Activities/Proposals/Wikipedia CD

Distributing Wikipedia on CDs or Laptops

Outline

We contact either a PC magazine or a computer or Linux distributor and persuade them to include a CD/DVD including a sample of Wikipedia articles (possibly Wikipedia for Schools or Wikipedia v0.5)

See this article for how the Indonesian chapter did something similar.

Benefits

We make Wikipedia content more widely available and used.

Financial requirements

The magazine/computer/Linux distributor would pay for the costs

Volunteering

Just contacts to speak to the partner companies.

Discussion

Proposed by AndrewRT

Nice idea! I guess trademark usage would be needed (e.g. the wikipedia logo), so the WMF would need to be involved. Mike Peel 22:18, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

• Excellent idea. Perhaps this could be useful in the schools project as well - a taster CD of what Wikipedia offers and some of its high-quality work could be good for illustrating the project to young'uns. Ironholds 08:33, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
• The DVD should be produced with openZIM and Kiwix. --Nemo 18:08, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Why? The schools wikipedia is in production since 2005, has trade mark agreement and is on its third major revision with several million users but has none of these? Also SOS Children pays for the production costs... --BozMo 20:03, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we would want the schools DVD for general issue like this. It is intended for school children, not the readers of computer mags. --Tango 23:30, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure of the point of this. How likely are people that read those mags to have a computer with a CD drive but no internet connection? It happens occasionally (on your laptop while travelling, say), but not often. I think offline versions of Wikipedia should be aimed primarily at the developing world and for people that don't want access to the whole of Wikipedia (such as schools that are "thinking of the children"). --Tango 23:30, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

What? In Italy we sold a DVD in over 25.000 copies (although it was far from perfect). It was distributed mainly in libraries and superstores, and also newsagents. If such a magazine sells a DVD like this, it advertises the DVD and also people with a computer but without a internet connection (there are lots of them) buy the DVD. --Nemo 09:44, 27 September 2009 (UTC)