Ask HN: What are you doing to prepare for the pending wikipedia blackout?

6 points by mvanveen 14y ago ↗ HN

I'm going to leave the interpretation open[1], but generally speaking, after reading the recent SOPA blackout headline, I realized that I regard Wikipedia as an indispensable tool in my life as an engineer, and I feel that it would be sorely missing in the event of a blackout.

Do other HN members feel the same way, and if so, what sorts of things are you doing to prepare for a day without Wikipedia on Wednesday?

This url (http://www.igeek.co.za/2009/10/16/how-to-mirror-wikipedia/) was already posted, but I'm curious if anyone has begun planning a p2p effort or any other grassroots attempt to mirror wikipedia content in a decentralized fashion.

Big thanks to Wikimedia for giving western internet users a chance to meditate on the chilling effects of legislation like SOPA and PIPA.

[1] Looking at you, people who use wikipedia data in interesting ways

7 comments

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logn 14y ago ↗

Don't think a day without reddit, cheezburger, wordpress, and wikipedia will kill me. Besides, there's always the google cache of a wikipedia page. And there's Simple English wikipedia which hopefully they'll block too.

But is wikipedia really that indispensable? It's an encyclopedia, so it summarizes existing knowledge. It's all out there, maybe just scattered.

mvanveen 14y ago ↗

I was wrestling with calling it indispensable, and totally agree that it's all out there, but Wikipedia severely reduces the friction of finding the correct citations and often provides good starting points for great research.

The quality of your investigation increases and the round trip time for an inquiry decreases significantly with Wikipedia around.

There would probably be several points on Wednesday where without an archive I'd feel really frustrated by not being able to look up a reference on Wikipedia. I'd get by without it, but I'd sorely miss it.

Edit: And, to be fair, not having reddit or icanhascheezeburger wouldn't sting nearly as much missing Wikipedia would.

avree 14y ago ↗

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/ — terrible UI, but it's a mirror.

tnuc 14y ago ↗

I'll probably be getting work done without the reddit, wikipedia, etc. distractions.

redthrowaway 14y ago ↗

pg still hasn't said if HN is going down, so there will still be distractions aplenty.

brudgers 14y ago ↗

I told my child to get a head start researching their upcoming report.

ajayr 14y ago ↗

Install NoScript and browse along. You can also just disable styling.

P.S. I oppose SOPA/PIPA and support the efforts of the Wikimedia foundation. But going without Wikipedia is hard.