2006 Wikipedia CD Selection

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection was a selection of articles taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and was produced in April 2006. It was the first available English language CD version of Wikipedia. The CD was produced by SOS Children.

The CDs content totals three million words and 8,000 images, equivalent to a book with 4,000 to 5,000 pages of material. The CD contained 2,000+ articles of particular interest to schools or children (Geography, Science, Dinosaurs, Plants and Animals). The articles were manually selected off the English Wikipedia by volunteers working for SOS Children, checked for suitability to children and cleaned by hand and script. The CD included only thumbnails of images.

Criticism and comments

Based on the fact that the articles were chosen and edited away from the main Wikipedia, the blog TorrentFreak claims that this means that they are less reliable than the corresponding articles on the main Wikipedia.^[1] Another blogger claims that because he believes the articles are not rewritten in "simpler English", that this means their suitability for children at the younger end of the 8-15 age range is limited.^[2] However this surprising move by an NGO was praised by Norwegian telecommunications company, Telenor.^[3]

Circulation

As of November 2006, more than 30,000 free copies of this CD had been downloaded from the source site at Wikipedia CD download and a further few thousand had been downloaded from the BitTorrent site. Some of the downloaded copies have been copied many times over (including by the Shuttleworth Foundation for distribution to schools in Africa, and by a private Indian individual for sale on eBay India).^[4] About 20,000 unique visitors a day visit the online browsable version at Wikipedia CD. The selection is also available for free on CD from the charity's offices. There is also a Plucker database version to carry on an SD card for Palm Pilot.^[5]

Wiki to CD transition changes

Because this effort was not an official Wikimedia project, some changes had to be made for legal reasons.

The logo

The Wikipedia "puzzle-globe" logo was not included as SOS Children did not have permission to use it. Permission has since been granted and the 2007 Selection will use the Wikipedia logo.

Content changes

The only content added was a small box notice on about 130 pages which have a particular relevance to SOS Children (e.g. many of the 125 countries where SOS works).^[6]

Disclaimer

In addition to the Wikipedia General Disclaimer (Located at Wikipedia:General disclaimer on line) the CD carries the following notice:

Relationship with official Wikipedia releases

Although the CD selection was produced outside of Wikimedia, the project served as proof of concept for upcoming official releases of Wikipedia on hard copy as well as their distribution and the conversion of online to offline articles.

"Official" Wikimedia releases will use the naming pattern "Wikipedia Release Version [...]" to avoid confusion with the SOS Children's versions which will be named [date]-Wikipedia-CD-Selection.^{[citation needed]}

References and notes