Let’s say I wanted an offline copy of Wikipedia to show my father, who does not have internet access. I push a magic button, take a snapshot of the entire Wikipedia database, and start downloading it.
Ignoring issues of data transfer, and assuming I have a database engine and front-end web server to access the data, how much storage do I need to keep it? One BD-ROM? A terabyte hard drive? Something larger?
This page doesn’t directly answer your question, but proviudes some similar stats. For instance, printing out a harcopy of Wikipedia would currently need 733 volumes.
That kind of storage comparison I’m not sure, but that article says Wikipedia would fill between 708 and 731 volumes of the encyclopaedia Brittanica.
The English Wikipedia seems to take up ~7.5GB as of April 2007.
These folks offer a ready package if you want it locally.
You don’t need a magic button. You can download the whole database here. The table with all the articles in it, pages-articles, is only 3.2GB in compressed XML. You can fit it easily on a DVD with room to spare.
Hmm. That’s smaller than I expected, especially considering all the pictures.
The question has varying answers, though.
English only?
With pictures or without?
With discussion pages?
With page histories?
With links to cites?
With links to related pages?
Etc.
There’s a lot of stuff you can trim back to get it to fit. If all else fails, you can start cutting off less-popular articles.