Wikipedia CD Distributed over BitTorrent
Written by Smaran on November 24, 2006A “Wikipedia CD” has been made available for download on BitTorrent.com. The CD comprises of over 2500 hand-picked educational articles aimed at helping schools enhance their curriculum and children learn.
The CD has been compiled by volunteers for “the world’s largest orphan charity”, SOS Children. The articles, all of which are from the English language portal, are on common educational topics such as Geography, Science, Dinosaurs, Plants and Animals, to name a few. Articles on all countries and their capital cities have also been included.
Apparently, each of the articles has been “checked for suitability” and “cleaned by hand and script.” The CD is currently at release 1.0. Previous versions contained “disputed” articles relating to religion and politics, but they have subsequently been removed.
This CD is clearly aimed at schools and institutions with a slow, or non-existent connection to the Internet. Unlike Encyclopodia, the popular open source project that puts all of Wikipedia on your iPod, the Wikipedia CD is aimed at a younger audience who might find it hard to discern the clearly inaccurate or false from the ‘real’ information. It is a great effort, but at the same time one has to remember that the content on the CD is edited, and has therefore not been cross-checked by the innumerable people that frequent, contribute to and refine Wikipedia.
SOS Children did not have permission to use the Wikipedia logo, so it is not present on the CD, but they have recently been granted permission and it will appear on the next release in 2007.
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12 Responses
this is a great tool and I hope this sort of idea becomes widespread
I am a native Tamil guy from Sri Lanka. Got your link from Tamil Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. I would like at my mohter tongue Tamil wikipedia too in the CD. I shall be thankful if you could guide me on preparing cd from the wikipedia. Thanks in adavance.
The post states somewhat erroneously that “The CD is currently at release 1.0″. Terminology has been in flux and the preparer of the BitTorrent.com posted torrent was confused into labeling this Ver 1.0 by outdated information formerly posted on the Wikipedia Torrent Project site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Torrent_Project).
The Torrent project is a sub-project of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team. Currently the Team is preparing release version 0.5. It may be out as soon as December. Wpcd.zip (aka 2006_Wikipedia_CD_Selection.zip), a much appreciated side project by a Team participant, is referred to as “the first test version” by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team Project: Version 1.0 is a designation reserved for a future product. These things are bound to happen when labeling is in flux.
Here is a direct link that’s mentioned in the torrent, for all you bit torrent haters:
http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/wpcd.zip
it probably wont be of much use to people with priveldge of high speed broadband 24×7, but yes for colleges and schools, this could be a boon :)
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