this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Already got a copy on my NAS, I update it every year or two when I remember to.

But you've missed the point, my personal access to a Wikipedia text snapshot is not equivalent to the free access of information to everyone. The information just existing somewhere isn't enough.

And anyway a person can't practically keep their own copy of the Internet Archive. It takes up something like a quarter of an exabyte

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It existing somewhere is better than nothing, though. Internet archive on the other hand, that one is a lot harder.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yes of course

But every single scrap of information in Wikipedia exists somewhere else

Its value is twofold and exclusively these two when you boil everything down:

  • It is enough information to answer any question that has an empirically known answer
  • It is available to anyone on the planet with ease and without cost

There's very little else we've created that hits both of those, but the second is by far the most important.

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 points 1 day ago

But the fact that it's relatively easy to download and backup makes me confident that someone, somewhere, will rehost it should it go down. Hell, I'd even take a crack at it.

It's kind of the point of federation, too. An instance can go down but anyone who federated with them will still have that data.