Wikipedia defines itself as a free encyclopedia to highlight several key concepts related to its nature and mission. It is accessible by anyone with an Internet connection, at no cost. Wikipedia users have the right to edit and improve articles thanks to a template collaborative editing which encourages continuous development and sharing of updated information.
Wikipedia contents are released with free licenseslike the license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. This means that users can use, share and edit works originally hosted on Wikipedia. You can exploit them for any purpose, as long as you attribute the source and share the information derivative works using the same license.
Wikipedia guidelines also require you to maintain a point of view neutral in all articles. The contents must be written in a manner impartial and must not favor or oppose any position, person or group.
How much does the entire Wikipedia weigh and how to download it locally
Have you ever wondered how important the information published on Wikipedia is? To date approximately 102 GB or 60 GB if images are excluded.
Thanks to the very permissive license that distinguishes the free encyclopedia, anyone can therefore download the content of the platform and other similar services, provided that the operation is expressly permitted. Wikipedia itself explains how this can be done.
Once you have downloaded the entire encyclopedia, you can consult it even without an Internet connection. Furthermore, the advantage is that all the information acquired on one’s systems can, for example, be reused for train and generative model based on artificial intelligence.
An application like Kiwix, compatible with Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS (there are also versions for Raspberry Pi, for the main web browsers and a server module), not only allows you to supervise the download on Wikipedia but it also allows you to download specific sections of the encyclopedia. For example, you can ask to download the most consulted articles (1 million objects) limiting the download size to 44 GB, only the contents that deal with mathematical topics (2.6 GB) and so on.
To start the download, just start Kiwixchoose the item Library Therefore Categories and finally Wikipedia. The same operation, however, can be done with many other websites.