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50 comments
Tarmo Amer

@SnowshadowII @gleick Wikipedia is a living document. It evolves and changes as the human understanding of the world evolves and changes. Downloading Wikipedia, imho, would be a bit like downloading a weather forecast.

SnowshadowII :maple:

@tarmoamer @gleick

I am aware it is ever evolving and it will continue as such unless Trump and Elon have their way. Americans need to prepare for the worst.
Yes, wiki could continue in other countries, however if US dictator wannabes have their was the internet will be heavily censored

Christian Pietsch

@SnowshadowII @gleick

If this was a serious suggestion, please don't scrape the Wikipedia website.

Torrent the dump instead: meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_d

Or get @kiwix and download a ZIM file containing the Wikipedia in the language of your choice.

Dark Phoenix

@SnowshadowII @gleick
Not a techie here, so if this is a dumb question, forgive me.
Wouldn't you need a LOT of bytes to download all of Wikipedia? Like significantly more than my computer has available?

SnowshadowII :maple:

@Darkphoenix @gleick

NOT a silly question. (there are NO silly tech questions)

Here's the solution:

fedifreu.de/@chpietsch/1137104

ETA: and if you don't understand how to ...send out an S.O>S to all the techies on fedi using the Tech and Fediverse and computer hashtags--someone is sure to reply

AriSunDog, Spooky Version!

@SnowshadowII @Darkphoenix @gleick thank you. This is one reason why I have been buying more books lately. I'm just getting to collecting the reference books that I want to have. This will definitely go into my files.

Amgine

@arisummerland @gekko3k @SnowshadowII @Darkphoenix @gleick

The #histodon I know keeps reminding me that nothing, absolutely *nothing*, currently used to store information beats printed paper for longevity.

If you want something to survive your current cultural milieux, put it on archival paper, in a dry cave. Better yet, **move** to that dry cave, and start a religious organizataion which eschews technology and embraces food forests.

Dark Phoenix

@arisummerland @SnowshadowII @gleick I'm always looking for reference books on certain specialties, like herbs. I also kept all my textbooks from college.

SnowshadowII :maple:

@Darkphoenix @gleick
Unlike most people here, I am really bad with providing verbal instructions, I am more of a "here, let me show you using hands on" teacher, I am sorry. But if you give a shout out to Fedivers someone will explain it better, in the meantime...
Here's an explanation to start:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorre

SnowshadowII :maple:

@Darkphoenix @gleick
You're welcome.

You still download it but using torrent prevents a massive traffic jam on the internet

SnowshadowII :maple:

@martin_fff Edited to add: Perhaps you might be interested in adding US and tech hashtags to your reply?

__________
Thank you. 😀 @Darkphoenix @gleick

Hugo Labrande

@martin_fff @SnowshadowII @Darkphoenix @gleick You still can from the software side, the @kiwix software allows you to have your own offline copy 🙂

Dark Phoenix replied to Hugo

@hlabrande @martin_fff @SnowshadowII @gleick @kiwix
I sent this to my Gmail and starred it, so I can find it later

F4GRX Sébastien

@martin_fff @SnowshadowII @Darkphoenix @gleick this stuff is no joke. Even if it has flaws it's one of the most important sites. Musk attacking it is a proof of value.

Dark Phoenix

@SnowshadowII @gleick and the volume is shared over several nodes. So kinda similar to block chains

SnowshadowII :maple:

@Darkphoenix
And you can purchase external hard drives (get an SSD- they are sturdy) for less than $100 dollars. Prices are scaled to how much data you want to store) they come with the cord and just plug it in --works like your computer internal hard drive.

@gleick

Dark Phoenix

@SnowshadowII @gleick I have a 1TB passport drive. My 3rd*, because I have a massive music library, which, believe it or not, the majority of which was actually paid for.
* My third because I was told that 3 year operation life, and it was closer to 10 years, so I got a second, copied one to the other, but the second didn't survive baggage handling on a cross country flight, so I bought a third.

Dark Phoenix

@SnowshadowII @gleick oh sorry, I'm in California, and I use Android phone and windows laptop

Dark Phoenix

@SnowshadowII @gleick funny thing, last time I checked the original one is still functional, and its about 15 yo. (Back then they actually looked like the old little red address books)

Dark Phoenix

@SnowshadowII @gleick again, thank you. And Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, etc. I'm off to go stir some shit about the congresswoman in a nursing home, who's still collecting a paycheck.

Western Infidels

@Darkphoenix @SnowshadowII @gleick The Wikipedia dumps everyone's talking about here are text-only, no images.

As a result, the files are smaller than one might expect; under 30GB. Smaller than a Windows OS install, smaller than most triple-A games. Would fit on a modern smartphone easily. My local computer store often hands out USB drives bigger than that for free.

So the data is safe enough, many copies can be made. It's the social network Wikipedia creates and is created by that's vulnerable.

Ash_Crow

@WesternInfidels @Darkphoenix @SnowshadowII @gleick and they only have the current versions of the articles. Not the history, not the talk pages, etc.

Rich Felker

@Ash_Crow @WesternInfidels @Darkphoenix @SnowshadowII @gleick This. 👆

While just current versions may suffice for looking up information, the history is important to documenting provenance of the information, finding things that were already intentionally buried/rewritten (big example: "Web 2.0" rewritten to match crypto cult's contrast to their "Web 3.0" scam), etc.

argv minus one

@Darkphoenix

No, you can actually easily fit its text on a hard disk or SSD. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedi

There are some websites backed by data far too large for one computer to manage (commonly called “big data”), but Wikipedia is, somewhat surprisingly, not one of them.

Although all the images and videos and such add to its size. Not sure how large those all are.

@SnowshadowII @gleick

Dark Phoenix

@JustinH @SnowshadowII @gleick in 2019, my daughter was working in a geriatric care facility in TN, (I was working in CA as a in home caregiver) you know comparing notes, and she told me some serious horror stories. Things you wouldn't want to hear at dinner.

Dark Phoenix

@JustinH @SnowshadowII @gleick just realized that that is less than my music library!

F4GRX Sébastien

@Darkphoenix @SnowshadowII @gleick 30 gb for a compressed dump of the english wiki text, excluding images.

notsoloud

@Darkphoenix
The kiwix .zim file of English Wikipedia (but without videos) comes to around 110 GB.
@SnowshadowII @gleick

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