I have an old 2023 copy of Wikipedia saved to my NAS using kiwix. This is probably the most recent version I’ll ever need. But yeah, it’s long overdue for some healthy competition, conflicts have been brewing for over a decade at this point.

This is probably the most recent version I’ll ever need.

Assuming nothing historically significant happens after that download, sure.

I’ve got an ancient encyclopedia from the 1950s that my dad owned. Let me tell you how useful that’s been over the years.

When I was a kid in the 80’s, my sister and I found an old World Book Encyclopedia from the 50’s that someone in our neighborhood was throwing out, so we brought it home. It had some interesting “facts” in it. E.g., did you know that guinea pigs are perfect as subjects for scientific research because they’re unable to feel pain? 1950’s worldbook did!

Uhhhh there is no way that is true

I mean, I don’t have the encyclopedia anymore, so I guess I can’t really prove it to you. But it was sort of my introduction to the idea that not everything in an encyclopedia is necessarily true, so it’s pretty memorable for me. I recognize the irony of using another encyclopedia here, but Wikipedia mentions in the History section of its Pain in Animals article, “Researchers remained unsure into the 1980s as to whether animals experience pain.” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_animals#History ) I obviously don’t know the story about how the line ended up in World Book, but I know they employ fact checkers for every line in the book, so presumably in the 50’s the line reflected some kind of scientific consensus, as bizarre as that sounds now.

That’s the cool thing about knowledge. We learn new things all the time. 70 years from now, things we think are true today will be laughed at as ignorant and naive.

Like an old Sears catalogs, old encyclopedias are fun snap shots into the past and worth the read.

I have a single volume of an 1875 encyclopedia, it’s facsinating

@spicehoarder @lechekaflan how did you do it? We can download wikipedia content from anyplace or did you scrappe it yourself?

So, here’s a link to the kiwix site: get.kiwix.org/en/solutions/…/kiwix-server/ – I run their server software from my NAS, but you can run it anywhere really.

Go to a browser (MS Edge always refuses to load my Kiwix site, I use firefox) and just type in the IP of the machine you started the server on, plus the port. something like 192.168.1.XXX:80 or localhost:80 if you did it that way.

Then, to download the actual ZIM files, which is the archive format chosen by kiwix (idk why) you can go here: browse.library.kiwix.org

I should note that the zims only load when the server is started, you can’t just add new ones while the service is running, you’ll need to stop it and restart.

Hope this helps! Message me if you need more info :)

Then, to download the actual ZIM files,

Is that zim wiki related? 🤢

You can easily self host it with Kiwix, runs in a docker, and you just point it at the latest version of Wikipedia (you can download everything or just text). Then when you want to update the Wikipedia, just download the new version.

I’d rather use Grokpedia or Stupidedia, anyway. Gotta have my ✨ alternative facts ✨.

Lots of things could do with more competition more than ever