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
downloading thousands upon thousands of pages extremely rapidly. [...]
Use a web browser like everybody else, and please stop attacking the web
sites that you enjoy.
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?
Our customer here was only interested in math articles, and a download
of the whole Wikipedia probably wouldn't even have been attractive
for him. So a web site with a static version of Wikipedia that is open
to programs like Webstripper would also be a good thing.
Actually, I'm sure that once we offer ready-made HTML trees for
download, someone somewhere will set up such a site.
Axel