killing all of wikipedia is gunna be almost impossible, theres probably millions of backups around the world. here's a few links to download it, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
381 points (96.4% liked)
Showerthoughts
34047 readers
522 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Not only that, but MediaWiki is FOSS, and all existing content on all Wikimedia Foundation (except for a relative few kept on fair use grounds) is at most as restrictive as CC BY-SA 4.0. So you'd have whatever exists on Wikipedia currently (plus Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, etc., keeping in mind too that there are many Wikipedias besides English) plus the software that interacts with that data, other countries which haven't fully descended into fascism, the members of the Wikimedia Foundation, a bunch of pissed-off editors, and a pissed-off public... I think a new, substantially similar non-profit would crop up in the UK etc., and very few things would have to change about the content that's on the platform (where the UK has more restrictive speech laws).
I did already, tried the XOWA client to run a local copy on my PC. Wasn't as easy as I hoped but it worked.
Planning to get a couple of USBs stashed away with full copies of Wikipedia and the reader app for knowledge security. You can fit the whole thing with a working installation onto a 128GB USB or less. My install dir was about 69GB total.
additionally not everyone considers to backup the actual software used to compress/decompress the data. that isn’t permanent either and could disappear as well, same as wikipedia rendering such backups useless.
granted, it’s like, 10000x less likely than the already unlikely event of wikipedia being raptured. but the datahoarder mindset is better safe than sorry…
load more comments
(2 replies)
There's more to history than Wikipedia. Like physical books
I didn't even think of that 🤦
I've been online for too long
Back in my day you had to buy Wikipedia. It came in like 20 massive volumes that ate up a shelf or two.
Thinking about it… I wonder what my parents did with our copies…
I doubt Britanica has a page dedicated to Limp Bizkit.
The encyclopedia even came on CD for a while. It was called Encarta. But I loved my parent's World Book Encyclopedia much more.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
You can dowload wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
Thank you so much for this. I have been trying to offline Wikipedia for months but the torrent links on the kiwix site are broken or something. They stall out for me in the first 10m everytime. The download from your link is working perfectly.
load more comments
(3 replies)
here's the torrent:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents#English_Wikipedia
like 20gb when packed, ~90 when unpacked
Also archive.org, idk which one to seed that personally fits my limited storage space, so i'll just link the category, https://archive.org/details/wikimediadownloads
there's also this, but idk about it, just listing options🤷♀️ https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/
*just in case someone thinks its suspicious: they were all linked directly from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download under the "Where do I get the dumps?" section
You can't kill Wikipedia. MediaWiki is free software. If hosting in the US proves to be too hostile, the foundation can either pack up and host elsewhere, and even if they don't, anyone else can easily host their own Wikipedia as well.
I'm not here to be a doomer but net neutrality was murdered.
You can download Wikipedia to your computer. It’s big but it’s not an unreasonable download size. Many people have backed it up already!
It’s very unlikely to disappear without someone having a copy.
If you think Wikipedia is the only place that stores historical knowledge, please, start thinking about how much time you're spending online.
It is a modern library of Alexandria, free to all globally and community built. It's genuinely an amazing surviving piece of the old internet. No one is saying it's the only place, but it is vitally important and a huge deal if it goes away. Shame on you for downplaying that.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Wouldn't it make sense to just host the website from another country, outside of US jurisdiction?
They don’t need or want to kill Wikipedia. They just need to heavily edit it. Kind of a dream come true for those pushing a narrative.
In my mind that would be killing it.
It’s already happened, and is still happening. So is it dead? Or maybe it’s been a half-aware zombie all along.
load more comments
(14 replies)
Better fucking not. Wikipedia is my life bruh.
Who are "they"?
Tech bros like musk who capture companies to gut them.
There are a lot of citations to things like Britannica from 1911 that is archived and public domain.
Download the Downloader / Viewer at https://kiwix.org/.
Get your own backed up copy and keep it on a thumb drive.
view more: next ›