#Hard_copy_size estimates about 8 000 000 x 645 characters, or 5.16 billion characters.
72pt fonts are 1 inch tall, therefore a capital "M" is approx. 1 inch wide. Since most characters are thinner than that, especially punctuation, let's assume the average character is 1/2 inch wide.
1/2 inch/character x 5.16 billion characters = 2.58 billion inches = approx. 65 532 kilometers (or 40 719 miles)
The Earth's equatorial circumference is 40,075.02 km (I love Wikipedia). So you could put it about 1.5x around the earth, at the equator. :)
(Edit: For completeness, the minimum font size to reach around the equator would be about 48pt.) - zyklon, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9I'd better not see these sold in my local supermarket like Encyclopedia Britannica was in the early 90's.
- matrixbandit, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8lol, 1/4 of that is probably tied up in Chuck Norris "facts"
- joel2600, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7i love how they refer to it as 'dynamic truth'
- jedikv, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Double Space and double return......ahh the memories of essay writing
- spookyttws, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6We own the 1961 version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's 24 volumes long, just over 1000 pages per volume with what looks like size 8 font. Compared to the 3ftx 3ft space it takes up, Wikipedia is quite impressive.
- mglmouser, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6That fruitcake suspiciously look like the Pioneer 10 plaque fruitcake : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pioneer_plaque.svg (OMGOMGOMG!!! NSFW!)
- Nok1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Technically he never measured. He only speculated it.
There's still hope that cat's alive inside en.wiki - saintdesy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Probably goes around the world on normal font size if it is written out as a single line of text.
- Twist05, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6World of Warcraft?
- thespudmall, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5dugg your comment down...it should "encircle the globe".
- geometry, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I calculated about 3,100 miles if written on a single line. That sucks, that wouldn't even be long enough to make it across the USA would it?
- SiRwhilms, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7Well, just change the height of the font to 48 or 72 points. That would give it a boost.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Someone should make a PDA specifically hard-coded to browse Wikipedia using Free Wifi hotspots. It should include 8gb flash memory and/or SD slot. And make it affordable by low income families.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Same here :(
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