• Catfish [she/her]@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    Crazy how many people can suddenly peer into the future when this post was made! I hope they can use this power for good, maybe save us from horrible tragedies in the future instead of wailing about a Wikipedia alternative. Great work nutomic! I hope folks pitch in to help this project you’ve begun.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      Half the comments in this thread are the exact same as when we started working on a reddit alternative lol. “I don’t see why you’re doing this, reddit works fine for me.”

      Also I’m pretty stunned that more people aren’t aware of wikipedia’s many scandals and issues. I suppose if you use a site every day and don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes, you don’t seek these things out.

      • Catfish [she/her]@lemmygrad.ml
        0·
        1 year ago

        I suppose if you use a site every day and don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes, you don’t seek these things out.

        This ignorance is just more reason to continue working on the fediverse to help break these walls down, you are on the right path. o7

  • Ziggurat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Is it linked to the ongoing Drama on the french wikipedia ?

    How does federation works with with “SEO” ? Wikipedia is always among the top result on search engine, how would peopel find about Ibis ?

    • nutomic@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      1 year ago

      I dont speak French and havent heard about that drama. But its about the problems pointed out in this article among others.

      If Ibis gets popular it will get listed higher in search results. Same as Lemmy which is also slowly going up in results. Before that it will most likely spread through word of mouth.

      • Alsephina@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Same as Lemmy which is also slowly going up in results

        Huh. Searching for “Lemmy” on Google actually brings it up on the side now instead of Lemmy Kilmister like it did during the Reddit exodus. Neat.

  • airportline@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    It is not well known but there have been numerous scandals which put this trust into question. For example in 2012, a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation UK used his position to place his PR client on Wikipedia’s front page 17 times within a month. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales made extensive edits to the article about himself, removing mentions of co-founder Larry Sanger. In 2007, a prolific editor who claimed to be a graduate professor and was recruited by Wikipedia staff to the Arbitration Committee was revealed to be a 24-year-old college dropout. These are only a few examples, journalist Helen Buyniski has collected much more information about the the rot in Wikipedia.

    I don’t really understand how decentralization would address the trust and legitimacy problems of Wikipedia. I do see value in adding community wikis to Lemmy, however.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Wikipedia got as bad as it did because neoliberals had gotten into positions of power and kicked everyone else out. They weren’t the people who made the site (it was one guy who did like 90% of the articles) but they are the ones who made it the shithole that it is today.

      • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Besides still needing to establish that a) wikipedia is bad today (as opposed to just flawed), you also need to establish b) what about this would entice people over from wikipedia and c) if it did succeed, then why wouldn’t whoever got into positions of power with wikipedia get into the same positions of power on the biggest instances?

  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Get gamers involved, they’ve been starving for a replacement to the max-enshitified fandom wikia

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Mr. Wikipedia wanted to make money off wikipedia but couldn’t because it was a nonprofit, so made Wikia to profit off of.

        Worst they could do on Wikipedia is e-beg and then spam the email of anyone who actually sends them money (fucking assholes) but the limits are off for Wikia they can absolutely cake that as shit full of ads and spyware as they can fit.

      • Skelectus@suppo.fi
        0·
        1 year ago

        Y’know, I was just going to mention Fandom. I have no idea how well this will work for Wikipedia, but I know it can work great for games.

        Fandom is straight up harmful to game communities, and I think federation makes a lot of sense with per-game / series / etc. instances.

        I’ll look at this a bit more later, quite interesting idea.

  • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 year ago

    I think a centralized view of knowledge that Wikipedia provides is great, plus the record of changes and discussions help capture some of the nuances people are aiming for.

    That said where this really accelerates is when bias is wanted. For example the Arch wiki vs Debian wiki vs Wikipedia all SHOULD have biases that cater to their specific audience, even if there is obvious overlap.

    Interestingly use of wikidata could help create aknowlledge graph associating parts of the fediwikiverse and we might be able to see a dream of mine ; dynamic knowledge content. Where I might be an expert in databases so I can get the condensed version of how postgres but get the beginners version of kubernetes on an article about deploying them together

  • Daz@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    I don’t think a federated wiki is solving any of the problems of wikipedia. You’ve just made a wiki that is more easily spammed and will have very few contributors. Yes, Wikipedia is centralized, but it’s a good thing. No one has to chase down the just perfect wikipedia site to find general information, just the one. The negative of wikipedia is more its sometimes questionable moderation and how its english-centric. This has more to do with fundamentally unequal internet infrastructure in most countries than anything though. Imperialism holds back tech.

    I agree that it might be fine for niche wikis but again, why in the world would you ever want your niche wiki federated? Sounds like a tech solution looking for the wrong problem.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      1 year ago

      Arguably even Fandom / Wikia is ruined by plain old greed more than centralization. What’s wrong with it isn’t content, it’s the fact every page loads seven ads, a roll of clickbait, and a goddamn Discord server. A weird blog site for editable text and tiny images would work fine if it wasn’t twisted to feed Engagemagog.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      sometimes questionable moderation

      That’s one way of putting it. Another way is “ramrodding the narratives of anglo chauvinists that are to the right of even the neoliberal historical consensus”.

      • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Wikipedia is good

        until you want to learn about a group or country opposed to the west and then it’s about as educational as stormfront

        • Daz@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Wikipedia doesn’t replace books. In my comment at least that’s why I was specific about “general information”. I think everyone must be aware that when it comes to Wikipedia on history or current events, it will largely be from a liberal and pro-west perspective. Not all the time, and usually the references and further reading sections point in more interesting directions. But this is far more valuable than the most boring so-called Marxist wikis. If you want critical history, go read historians like Gerald Horne, read first-hand accounts from journalists like Edgar Snow and so on.

          Besides the purely political, wikipedia is also good for overviews on technical and scientific interests. Even with the negatives of wikipedia, I’d take it any day over some decentralized spam fest where its a gamble if you found the best version of some article. Not to mention core issues of the fediverse, such as whether the hypothetical wiki instance you found yourself on will sustain itself long-term.

          Some days I wonder if the core Lemmy developers have drifted further towards anarchist politics and philosophy…

      • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
        0·
        1 year ago

        Self-hosting any wiki software solves the problems of Fandom, surely? I fail to see how federation solves any of Fandom’s issues.

        • morrowind@lemmy.ml
          0·
          1 year ago

          No, for the same reason forums can’t replace reddit. Self hosted wikis have been around before and after fandom. The reason it became popular was giving you all the fandom wikis together, one account, discoverable, user friendly so regulars can contribute. If I have to sign up to every fandom wiki I can contribute to, learn a new interface (likely something old and not mobile friendly) and rebuilt up any reputation to gain extra editing rights… I just won’t.

          Ibis then in theory allows you to use one account, federate your reputation, use one interface, with lots of third party options if you don’t like the official one (if lemmy is any indication) and have discoverability of new wikis.

  • Aaron@techhub.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    @nutomic This is a cool idea! But I have a lot of questions about how the heck you make a think like Wikipedia work in a federated way. Are articles duplicated on each instance, or do we lose some of them when an instance goes down? How does moderation work? How do I search it?

    Also, I see someone else posting screenshots, but the link you posted takes me out of my Mastodon app to a Lemmy page where I don’t see any links to Ibis itself.

    (Saw some criticism of the name there. Ibis is an awesome & appropriate name, IMO.)

    • nutomic@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      1 year ago

      Yes articles are duplicated in the same way posts are duplicated on Mastodon or Lemmy, so they wont go away. Moderation doesnt exist so far. There is a search field in the sidebar.

      The link goes directly to Ibis where I posted the announcement.

  • spaduf@slrpnk.net
    0·
    1 year ago

    This is super exciting. I think one of the things a lot of people are missing here is the potential for small wikis to augment existing fediverse communities. Reddit’s killer feature has always been the massive treasure trove of information for hobbyists and niche interests. There is huge potential in the fediverse to take advantage of that sort of natural collaborative knowledge building process.

    • nutomic@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      1 year ago

      Adding such functionality in Lemmy would be very complicated because Lemmy itself is already quite a complicated project. So it would require test coverage, pass code review, have a stable API and so on. Its better to experiment with this in a new project so I can write some quick and dirty code to get the basic functionality working. If it proves successful it can be integrated with Lemmy later.

  • Demoncracy@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    A great idea. I wonder if the fandom wikis could move onto the platform and therefore make the adoption widespread.

  • csm10495@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Why not just build a wikipedia mirror?

    All the data is available for free via download, torrent, etc.

    Idk I have no complaints about wikipedia to lead me to look for a federated alternative.