Wikipedia:Wikipedia down

If Wikipedia does not work at all, go to the Wikipedia Status page on OpenFacts. That page will tell you what is wrong and the developers will say if they are fixing it. You could also check IRC: #wikipedia on irc.freenode.net for when Wikipedia is closed for repairs.

If you want to change Wikipedia, there is a page on OpenFacts where you can write Wikipedia pages and then move them here when Wikipedia is fixed.

If you only want to learn something at Wikipedia, Google keeps a copy of one version of every Wikipedia page (except redirect pages, but including pages resulting from redirects). Since Google checks the contents of pages once every one or two months, the saved version may not be the latest. Also, neither older versions are kept, nor the revision history listing. Thus, through Google one can still read and search the contents of Wikipedia, albeit not always the latest content; see below.

You can also visit sites which run fixed copies of Wikipedia whilst Wikipedia is down or visit the Wikipedia Selection for Schools which runs on a different machine. A fuller list of fixed copies is available at the open facts site listed above.

Google search of Wikipedia

By following the link below, you can use the Google search engine to search the English Wikipedia. Google keeps a copy of all namespaces and all language Wikipedias. When you find the page you want listed by google you need to click on "cached" to see the copy of the whole page.

Google updates its index about once a month, the search is based on the contents at that time!

The search is based on the text the browser shows, not on the source text which is seen in the Wikipedia edit box.

Using Google to search Wikipedia is faster. After finding an article, one can choose to view the current version or the cached one. The cached version may not be the same as the current version on Wikipedia, but it is faster to view and is always available.

Use Google to search Wikipedia

It also searches many other language versions (those also on wikipedia.org), including Dutch, German and French, but not those on wikipedia.com, which include Afrikaans, Frisian, Italian and Simple English.