For coders with internet access, an offline encyclopedia provides a lifeline

After 3 years of work, I’m excited to announce the launch of the Overflow Offline Project.

There are coders and students across the world who can benefit from the enormous amount of knowledge our community has shared, but don't always have internet access to reach our platform online.

We're working with a great non-profit, Kiwix offline, to ensure those folks can tap into this virtual encyclopedia without an internet connection, that the data remains up-to-date, and that it's easy to read and search.

Overflow Offline is already being used by great organizations like Code4000, Bard Prison Initiative, Unlocked Labs, and The Last Mile to provide a resource to students learning in prisons where internet is not available.

Overflow Offline has also been used by scientific researchers like the folks at IceCube Labs, who are studying neutrinos at the South Pole, and have spotty internet most of the year.

It's also being utilized by folks like EduAir, who provide an offline version of Stack Overflow to help students who don't have affordable access to internet at school or at home.

We hope this is the beginning of a long term effort, and that we will be able to learn from our users and improve the data so it becomes easier to access and provides more value to an ever wider collection of people and organizations.

Check out our blog to learn more about the organizations involved and how you can help through donations or open source contributions. And a huge thanks to the many colleagues at Stack Overflow who helped make this project a reality!