Tim Starling wrote:
Talk pages include information vital to the diligent reader, such as factual disputes and source information. Once we are sure Wikipedia is perfect, we can remove the talk pages, and the reader can base their trust in the accuracy of our material on the force of our authority alone.
I agree with you completely. Many users will want to see the talk pages.
However, as a potential user of this, I find the 27GB size a bit daunting. I have, at this moment, 8GB free space on my laptop.
I wonder how much work it would be for you to generate a few different versions...
Complete (current version) Complete, no images Minimum (no talk pages, no images)
A really cool thing to have would be some kind of cleverly constructed "middle" version -- some images, but not all the images -- but I can't at the moment think of any clever way to decide algorithmically which images to include. Maybe exclude images over a certain size, or include a maximum of one image per article or similar?
--Jimbo