《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第118期:紙質版維基百科(1)
UPDATING A PRINTED WIKIPEDIA
紙質版維基百科Q. If you had a printed version of the whole of (say, the English) Wikipedia, how many printers would you need in order to keep up with the changes made to the live version?
Q.如果你要把整個英文版維基百科打印出來,那麼你需要多少臺打印機才能趕上網絡版本的更新速度?——Marein Könings
——馬裏安•科寧斯
A. THIS MANY.
A.這麼點就夠了。If a date took you home and you saw a row of working printers set up in his or her living room, what would you think?
如果你的男友/女友帶你回家,你發現他/她的客廳裏有一排打印機轟轟作響,你會怎麼想?That's surprisingly few printers! But before you try to create a live-updating paper Wikipedia, let's look at what those printers would be doing . . . and how much they'd cost.
原來只要這麼點兒打印機就夠了!但在你打算自己打印一套實時更新的紙質版維基百科出來之前,讓我們先看看打印機需要幹些什麼……以及這麼做要花多少錢。Printing Wikipedia
打印維基百科People have considered printing out Wikipedia before. One student, Rob Matthews, printed every Wikipedia featured article, creating a book several feet thick.
事實上曾有人考慮過把維基百科全部打出來這個想法。幾年前,一個叫作羅布•馬修斯的學生把維基百科上的所有“特色條目”都打印了出來,於是就有了一本一米多厚的書。Of course, that's just a small slice of the best of Wikipedia; the entire encyclopedia would be a lot bigger. Wikipedia user Tompw has set up a tool that calculates the current size of the whole English Wikipedia in printed volumes. It would fill a lot of bookshelves.
當然了,這些只是維基百科所有精華的九牛一毛,整個維基百科要比它大得多。一名維基百科用戶Tompw建立了一個頁面,計算整個英文維基百科如果全部打印出來要佔多少地方。結論是它至少會填滿好幾十個書架。Keeping up with the edits would be hard.
要想趕上實時更新的速度可不容易。Keeping up
趕上更新速度The English Wikipedia currently receives about 125,000 to 150,000 edits each day, or 90–100 per minute.
英文版維基百科現在每天有12.5萬~15萬次修改,相當於每分鐘有90~100次。