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

211–220 of 266 posts

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#211

Post by rglullis »

patrickmcnamara wrote: post #209
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.

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

Not replaced, but we should develop alternatives to the centralized systems that concentrate too much power to have a backup in case they fail.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#212

Post by LordDragonfang »

hnbad wrote: post #148
agumonkey wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect Beyond the Wikipedia definition, I've heard the term used to describe the phenomenon of people looking at an ugly codebase with tons of special cases and expectations, thinking they can create a leaner version only to end up going nowhere because all those special cases and expectations that made for ugly UML diagrams had reasons to exist and the overconfidence led t…

Having read the book that term came from, I recall that being more about the developers of the first system feeling overconfidence in their abilities on a version two, rather than an outsider looking in (as is the case here).

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#213

Post by LordDragonfang »

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.

I've seen something similar referred to as the "Voat" effect. Voat was a reddit alternative that popped up when reddit started banning subs that had poor optics (the explicit hate subreddits, the pro-racism subreddits, the basically-child-porn subs). Voat was founded on a principle of free speech, allowing whatever content users wanted.

Regardless of whether reddit made the correct decision banning those suspect subreddits, it turns out having a community composed almost entirely of those cast-offs is not a pleasant place to be.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#214

Post by hagbard_c »

lolc wrote: post #177
nick238 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They claim physical reality of the biblical flood

There is evidence of the Mediterranean Basin flooding after breach of a land bridge across what is now the Strait of Gibraltar [1,2] some 5 million years ago. In the same way there is some evidence of the Black Sea rapidly expanding some 8000 years ago [3]. Similar 'catastrophic flood' scenarios have played out elsewhere on the planet which has led to the rise of flood myths like the Biblical flood. While Conservapedia goes heavy on scripture in laying out their proof for a historical basis for the flood (i.e. they are just as biased as Wikipedia tends to be on politically contentious subjects) it is a rational position to state that the myriad of flood myths around the world and along the ages are based on historical flood events.

In short, Conservapedia does what Wikipedia does but replaces the 'progressive' bias with a 'conservative' one.

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#215

Post by hughesjj »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #213
agumonkey wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen something similar referred to as the "Voat" effect. Voat was a reddit alternative that popped up when reddit started banning subs that had poor optics (the explicit hate subreddits, the pro-racism subreddits, the basically-child-porn subs). Voat was founded on a principle of free speech, allowing whatever content users wanted. Regardless of whether reddit made the correct decision banning those suspect subr…

I tried it for a solid 5m before noping TF out. There was also a bunch of mudslinging against Ellen Pao when it turned out she was basically just a scapegoat for the founders and other reddit higher ups to make some unpopular (at the time, given public context) decisions

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#216

Post by nyolfen »

lolc wrote: post #177
nick238 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the guy who runs this was an editor on the harvard law review with obama

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#217

Post by archagon »

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 feel the second biggest innovation of Wikipedia, after the wiki format itself, is establishing the proper tooling, policies, and incentives to allow a stable hierarchy of editors and maintainers to develop. This is the aspect that gives Wikipedia its longevity.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#218

Post by BizarroLand »

shuntress wrote: post #210
BizarroLand wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

True, but based on the remainder of the page, my guess is that they found some correlation between SSL and the Mark of the Beast or the New World Order or some other craziness.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#219

Post by lolc »

hagbard_c wrote: post #214
lolc wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They claim physical reality of the biblical flood There is evidence of the Mediterranean Basin flooding after breach of a land bridge across what is now the Strait of Gibraltar [1,2] some 5 million years ago. In the same way there is some evidence of the Black Sea rapidly expanding some 8000 years ago [3]. Similar 'catastrophic flood' scenarios have played out elsewhere on the planet which has led to the rise of fl…

Yea these flood events are interesting. But did you read the Conservapedia page? They are very specific about the flood having happened 5000 years ago and say it was a global phenomenon. That was just the first link I clicked on the homepage. I dare you to find something equally implausible on the English Wikipedia homepage.

And if you don't find the biblical flood implausible, well, I'm somewhat intrigued why you believe that to be an option.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#220

Post by hagbard_c »

lolc wrote: post #219
hagbard_c wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They claim physical reality of the biblical flood There is evidence of the Mediterranean Basin flooding after breach of a land bridge across what is now the Strait of Gibraltar [1,2] some 5 million years ago. In the same way there is some evidence of the Black Sea rapidly expanding some 8000 years ago [3]. Similar 'catastrophic flood' scenarios have played out elsewhere on the planet which has led to the rise of fl…

Yea these flood events are interesting. But did you read the Conservapedia page? They are very specific about the flood having happened 5000 years ago and say it was a global phenomenon. That was just the first link I clicked on the homepage. I dare you to find something equally implausible on the English Wikipedia homepage. And if you don't find the biblical flood implausible, well, I'm somewhat intrigued why you be…

Looking at Conservapedia from a 'liberal' standpoint is like looking at Wikipedia from a 'conservative' standpoint. Where a Conservapedia article like the one you mentioned - the Biblical flood being based on a recent 'global' flood event - is hard to take seriously by 'liberals' the same goes for Wikipedia articles like 'Non-binary gender' [1] to 'conservatives'. Both Conservapedia as well as Wikipedia treat highly contentious issues - the 'truth' of Bible stories and the 'truth' of gender ideology - as settled facts where in reality both are very much up for discussion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary_gender

Post reply on HN