Wikipedia on a dvd! Good or Bad?

  19 Apr 2007 by ReviewSaurus

Wikipedia05.JPGWikimedia foundation and Linterweb have together announced the first version of Wikipedia on a DVD. This DVD will contain handpicked article (almost 2000 articles) and is going to cost around $ 14.00. At this point of time, only the English version is available, but it is said by the companies that most likely the French version will also be shipped shortly.

Now, considering the fact that Wikipedia English (which is available for free online) has got 1,731,000 + articles in it and the DVD is going to have just 2000 articles, then I think that it is not going to be the best of the deal which one can get. What do you have to say about this offer, do you really think that it will be able to build a huge success as Wikipedia online is making ?

Note : In case you are wondering about which all articles are included in the DVD, then you can always go through the list of articles over here.
[Via : Download Squad]


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5 Responses so far

  1. Gautam Agarwal April 19, 2007 9:53 pm

    This offer doesn’t sounds good considering the fact that in developed countries internet is quite easily available and has a large penetration. It doesn’t makes sense to spend 14$ for something which is just a fraction of what is available online. Taking the case of countries like India, China nobody is gonna buy this because one would rather log on to internet. The case would have been much different if suppose the number of articles were more say something around 100k or so which will form the major chunk of database of wikipedia. As in that case one could think of buying of such a dvd as it will be like having a encyclopedia on the go. Beside all this one should not forget what wikipedia is known for making good and relevant information free online. It was becoming more of a standard of looking up something on the web. So, even if people at wikipedia wanted to make it a commercial success they should have given the buyer a better deal.

  2. Aish Wary Blogs » Wikipedia on a dvd! Good or Bad? April 19, 2007 10:07 pm

    [...] redchaos wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptJPG Wikimedia foundation and Linterweb have together announced the first version of Wikipedia on a DVD. This DVD will contain handpicked article (almost 2000 articles) and is going to cost around $ 14.00. At this point of time, … [...]

  3. Narinder Sahota April 20, 2007 12:16 am

    I don’t believe its a good deal offered by Wikipedia. The group of people those who need this have Internet and those who don’t hardy care about. So why to pay when you have it all online and that too updated stuff.

    In my opinion Wikipedia should have launched it as a promotional product and should have offered the disk for free with popular IT magazines. If not the full version then at least a shorter version. Anyhow I am not the one going to buy it at this price but yes better deals are always welcome.

  4. Rishi April 20, 2007 12:55 pm

    Hmm… for 14$ its OK. Now in my sight, this is an advertising technique, I myself once distributed some floppies among my friends which have matters on having a website in short and have a text For more, log onto StudentsPlace.net . This got me many visitors. So anyone who doesn’t use Wikipedia a lot [ not me, I'ma wiki-ffreak ] will use this disc and will get attracted to use it. ;)

  5. reviewsaurus April 20, 2007 4:50 pm

    Well, Rishi Wikipedia is really not in a need of advertising. They already get enough traffic. This is one of the monetization source. Remember, that they dont display any ads and thus the amount of traffic is more than enough for them. They only depend on donation and so, they need something to keep them alive.

    This DVD will give them chance to earn money and that will help them in keeping them alive and kicking :)

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