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78 Comments
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21Thanks Digg readers. Since Wikipedia has so much bandwidth and all, they're just more than generous to dump 20gb per user who randomly wants to download the whole Wikipedia.
They set this up so that people can run mirrors and so that locales with slower internet performance could have a copy of the Wikipedia locally to help save on bandwidth costs all around. It's been around for quite some time. If you don't have a legitimate use for it.. DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT DOWNLOADING IT. That bandwidth costs them a lot of money, and you might think that it doesn't add up as quickly as it does, but trust me, it does.
Ugh. I feel sorry for Wikipedia. I hope they take down the download links for a month to make sure people don't feel the need to test out their connections, or at least provide a torrent or something. Sheesh. - geoffeg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I did this and was trying to parse the XML file to do some custom stuff with it (I won't tell you because someone will just say "A project all ready exists to do that!"). The XML file takes quite a while to parse and makes you realize how much junk there is in wikipedia. "List of people who picked their nose using their left pinky on October 1st 1929" kind of things. The sad part is that there is no easy way to figure out which articles are worthy of keeping and which are worthy of removal. Wikipedia needs to add a "hit count" or popularity meter to each article. This way you could remove articles that get very few hits (like 2 hits ever) and assume that these articles are not as useful.
Wikipedia has a long way to go as far as organizing and cataloging their massive amounts of data before I'm convinced that it's as mature as they seem to play it off as.
Just my $0.02. - Punisher2K, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Why would you static download something who's entire claim to fame is dynamic content?
- ,,|,_, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The cool thing about Wiki is that it is a living document. By downloading the whole thing, it looses the organic quality that makes it so much better than the dead tree version...
/my $0.02 - joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Whew finished downloading.
CRAP...they've updated it again.
Downloading again... ;o)
"Wikipedia needs to add a "hit count" or popularity meter to each article. This way you could remove articles that get very few hits (like 2 hits ever) and assume that these articles are not as useful."
Considering Desperate housewives gets better ratings than anything on PBS, I don't think I'd equate popularity with usefulness. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Downloading Wikipedia.zip... please insert disk 2 of 12,445,679,987 into drive A:"
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This is so stupid. They need a warning on the front page, "DON'T DOWNLOAD THESE FOR THE HELL OF IT".
- NexFlamma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you download the entire thing, won't it become somewhat outdated in a month or two once new stuff is added?
Too bad they dont have a program set up to auto-update it at intervals. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4geoffeg: "Wikipedia has a long way to go as far as organizing and cataloging their massive amounts of data before I'm convinced that it's as mature as they seem to play it off as."
Where does Wikipedia claim to be so mature? The project is trying to reach a sort of 1.0 status which would indicate maturity. However, all wikipedians would agree that the encyclopedia is not there yet. Give it time. See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pushing_to_1.0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team - tudisco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Why don't one of you guys that downloaded this put it on bittorrent and post the link here
- Rirath, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3To all the "...Then why didn't YOU post a Digg about it?" people
1) Digg is not an archive of everything that happened on the Internet.
2) I, for one, would not promote the downloading of a 16GB file on Digg.
3) Get an original response. - Harlequn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The moment you download it, it looses value. Wikipedia is only valuable while it's online and dynamic.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Encyclopedia Britannica goes bankrupt.
- thecapitalizt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Anyone feel like building a Hitchhiker's Guide to Earth?
Imagine stuffing a hard drive in that $100 laptop and loading this in with a GPS receiver. - windwaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3NO, PLEASE DON'T.
Wikipedia didn't put this here so you could download everything; don't waste its bandwidth. - xelloss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Can we Download Google?
- step, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3downloading wiki is one of those geek-fetiches I can't understand... Its just a waste of wiki's bandwith
- mojaam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It will be even better if we can download the internet hahaha!
- TheMatt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Can someone here help me out with the sizes of some of these? Namely, I'm confused as to why 20051113_pages_full.xml.bz2 (in the /wikipedia/en) is 14.1G, but the .7z version is 2.8G. Now, I can extract some good performance from 7-zip like most people (a la maximumcompression.com), but 7 times the compression?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2COOL ...thanks guys way to ***** up a good thing lets kill digg why we are at it!
Leave that site alone and lets not mess this site up like we do to the rest we need to help not still bandwidth. - dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2their site performance will increase tomorrow if it slows down today..
The digg effect usually only sticks around for about a day. - canyadiggit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Can someone set up a daily BitTorrent seed? We could all have daily downloads of Wikipedia, frozen at say midnight, synced with the live version, without incurring Wikipedia bandwidth costs. Thereafter, Wikipedia could offer a "daily updates" module, which could then be seeded daily, further reducing bandwidth. We would all have semi-dynamic local copies of Wikipedia at our fingertips!
- errer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I might download it for those times I need to look something up, but my shiatty DSL bites the dust. You have no idea how often that problem arises.
- Crazy_8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Jezzous....how much Banwidth are they going to lose on this now? All the Digg users are linked to it.
Maybe they should put it up in BitTorrent? That would help them alot actualy. - dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3woah......
- dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2hehe..
Index of /images/wikipedia/en/
upload.tar 2005-Jun-01 09:52:15 16.7G application/x-tar
....16.7gb :O
lots of images.. anybody care to set up a gallery? :) - henryli, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1caluml: "I thought about downloading a copy of the database and making a script that found the links between say, Pluto, and Giardia Lamblia - i.e. what you would have to click on to get from the source page to reach the target page.
But I can't be bothered. Someone else do it, and post it here."
Here you go. (I didn't do it though.)
http://tools.wikimedia.de/sixdeg/index.jsp - Bluezdood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ha, that's one freaking long download, but cool anyway.
- superalamar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1how many times has an article changed in front of your eyes. A copy on a laptop would be good for refernece in a car while dirving through northern navada....
- TheNik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@geofag - Wikipedia was made to catalogue the worlds information. Everything.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I need thouse guys and the information on that site for school and work its a shame that someones good idea would get killed by some dumbass.
- caluml, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I thought about downloading a copy of the database and making a script that found the links between say, Pluto, and Giardia Lamblia - i.e. what you would have to click on to get from the source page to reach the target page.
But I can't be bothered. Someone else do it, and post it here. - mojaam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Can you say, insecurity? That's one reason people will download Wiki. Here are some possibilities:
//Your internet may go out soon
//You think Wiki will soon be shut down or not free - dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1oh.. and another great find:
Index of /wikipedia/en/
pages_full.xml.bz2 2005-Nov-17 19:47:11 14.1G application/x-bzip
...14.1gb - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Someone should try to publish it on CafePress!
- flock31070, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Downloading? That's so Web 1.0...
- ,,|,_, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1...besides, uncontrolled documentation makes my head asplode. Be sure to tag it "For Reference Only" in case one of those pesky ISO auditors shows up.
- pixelbeat_, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1well 7zip does seem to be 5 times better at compressing the full thing?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Too bad they dont have a program set up to auto-update it at intervals.
you could try an incremental download via rsync or lftp - LoneStar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1and in other news.. wikipedia on blu-ray
- masterzora, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2:/ I thought this was considered "common knowledge". It's always been there. Even if it wasn't common knowledge, it ain't news.
Report++ - LawrenceDudley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What's the point other than geek value?! If you want to access it on a device - well, anything with 14Gigabyte of storage will more than likely have an internet connection. And I don't really think anyone needs wikipedia when they dont have an internet connection... At least no-one with a cell phone does: Wikipedia works on those too, so although there are instances of when wikipedia when not at a computer is a good idea, there aren't really any occasions where it's impossible to access it at all.
Still, I'm not stopping anyone!! - ahmerhussain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1uh...
This would need a HUGE Hard Drive. Anyway why doesn't someone make a wikipedia mirror. I've been seeing it o down very frequently recently. - rm999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This would be an interesting research project - how to distribute the whole wikipedia as cheaply and distributed as possible. I bet you >50% of the wikipedia by size is static in a given month, so only changes need to be updated. Preferably in a torrent-style manner.
- midorigin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I keep a copy on my PDA, so I wherever I go I always have it as an available resource. It's proven extremely useful, simply because it has articles on so many little things you might wonder but not care enough about to actually remember to look up. For example, today someone asked me what the difference was between apple juice and apple cider - I just pulled Wikipedia out of my pocket and looked it up in a matter of seconds. Truly amazing.
- Vortech89, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nice find! This will become very useful to me since I don't always have access to the internet for my schoolwork. Now I can carry the best and biggest encyclopedia around with me everywhere.
- diggnationdevon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Cool find.
- mindsinker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"someone print it out."
Haha. - patrickweber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why don't we download digg while were at it?
- adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I would do this if they offered a daily update feature so I knew I had the most upto date stuff. Otherwise I might as well go out and just go buy a set in hard copy (yuck).
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