[Wikipedia-l] Downloading Wikipedia (was: please help me)

[Peter Gervai]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 07:00:31PM +0100, Axel Boldt wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> 
> >Please do *not* use programs such as Webstripper. Especially on dynamic
> >sites like Wikipedia, they create a huge amount of load on the servers by
[...]

> While I of course agree with Brion's statement, I think we should also 
> try to understand the other side. When I was still on a dial-up line 
> that charged by the minute, I also several times tried to download 
> interesting sites all at once, so that I could read them leisurely 
> off-line. That seems to be quite natural behavior. You can't really 
> learn stuff when the clock is ticking.
> 
> Don't we have a nice compressed static HTML tree by now that we could 
> offer people under the "Download Wikipedia" heading on the main page?

I see no problem about the possibility to generate a whole Wikipedia
(mirror) site as a static snapshot. Probably it could be done with minimal
modificaiton of the scripts. Static content can be retrieved by bots
without causing any trouble.

Consider it as a special mirror.

I'm not volunteering though ;-)

g.