Surviving the Wikipedia blackout: Mirrors, caches, alternatives, apps, and more

If you haven't heard the news yet, the English-language version of Wikipedia -- all 3.8 million articles -- will be blacked out from 10pm ET tonight until 10pm on Wednesday night. During this 24-hour window en.wikipedia.org will be inaccessible; instead, a plaintive message will appear, asking for you to contact your local Representative or Senator to protest against SOPA, PIPA, or any of their similarly nasty offspring.

But what if you need to access Wikipedia? What if you use the English-language Wikipedia, but you're not American? I don't want to turn this into political or philosophical rant, but it does seem a little brash to shut down an invaluable service that's visited by millions of people every day based on the votes of just a few hundred contributors.

Anyway, if you want to access Wikipedia, here's how.

Use the mobile version, hit Escape, or disable JavaScript

The Wikipedia blackout is actually just a piece of JavaScript -- and so by disabling JavaScript in your browser, you can surf Wikipedia normally. In Firefox, this option is found in Tools > Options > Content. In Chrome, hit Wrench > Options > Under the Hood > Content Settings. For Internet Explorer, this option is buried way down in Cog > Internet options > Security > Custom level, and then scroll all the way down to "Active scripting."

An easier option is to simply hit Escape on your keyboard as the page is loading. This is a bit hit and miss: You have to time it for after the content of the page has loaded, but before the JavaScript can kick in.

Finally, the mobile version of English Wikipedia is still available at http://en.m.wikipedia.org/(Opens in a new window) -- the formatting is a bit iffy for desktop use, but still.

Use a mirror

The content of Wikipedia articles and most of its images are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license, which means that other sites are free to set up a mirror of Wikipedia. Unfortunately, due to the size of English Wikipedia, only one full mirror seems to exist: The Free Dictionary Encyclopedia(Opens in a new window). It's a little bit out of date, however, so be careful.

Updated January 18 @ 11am: The other option is making your own mirror of Wikipedia. This ensures that you always have a copy of Wikipedia to hand, and it also helps the internet if Wikipedia ever gets taken offline permanently.

Use the Google Cache

Google maintains a full cache of every Wikipedia page. To view the cache, click the double right arrow next to a search result and then click "Cached." Except for a gray banner across the top, Google's cache looks exactly like the real thing -- but don't try clicking any links, as they link back to en.wikipedia.org, rather than Google's cache; darn!

Learn German

Ha, just kidding -- but seriously, the German-language version of Wikipedia is huge (over one million articles), and Google Chrome automatically detects when pages are in a foreign language... so why not just use Google Chrome and de.wikipedia.org(Opens in a new window) for a day? Obviously this might not be an ideal solution if you're writing a research paper, but if you're only doing something menial -- like writing a story for a tech blog, say -- machine translation should be more than enough.

Use an app

There are a number of apps that, after downloading gigabytes of data, will grant you offline access to Wikipedia. Wiki Offline(Opens in a new window) is probably the best option for iOS, but costs $5; Android uses, thanks to WikiDroyd(Opens in a new window), get the same experience for free. We're not certain if the Wikipedia mirrors will be available to download during the blackout, but they probably will be.

Windows users have the free and excellent WikiTaxi(Opens in a new window); Mac users only seem to have one option: Wiki Offline(Opens in a new window), which costs $10.

Use an alternative encyclopedia

It's hard to fathom, but there were actually a few good encyclopedias before Wikipedia kicked and screamed its way into existence in 2001, and despite being severely overshadowed, even a handful have sprung up since. Encyclopaedia Britannica(Opens in a new window) has a 30-day free trial. Scholarpedia(Opens in a new window) is kind of like Wikipedia, but as it only allows bona fide experts to edit articles it's a lot smaller. Citizendium(Opens in a new window) is similar to Scholarpedia, but not quite as severe.

Of course, if you're fairly right-wing in your beliefs, there's always Conservapedia(Opens in a new window) -- and likewise, if you're a raving liberal loony, there's Uncyclopedia(Opens in a new window) (but again please don't use it for writing reports).