English Wikipedia on CD-ROM & DVD

Zdnet reports that The Wikipedia Foundation hopes to sell an English version of Wikipedia on CD-ROM and DVD before the end of the year.

Wikipedia is a free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by people from all around the world. The site is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the edit this page link. It runs on MediaWiki software.

A boxed CD and DVD set of the German language version of Wikipedia has been available since last year. An updated version of the German Wikipedia was launched on Amazon.de this week.

Some excerpts -

The Wikipedia community will decide what will be omitted from the CD, although many of the size savings are likely to be made by omitting or reducing the size of images and by getting rid of incomplete articles, known as stubs. Many in the community are already working hard to prepare the English Wikipedia to be put on CD.

Before creating the CD it is important that all articles are checked to ensure they are acceptable. “We want one last level of review to get to a stable branch,” said Wales. Wikipedia volunteers will also double-check articles to ensure there is no plagiarism or copyright violation.

Making Wikipedia available on CD is another step towards the organisation’s goal of providing the world with a free encyclopaedia.