[cross-posted to Foundation-l, Wikipedia-l and WikiEN-l]
Well, after a couple of snags that pushed back the release dates, Wikipedia 0.5 is finally available for commercial distribution. Thanks to Linterweb, one of the long-term goals of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team in the English Wikipedia has been accomplished.
The release consists of an eclectic selection of 1964 articles, selected over a period of one year, which span from Art to Zeus. It draws heavily on the English Wikipedia’s featured article base, to have it also be a showcase of the best of our work. The CD is available at http://www.wikipediaondvd.com, and sells for approximately €12 ($15 USD, £8.50) with part of the sales going directly to the Wikimedia Foundation. The CD is also publicly viewable online, and the CD’s ISO file is available as well.
Either way, as the number "0.5" indicates, we are not done; static releases, just like Wikipedia itself, are not finished, as they are works in progress. We're starting work on Version 0.7 soon, and as everything else on Wikipedia, "more eyes are always more better" (the bad grammar is intentional ;) ). After v0.7, if things go as planned, we intend to finally publish Wikipedia Version 1.0 and accomplish our goal. But we need everyone’s help.
As part of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, I hope that you will enjoy and use our work, and we hope to provide you with more news of this kind soon.
Titoxd.
On 4/7/07, Titoxd@Wikimedia titoxd.wikimedia@gmail.com wrote:
As part of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, I hope that you will enjoy and use our work, and we hope to provide you with more news of this kind soon.
Hi,
I downloaded the iso image and had a few minutes to play with it. Congratulations and thank you for doing this work.
Here is a short list of my observations (this may overlap with other emails in this thread).
The software is, as far as I can see, a modified mozilla rendering engine with another skin that does display pre-rendered articles from the CD-ROM. 1964 moderatly long articles take about 112 MB of size (without images, without search index).
There are no wikilinks present (despite its lack of use on such a selection)
the search engine works fine, as far as I can tell.
I am not sure if the current solution can be considerered license compliant with the GFDL.
I was unable to find the source code for the kiwix software somewhere.
the current skin consumes quite a lot of space currently. It also suggests that this is "the" wikipedia. In the future, it might become a good offline version of it, until then, it may be confusing to people as long it is just a very thin selection (...albeit of some of the finest articles from en.wp).
Greetings, Mathias
2007/4/8, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com:
I downloaded the iso image and had a few minutes to play with it. Congratulations and thank you for doing this work.
Thanks
Here is a short list of my observations (this may overlap with other emails in this thread).
The software is, as far as I can see, a modified mozilla rendering engine with another skin that does display pre-rendered articles from the CD-ROM. 1964 moderatly long articles take about 112 MB of size (without images, without search index).
That is true.
There are no wikilinks present (despite its lack of use on such a selection)
Hmm... you mean interwiki links ?
the search engine works fine, as far as I can tell.
Thx to Linterweb, which has coded this search engine.
I am not sure if the current solution can be considerered license compliant with the GFDL.
It is true that a few problem stay open... but we do our best to be fully GFDL compliant for the next release.
I was unable to find the source code for the kiwix software somewhere.
the current skin consumes quite a lot of space currently. It also suggests that this is "the" wikipedia. In the future, it might become a good offline version of it, until then, it may be confusing to people as long it is just a very thin selection (...albeit of some of the finest articles from en.wp).
It is true that this selection is very/too small, this problem will be always less important with the next release.
Best regards
Kelson
I am not sure if the current solution can be considerered license compliant with the GFDL.
It is true that a few problem stay open... but we do our best to be fully GFDL compliant for the next release.
I don't believe there was some urgent need that would justify a non-compliant release. As it seems this release is a copyright violation: without an internet connection and some skills in searching, one cannot find the contributors and history for any article. The fact that Wikimedia Foundation granted a license for this release to use the name Wikipedia is very worrying. While we try to protect the copyright rights of third parties in Wikipedia, the Foundation allows to some people to disregard the rights of Wikipedia users. Such a failure...
Konstantinos
Geraki@el.wikipedia
"Titoxd@Wikimedia" titoxd.wikimedia@gmail.com wrote in message news:000201c77931$bc57fd70$6501a8c0@TitoLap...
[cross-posted to Foundation-l, Wikipedia-l and WikiEN-l]
Well, after a couple of snags that pushed back the release dates,
Wikipedia 0.5 is finally available for commercial distribution. Thanks to Linterweb, one of the long-term goals of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team in the English Wikipedia has been accomplished.
The release consists of an eclectic selection of 1964 articles, selected
over a period of one year, which span from Art to Zeus. It draws heavily on the English Wikipedia's featured article base, to have it also be a showcase of the best of our work. The CD is available at http://www.wikipediaondvd.com, and sells for approximately ?12 ($15 USD, £8.50) with part of the sales going directly to the Wikimedia Foundation. The CD is also publicly viewable online, and the CD's ISO file is available as well.
The website is still broken if you don't have CSS enabled/available (all the navigation disappears). This should be fixed as a matter of priority.
I also agree with others that it is not clear that the DVD is a 'best of' compilation, rather than an off-line copy of the entire encyclopedia.
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org