Comments on: Offline Wikipedia

By: fidusz's status on Thursday, 02-Jul-09 09:17:07 UTC - Identi.ca

fidusz's status on Thursday, 02-Jul-09 09:17:07 UTC - Identi.ca — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:17:12 +0000

[...] Offline Wikipedia – mish suggested it on the Ubuntu NGO Team list: http://tinderblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/offline-wikipedia/ [...]

By: John

John — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:18:24 +0000

Personally, I use Thanassis Tsiodras’s method.
You are mistaken in claiming that it needs twice the space – it does not. After you split the wikipedia .bz2 file, you can remove the original (and easily reconstruct it if you ever want to, by simply cat-ing the pieces together).
It is also one of the only two methods (the mediawiki being the other one) that correctly shows mathematical formulae, something which was very important to me.

By: Jpoa

Jpoa — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:40:56 +0000

Hi there!

I was able to run WikiTaxi both on Linux and MacOSX (with Wine and Crossover respectively), don’t know if it is still of use for you.

I’ll check the projects you mentioned.

Best regards and thanks!

By: chrisw

chrisw — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:19:01 +0000

Hi Jpoa, Thanks for the offer, but we did what we needed to do by using Mediawiki and Wikipedia for Schools. If you're looking for an interesting project to volunteer for, you might like to have a look at our pmGraph or Loband projects, or EpiSurveyor. Cheers, Chris.

By: Jpoa

Jpoa — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:21:31 +0000

You know, this could be a very interesting project to lay hands on.

Are you still needing this platform? Can you provide some more info?

I have a small team of competent java developers and I’m sure we can come out with something worthwhile since this is for a good cause.

Oh, and just because I say team don’t immediately think on a payroll =)

Say what is needed and your ideas, but some of the projects you described are really close of what you want, wouldn’t it be easier to modify those?

Anyway, say something.

Best regards!

By: Alan Jackson

Alan Jackson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:43:39 +0000

If wikipedia truly wants to be by the people, for the people then it needs to find ways of engaging with the large numbers of people who still have marginal access to the Internet and little bandwidth.

By: Miquel

Miquel — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:12:54 +0000

In talking with Wikimedia’s CTO a week or two ago, it became painfully obvious that they don’t really care much about anything except the live, English Wikipedia site. Small language sites dying off was met with a shrug as if it’s expected and talking about providing a proper offline, fully compiled version was avoided. They love the publicity of these things, but don’t really seem to put much effort in to maintaining them. I love the Wikipedia, but I am really annoyed and alarmed at Wikimedia’s severe lack of transparency and decidedly logjam approach to their technology.

By: jimjepps

jimjepps — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:31:00 +0000

That’s interesting Chris… what are your concerns?

By: chrisw

chrisw — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:59:29 +0000

Hi anon,

Thanks for your comment, but I disagree. I think I’m entitled to generalise about my own opinions (i.e. whether or not I trust something).

If I’d said “Software from Romania is not trustworthy”, that would be a gross generalisation, but I didn’t say that.

I have a higher skepticism about software from Africa and Eastern Europe than other places, and the way this software is packaged and presented doesn’t do enough to assuage my doubts.

Call me paranoid or whatever, but I think I’m entitled to choose what software I trust and don’t trust.

By: anon

anon — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:37:09 +0000

“as it comes from Romania, I don’t trust it enough to run it”

Given the stated goal of your blog, such sweeping generalisations seem a little unnecessary.