For the English Wikipedia, you'd need this many.

英文維基百科需要這麼多。

Six printers is surprisingly few.

六臺列印機少得出奇。

But before you try to create a live, updating paper version of Wikipedia, let's look at what those printers would be doing and how much they'd cost.

不過，在你嘗試創造一個實時更新的紙本維基百科之前，讓我們先來看看這些列印機要做什麼以及它們的成本有多高。

People have considered printing out Wikipedia before.

人們曾經考慮過將維基百科打印出來。

In 2012, Rob Matthews printed every featured article, creating a book a couple feet thick.

2012 年，羅布-馬修斯將每篇特寫文章都打印出來，形成了幾英尺厚的一本書。

And in 2015, Michael Mandelberg created an art installation to show the scope of Wikipedia by printing around 1% of its articles, although without images.

2015 年，邁克爾-曼德爾伯格（Michael Mandelberg）創作了一個藝術裝置，通過打印約 1%的維基百科文章來展示維基百科的範圍，儘管沒有影像。

The entire encyclopedia would be a lot bigger.

整本百科全書會大很多。

Wikipedia user TomPW has set up a Wikipedia page that calculates the current size of the whole English Wikipedia without images in printed volumes.

維基百科用戶 TomPW 創建了一個維基百科頁面，用於計算整個英文維基百科當前的大小，其中不包括印刷卷中的圖片。

It would currently fill a lot of bookshelves, but most libraries have far more books.

目前，它可以裝滿很多書架，但大多數圖書館的藏書要多得多。

Keeping up with the edits would be harder.

堅持編輯會更難。

English Wikipedia currently receives about 150,000 edits each day, or 100 per minute.

目前，英語維基百科每天收到約 150,000 條編輯資訊，即每分鐘 100 條。

We could try to define a way to measure the word count of the average edit, but that's hard bordering on impossible, and fortunately, we don't need to.

我們可以嘗試定義一種衡量平均編輯字數的方法，但這很難，幾乎不可能，幸運的是，我們不需要這樣做。

We can just estimate that each change is going to require us to reprint a page somewhere.

我們可以估算一下，每次更改都需要在某個地方重印一頁。

Now, many edits will actually change multiple pages, but many other edits are reverts, which would let us put back pages that we've already printed.

現在，許多編輯實際上會更改多個頁面，但還有許多其他編輯是還原，這可以讓我們放回已經打印的頁面。

So one page per edit seems like a reasonable middle ground.

每次編輯一頁似乎是一個合理的中間立場。

For a mix of photos, tables, and text typical of Wikipedia, a good inkjet printer might put out 15 pages per minute.

對於維基百科中典型的照片、表格和文本混合內容，一臺好的噴墨打印機每分鐘可打印 15 頁。

This means you'd only need about 6 printers running at any given time to keep pace with the roughly 100 edits each minute.

這意味著你只需要 6 臺列印機同時運行，就能跟上每分鐘大約 100 次編輯的速度。

The paper would stack up quickly.

紙張很快就會堆積如山。

Using Rob Matthews' book as a starting point, I did my own back-of-the-envelope estimate for the size of the current English Wikipedia, and based on the average length of featured articles versus all articles, I came up with an estimate of 300 cubic meters for a printout of the whole thing.

以羅布-馬修斯的書為起點，我自己對當前英文維基百科的規模進行了反向估算，根據特色文章的平均長度與所有文章的平均長度，我估算出整個維基百科的打印件為 300 立方米。

By comparison, if you were trying to keep up with the edits, you'd be printing out 300 cubic meters every month.

相比之下，如果要跟上編輯進度，每月就要打印 300 立方米。

Six printers isn't that many, but they'd be running all the time, and that gets expensive.

六臺列印機並不算多，但它們要一直運轉，成本會很高。

The electricity to run them would be cheap, a few dollars a day.

運行這些設備的電費很便宜，每天幾塊錢。

The paper would be about one cent per sheet, which means you'd be spending about $1,000 a day.

每張紙大約 1 美分，這意味著你每天要花費大約 1000 美元。

You'd want to hire people to manage the printers 24-7, so depending on wages in your area, this could cost less than the paper, or much less if you can figure out a way to trick Wikipedia's volunteer editors into helping you.

你需要僱人全天候管理打印機，所以根據你所在地區的薪資水平，這樣做的成本可能比報紙還低，如果你能想出辦法騙維基百科的志願編輯來幫助你，成本還會更低。

Even the printers themselves wouldn't be too expensive, despite the terrifyingly fast replacement cycle, but the ink cartridges would be a nightmare.

儘管更換週期快得嚇人，列印機本身也不會太貴，但墨水盒將是一場噩夢。

Various sources estimate that for a typical inkjet printer, the real-life cost of ink runs from 5 cents a page for black and white to around 10 cents a page for color.

據各種資料估計，對於一臺典型的噴墨列印機來說，墨水的實際成本從黑白每頁 5 美分到彩色每頁 10 美分左右不等。

With 150,000 daily page edits, that means you'd be spending about $10,000 per day on ink cartridges, so you'd definitely want to invest in a laser printer.

以每天編輯 150,000 頁計算，這意味著你每天在墨水盒上的花費約為 10,000 美元，你肯定會想投資一臺雷射印表機。

Otherwise, in just a month or two, this project could end up costing you half a million dollars.

否則，只需一兩個月，這個項目就會讓你損失 50 萬美元。

But that's not even the worst part.

但這還不是最糟糕的。

If someday Wikipedia decides to go dark again, like they did in 2012, and you want to join the protest, you're going to have to get a giant crate of markers so you can color every page solid black.

如果有一天維基百科決定像 2012 年那樣再次變黑，而你也想加入抗議行列，那你就得買一大箱記號筆，把每一頁都塗成純黑色。

I would definitely stick to digital.

我一定會堅持使用數位版就好。