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.
this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
404 points (96.5% liked)
Showerthoughts
34113 readers
708 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
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.
Better fucking not. Wikipedia is my life bruh.
You can dowload wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
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
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)
books exist
Not for long
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
(4 replies)
Download the Downloader / Viewer at https://kiwix.org/.
Get your own backed up copy and keep it on a thumb drive.
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)
Who are "they"?
Tech bros like musk who capture companies to gut them.
I mean they can try to censor it but I really don't see why the wikimedia foundation wouldn't just move shop to a different country, or a different group just starts running a mirror of it. Like it might be down for a while, at which time we would have to use mirrors, but I can't see any future where its just gone forever.
Wait surely there's someone using ai to edit wiki articles? Is that a thing?
Yes, I think that's the scenario most commenters are missing; Wikipedia could evolve into something it's not. Then what good are backups as they won't capture the decades/centuries to come.
I mean every historical source is full of one sided propaganda.
Have you ever heard the phrase "history is written by winners"?
What have keep history alive is not Wikipedia. Is the fact that multiple people from multiple POV write things down and we can find and read multiple sources.
Don't get me wrong, Wikipedia is great, but it's not what keeps history more or less accurate. Take into account that Wikipedia is a sum up of other sources. In order to write to Wikipedia you must quote a primary source.
And AI really doesn't have much to do with anything here. Bad sources have existed forever, since Herodotus.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›