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

171–180 of 266 posts

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#171

Post by tootie »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #142

> The fact is that we can’t rely on any single website to hold the whole world’s knowledge, because it can be corrupted sooner or later. The only solution is a distributed architecture, with many smaller websites connecting with each other and sharing information. This article doesn't even try to explain or convincingly make this argument, it just takes it as given.

To me, Wikipedia is the canonical answer for how centralization and content moderation should be done. They have solved the hard problems as well as anyone. Federated solutions basically sidestep the real problems by rendering them completely unsolvable.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#172

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #16
matricaria wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just search for anything remotely political and you will find a lot of bias.

I just picked a random political article to which I have no significant connection[0]; I don't notice "a lot of bias"...? For me Wikipedia is consistently amongst the least biased sources on the internet. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Labour_Party

Compare the first paragraphs of these two articles. Remember that Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign...

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#173

Post by rglullis »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #142

> The fact is that we can’t rely on any single website to hold the whole world’s knowledge, because it can be corrupted sooner or later. The only solution is a distributed architecture, with many smaller websites connecting with each other and sharing information. This article doesn't even try to explain or convincingly make this argument, it just takes it as given.

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Find me one example of institution that managed to go for any significant amount of time (say, longer than a decade) without facing corruption. I double-dare you.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#174

Post by 5900 »

user- wrote: post #168

Wikipedia has a very slick website on mobile, desktop and mobile apps. This page doesn't even render on my phone properly. Probably should fix that before it can approach being an alternative

It's unusable on mobile. Adding a basic responsive layout is essential and trivial compared to the problems Ibis is trying to solve.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#175

Post by vkou »

Loughla wrote: post #117
tux3 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has a similar problem to Stackoverflow, though nowhere near as bad, where the active community members really care about rules and have a whole established process and tooling for efficiently dealing with new contributions that don't necessarily meet that bar. It all sounds utterly reasonable from the point of view of the community, who is most exposed to very low-quality content, spam, and vandalism. But n…

The problem with this, with Wikipedia specifically is the good faith part. It isn't adherence to strict rules that is the problem. It's the massively toxic little kingdoms that have become established among power users/moderators. Like it or don't. Them is the facts.

That makes it no different from a run-of-the-mill legal system.

Which, for their flaws, do sometimes produce results.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#176

Post by dghlsakjg »

rglullis wrote: post #173
sharkjacobs wrote: post #142

> The fact is that we can’t rely on any single website to hold the whole world’s knowledge, because it can be corrupted sooner or later. The only solution is a distributed architecture, with many smaller websites connecting with each other and sharing information. This article doesn't even try to explain or convincingly make this argument, it just takes it as given.

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Find me one example of institution that managed to go for any significant amount of time (say, longer than a decade) without facing corruption. I double-dare you.

Decentralized organizations (institutions?) are not at all immune to corruption and malevolent inside actors.

One look at the world of decentralized crypto-currency more than proves that corruption is not limited to institutions.

Corruption seems inherent to humans, the difference is that institutions are well aware of this, and frequently set up controls and systems to balance power and fight the most obvious forms of corruption.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#177

Post by lolc »

nick238 wrote: post #157
lenerdenator wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Blackjack and Hookers" reflex, from Futurama when Bender gets thrown out of the amusement park on the Moon and says "I'll start my own theme park... with blackjack!... and hookers!... in fact, forget the park!" EDIT: Basically that's how these projects turn out. Having a theme park was never the point; blackjack and hookers were the point. Having a federated Wikipedia alternative isn't the point; having an encyc…

Wikipedia + Blackjack + Hookers - Wikipedia = https://www.conservapedia.com/

Wow I haven't seen a link to Conservapedia in a looong time. Out of curiosity, I clicked. They claim physical reality of the biblical flood: https://www.conservapedia.com/Great_Flood

And wow somebody has put a lot of work in this page https://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia_proven_right Great resource if you want to know what US bible people care about. They have institutionalised their confirmation bias.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#178

Post by jrm4 »

This feels like a really good idea, really poorly explained, especially with the whole "going up against Wikipedia" thing (Wikipedia being arguably the best mostly-decentralized thing ever?)

"Replacing Wikipedia" strikes me as one of the least essential ideas on making the web better these days, but "developing an alternative news/information thing that anyone can work on and edit" seems cool? Something between the very authoritative "Wikipedia" and the mostly "single-creator" things like githubs awesome lists, rentry's and so forth?

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#179

Post by jrm4 »

npteljes wrote: post #88

"There are many problems with Wikipedia. Here is an example from 12 years ago! Did we forget to mention that Wikipedia is now twice as old?" Ridiculous article. Organizing a wiki effort, just to spite the original won't work, because that's not enough, and not the right kind of fuel to last for such an undertaking. I feel like these people have no idea what kind of effort is to run an organization, instead seeing the…

Right? I think there is a cool idea here, but the article is so weirdly negative and generally garbage I have trouble telling.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#180

Post by rglullis »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #176
rglullis wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Find me one example of institution that managed to go for any significant amount of time (say, longer than a decade) without facing corruption. I double-dare you.

Decentralized organizations (institutions?) are not at all immune to corruption and malevolent inside actors. One look at the world of decentralized crypto-currency more than proves that corruption is not limited to institutions. Corruption seems inherent to humans, the difference is that institutions are well aware of this, and frequently set up controls and systems to balance power and fight the most obvious forms…

No one (reasonable) ever said that decentralization makes us immune to corruption. The argument is that decentralization reduces concentration of power and the potential damage that inevitably will occur when anyone in a position of power fails or tries to abuse the power they have.
Post reply on HN