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Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

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Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#201

Post by solidsnack9000 »

agumonkey wrote: post #95
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…

I wonder if this has a name, it's a common reflex that pops up regularly, and yeah most of the time nothing comes out of it.

Maybe we should name it. The "alt-Wiki reflex" or something like that.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#202

Post by thcipriani »

jrm4 wrote: post #178

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 v…

WikiNews[0] sounds like the news bit of what you're describing.

[0]: https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page>

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#203

Post by araes »

kaibee wrote: post #196
jrm4 wrote: post #178

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 v…

> "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? I read a comment here on HN recently, wish I could find it now (I thi…

It's known as the Valley of Death syndrome. [♪][♫][ꜘ]

Especially common in the DoD where they're good at funding enormous numbers of SBIRs/STTRs, yet they never go anywhere, because all large money contracts are guaranteed to be vacuumed up by Lockheed / Raytheon / Northrup Grumman / Boeing / General Dynamics / Teledyne Brown / Honeywell / ect...

And in most cases (in my opinion, not legally binding), they purposely, slowly build cripple-ware with planned obsolescence that results in equipment that's vestigial before it launches and immediately needs 'upgrade' contracts.

[♪] DoD funding, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contracting/2023/07/defense-i...

[♫] VC investment, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/death-valley-curve.asp

[ꜘ] US Biomanufacturing, https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/mind-gap-bridging-...

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#204

Post by jjmarr »

observationist wrote: post #138
npteljes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunning–Kruger effect might have something to do with it. People spotting issue in an established project, having an idea about how to improve it, but no actual experience in running such projects or even knowing the history and context of the established project. And the lack of this knowledge helping to overestimate their ability and perceived chance of success.

If someone has staked a claim over an article, regardless of its factual accuracy, it's almost impossible to fix problems. Look at any politicians, celebrities, topics that are contentious in the public sphere, and you'll find control over the topic has been taken. There is no sane recourse - you can find endless examples of years long discussions as people who know what they're talking about battle it out with empty…

Speaking as someone who's been on there for years, the process is about as fair and transparent as it can be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discus...

You make a change, it gets reverted, and then you discuss it. The number one mistake I see new editors make is they don't understand how discussion works and when to seek additional input.

After being reverted, you're expected to start a discussion on the talk page. So many people do not do that, and instead try to communicate through 200 character edit summaries.

But talk pages are just the first step. The next step is to get more people involved. There are a bunch of informal rules which editors have tried to write down on how you can bring more people to a talk page in a fair way (otherwise you would only solicit input from people you would agree with).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution

The typical way this is done is through an RfC, which is a structured discussion between multiple options. When you set up an RfC to resolve a dispute, a bot randomly messages people who are interested in the general area to comment at the talk page. That means you get a bunch of uninvolved editors that don't really have any stake in the dispute and are more level-headed.

The discussion's consensus itself is then evaluated by someone (a closer) who must be uninvolved. In a contentious subject it is often an administrator who has never edited in the topic area before. The closer must give reasons for their decision and an explanation, and there is a working appeals process.

Contrast to virtually any other website where decisions are frequently made by people involved in disputes, you typically don't get reasons for why something is moderated, and you can't effectively appeal to another decision maker as you don't understand the reasoning upon which the decision is based.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#205

Post by tux3 »

lupusreal wrote: post #164
tux3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main concern Wikipedia has with notability is that if you don't have reputable secondary source writing about the topic, then you won't have references for any claims in the article. People just starting adding things that they know, or that "everyone knows". When people disagree about content, Wikipedia always falls back to just reflecting what reliable sources says. And if they disagree, people can always colla…

But "has reputable secondary sources" isn't even close to Wikipedia's real 'notability' determination.

Well, I can only say that it's what goes into my decision process. And it is a good part of what the written guidelines focus on.

No promises about what anyone else might be thinking at AfD!*

*(Articles for Deletion. The place where people spend a lot of time discussing notability)

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#206

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

vkou wrote: post #186
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

But... It was a misogynistic harassment campaign. Some maybe well-meaning useful idiots also hitched their horse to it (and most have not even been tarnished by it), but that was the main thrust of that adventure. Is Wikipedia supposed to describe World War II as a 'small disagreement over national borders and ethnic purity', lest it be accused of partiality? A spade's a spade, a war's a war, a harassment campaign is…

The KYM article mentions the harassment but is less editorialized.

"The term has also since been used to describe the group of internet users, based mainly on Twitter, who claim that there is a lack of transparency within the video game journalism industry. These same people have also been criticized of practicing misogyny and sexism by many, through harassment and trolling, referring to their opposition as social justice warriors."

Compare that to the indignation dripping from the wiki paragraph.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#207

Post by BizarroLand »

arp242 wrote: post #184
theamk wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a non-zero amount of people who are unhappy with wikipedia's policy. The "rot in wikipedia" link gives some examples: "fields as diverse as Complementary and Alternative Medicine and progressive politics" I am afraid that the new clone would be mostly full of pages about "Curing Cancer using Magic Healing Crystals", because people writing amount more conventional knowledge would prefer traditional wikipedia.

That article is upset alternative "medicine" quackery isn't taken serious. In particular it seems upset that it calls Gary "you can cure AIDS with a diet" Null's fraudulent bullshit exact that. It calls Stephen Barrett from quackwatch "a discredited former psychiatrist", which is a blatant brazen lie. That article is the classic "Wikipedia criticism": butthurt they can't spread their favourite flavour of shit on Wiki…

That article (http://helenofdestroy.com/index.php/exposing-wikipedia/49-wi...) is a perfect example of radicalizing material.

It starts off gentle, "OMG guys, look at the sketchy things this person who is typically portrayed as "One of the good ones" has been doing!"

And then it ramps up, "they claim to have 100,000 editors, but it actually only has 30,000. What is up with that?"

Insert picture of Wikipedia icon colored red with devil horns, pitchfork and tail.

Then: Big Oil has been paying people to edit its articles! There are companies who exist to edit Wikipedia articles and they work for the bag guys! Wikipedia makes millions of dollars a year! The CIA edits Wikipedia! BIG PHARMA! And another bad guy ALSO PAID TO HAVE WIKIPEDIA EDITED OMG!

(trust me, here's a reference number to a link below that we all know you will definitely read and verify the authenticity of ;) )

Then Washington! The "Phillip Cross Affair"! Dictators!

And once you are sufficiently outraged, also, here's this poor little guy, just a little guy, an everyman, just like you, being picked on by the big bad evil wikipedia editors because he's right and they're wrong and they don't like that.

How can you tolerate this injustice!?!

___________________________________________________________________________

And it all makes sense, inside of its bubble. Outside of verification, this is terrible.

But then you look at the rest of the website:

http://helenofdestroy.com (no ssl certificate because?)

And the rest of the webpage is pure distilled "covid, conspiracies, bill gates, commoncore, newspeak, prince andrew, coronapocalypse, biden, New world order, China blah blah blah blah" insanity.

And you see exactly where being radicalized leads you. Desperately searching for the truth at the core of every lie, ultimately burying yourself under a mountain of bullshit in hopes of finding a pearl.

You're not gonna find a pearl. At best, it's going to be an undigested piece of corn.

Caveat Emptor, don't buy the bullshit.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#208

Post by SpecialistK »

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…

> 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.

Can confirm firsthand. The wiki project I founded was pretty niche (no overlap with Wikipedia) but took hundreds of hours of page creation just to get off the ground. It has to be a labour of love.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#209

Post by patrickmcnamara »

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.

What's the argument here? If it is possible for something to be corrupt it shouldn't exist and should be replaced?

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#210

Post by shuntress »

BizarroLand wrote: post #207
arp242 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is upset alternative "medicine" quackery isn't taken serious. In particular it seems upset that it calls Gary "you can cure AIDS with a diet" Null's fraudulent bullshit exact that. It calls Stephen Barrett from quackwatch "a discredited former psychiatrist", which is a blatant brazen lie. That article is the classic "Wikipedia criticism": butthurt they can't spread their favourite flavour of shit on Wiki…

That article ( http://helenofdestroy.com/index.php/exposing-wikipedia/49-wi... ) is a perfect example of radicalizing material. It starts off gentle, "OMG guys, look at the sketchy things this person who is typically portrayed as "One of the good ones" has been doing!" And then it ramps up, "they claim to have 100,000 editors, but it actually only has 30,000. What is up with that?" Insert picture of Wikipedia icon co…

> no ssl certificate because?

This is way beside the point but there is nothing inherently wrong with unsecured plain http traffic if you aren't accepting user information over that connection (such as a name/password, auth token or whatever).

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