Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

ibis.wiki

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 266 posts

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#2

Post by mdaniel »

https://github.com/Nutomic/ibis#federation

> applying all associated edits in order. Instances can synchronize their articles with each other, and follow each other to receive updates about articles. Edits are done with diffs which are generated on the backend, and allow for conflict resolution similar to git.

I somehow got the impression that CRDT was stand of the art in multiple edits to a common document, and sincerely doubt that git's conflict resolution is going to be a good experience

Also, as I understand federated things, the real hazard to usefulness is one of discovery. So how would I, owner of a hypothetical mdaniel.wiki, discover who has the best CRDT documents in their wiki such that I could subscribe to updates on those pages? A wiki of wikis?

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#4

Post by lifthrasiir »

bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #3

If there's one thing I DON'T want a new version of, it's Wikipedia.

A federated version of Wikipedia wouldn't displace the centralized Wikipedia (for the same reason that Wikipedia didn't exactly replace traditional encyclopedias), but it has a potential to supplement everything else, and I believe it's worthwhile enough.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#6

Post by thaumasiotes »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #4
bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #3

If there's one thing I DON'T want a new version of, it's Wikipedia.

A federated version of Wikipedia wouldn't displace the centralized Wikipedia (for the same reason that Wikipedia didn't exactly replace traditional encyclopedias), but it has a potential to supplement everything else, and I believe it's worthwhile enough.

> for the same reason that Wikipedia didn't exactly replace traditional encyclopedias

It didn't?

Compare https://www.worldbook.com/world-book-encyclopedia-2024.aspx :

> As the only general reference encyclopedia still published today, The World Book Encyclopedia 2024 provides authoritative content on almost every topic to learners of all ages

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#8

Post by lifthrasiir »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #6
lifthrasiir wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A federated version of Wikipedia wouldn't displace the centralized Wikipedia (for the same reason that Wikipedia didn't exactly replace traditional encyclopedias), but it has a potential to supplement everything else, and I believe it's worthwhile enough.

> for the same reason that Wikipedia didn't exactly replace traditional encyclopedias It didn't? Compare https://www.worldbook.com/world-book-encyclopedia-2024.aspx : > As the only general reference encyclopedia still published today, The World Book Encyclopedia 2024 provides authoritative content on almost every topic to learners of all ages

Most traditional encyclopedias ceased to publish in the book form. Online encyclopedias are pretty much alive.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#9

Post by kemayo »

…they couldn’t think of a good Wikipedia scandal from within the last decade?

(The "why wikipedia is bad" bit at the start talks about things from 2005, 2007, and 2012.)

Anyway, this might be pretty "it's hard to make a man understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it" since I work for the WMF, but I'm not really seeing much appeal from federation in this area. It certainly seems less relevant than in social media, anyway.

Post reply on HN