《那些古怪又让人忧心的问题》第118期:纸质版维基百科(1)
UPDATING A PRINTED WIKIPEDIA
纸质版维基百科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.如果你要把整个英文版维基百科打印出来,那么你需要多少台打印机才能赶上网络版本的更新速度?——Marein Könings
——马里安•科宁斯
A. THIS MANY.
A.这么点就够了。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/女友带你回家,你发现他/她的客厅里有一排打印机轰轰作响,你会怎么想?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.
原来只要这么点儿打印机就够了!但在你打算自己打印一套实时更新的纸质版维基百科出来之前,让我们先看看打印机需要干些什么……以及这么做要花多少钱。Printing Wikipedia
打印维基百科People have considered printing out Wikipedia before. One student, Rob Matthews, printed every Wikipedia featured article, creating a book several feet thick.
事实上曾有人考虑过把维基百科全部打出来这个想法。几年前,一个叫作罗布•马修斯的学生把维基百科上的所有“特色条目”都打印了出来,于是就有了一本一米多厚的书。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.
当然了,这些只是维基百科所有精华的九牛一毛,整个维基百科要比它大得多。一名维基百科用户Tompw建立了一个页面,计算整个英文维基百科如果全部打印出来要占多少地方。结论是它至少会填满好几十个书架。Keeping up with the edits would be hard.
要想赶上实时更新的速度可不容易。Keeping up
赶上更新速度The English Wikipedia currently receives about 125,000 to 150,000 edits each day, or 90–100 per minute.
英文版维基百科现在每天有12.5万~15万次修改,相当于每分钟有90~100次。