Wikipedia talk:Terminal Event Management Policy

So...
Will this be activated if North Korea tries to shoot down the US or a hurricane hits Florida? ViperSnake151 Talk  14:12, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Is it bad that I cried a little seeing the templates indicating the imminent extinction of Wikipedia? —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 10:37, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I cried at the Jimbo quote at the end of the article.Teddks (talk) 23:20, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
 * a single missile attack or a single hurricane is not the reason to raise the warning levels. Geraldshields11 (talk) 13:07, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Ha
I love the idea that if it came to the point where you would want to trade article for essential foodstuffs, you would care about attributing its authors properly (many of whom may well be dead). You wouldn't want to get sued now, would you? - Jarry1250 [ In the UK? Sign the petition! ] 12:41, 16 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It occurs to me this means printing the page histories as well as the articles. Millahnna (talk) 12:52, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Seriously, though.
What plans does Wikipedia have to preserve its articles in case it ceases to exist? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.77.238.3 (talk) 03:54, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I came here, read this, and thought it was serious. (I tend to skim past the templates at the top of articles.) Then I found out that it was meant as humor, and my faith in the awesomeness of Wikipedia has been diminished. What can be done to make these policies implementable (not implemented)? 164.107.200.192 (talk) 06:24, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Even if we manage to implement these security strategies, maybe they pretend there's no one home in the Universe --188.194.44.232 (talk) 12:38, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Level 0
How do I insert my template?

Lanthanum-138 (talk) 06:00, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Level -1
Please Wikipedia, make this project real!

Please Wikipedia, make this project real!

Please Wikipedia, make this project real!

Please Wikipedia, make this project real!

Seriously should this be considered?
OK, so some of the article is a joke, but should at least the key portions of wikipedia be printed out and preserved in the even of impending societial collapse? I don't necessarily see the need to beam it into space, but arranging to print out and preserve, (then manually copy if possible,) main portions of the archive make perfect sense. DreadLindwyrm (talk) 22:36, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The possibility of planetary calamity, while remote under most circumstances, is never zero; there should be a preservation protocol just in case. Various astronomical events could wipe out the majority of technology or even the human species with little or no warning. 157.139.9.155 (talk) 19:46, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I suppose this page is actually a fairly reasonable course of action in the case of a Terminal Event. If possible, I will follow these guidelines, after all, life imitates art. 83.87.239.185 (talk) 22:44, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Wikipedia is a repository of knowledge that would be very useful to humans attempting to rebuild civilization, or to aliens trying to understand what we were. There should probably be protocols for the varying levels of apocalypse: print science and engineering pages if humanity will survive, ones about our culture and government and history if we won't (because any aliens advanced enough to reach our planet from another star system will have no use for our STEM). Robert (talk) 15:00, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree. We're facing multiple societal-level threats over the next few decades, we should absolutely have some means to preserve the greatest collection of knowledge in human history.  It's unacceptable to have no contingency for preserving the repository of human achievement in the face of something as simple as the electricity turning off. The Cap&#39;n (talk) 16:17, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Hilarious thought
I just had the thought, that what if Wookiepedia preserved all of their content but Wikipedia did not. I imagine that future generations would have a rather bizarre understanding of our history. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:03, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

We should have some sort of contingency plan.
This, even as a joke, made me realize how important wikipedia will be after the apocalypse.

Maybe some sort of data vault underground? I dunno. --Viveret (talk) 06:02, 12 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think we should have some sort of policy dealing with this, even if this page is just a joke. Perhaps Database download would be a good place to start for anyone looking for something to backup offline? But getting it on paper may be more important. Tony Tan · talk  14:12, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Idea: have some sort of system that pings something every 30 minutes and if it is inactive for 24-ish hours it archives wikipedia? --76.104.233.150 (talk) 01:41, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Mentioned in Documentary
FYI. This "fun" page was mentioned in the documentary Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World at about the 1h30m mark. Tspilman (talk) 10:26, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * And it was presented as serious, that the big plan is we all take a section and frantically print things out before we flee the city.  freshacconci  talk to me  01:55, 30 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Wow, I did not know that. Thanks. (Now re-reading the page in a Werner Herzog voice :) )  FlowerpotmaN &middot;( t ) 17:04, 11 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Came here after watching the documentary. Pretty saddened that the page is supposed to be humorous. I believe we should actually develop a proper plan for when SHTF or otherwise. ~ Crefollet   (talk)  00:23, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
 * There is this https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Contingency_planning however it hasn’t been updated since 2009 DogsRNice (talk) 16:43, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

This would be quite expensive.
Printing all wikipedia articles AND keeping up with edits could cost you MILLIONS in a relatively short amount of time compared to, say, buying a house every month, as detailed in this xkcd What If? video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgBYohJ7mIk TrollingSpin (talk) 22:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)