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Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

ibis.wiki

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Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#221

Post by panopticon »

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).

SSL also protects against certain classes of third party snooping and injection. It's nice knowing that every piece of networking gear between me and the server doesn't know what I'm reading. Hell, I've seen ISPs inject ads into non-secure pages.

There are also networking policies that prevent non-https connections, so you could be accidentally blocking out users on a strictly managed device.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#222

Post by dghlsakjg »

rglullis wrote: post #185
dghlsakjg wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, look at crypto-currency, there have been more than ample examples that prove that a single person can aggregate power and wield it in self-interested ways.

It's the opposite: despite all the scams that have occurred in cryptocurrency, the overall system still continues to work. Rug-pulls are inevitable, what matters is whether people are left with power to move on or if they are trapped into the corrupt system. How many people managed to leave the banking system after the crash of 2008? See also: Reddit. Despite all the protests, the absolute majority of people went bac…

Despite all of the corruption/scams present in deeply centralized institutions, the overall system continues to work. What is your point?

>Rug-pulls are inevitable.

That sounds like a pretty undesirable system where illegal, immoral behavior is "inevitable", hardly a replacement for the existing institutions. Especially since crypto intentionally operates (or attempts to operate) outside the jurisdiction of anti corruption and law enforcement powers. I for one would much rather be the victim of a traditional institution since there are balancing institutions that exist to hold them accountable. The fact that the only organizations that have demonstrated the capability of reigning in crypto scammers are incredibly centralized is deeply ironic to me.

Plenty of people are unbanked, about 5% of adults in the US, and plenty of people left Reddit.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#223

Post by bawolff »

lencastre wrote: post #62
bawolff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it has a potential to supplement everything else, and I believe it's worthwhile enough. What do you think it would supplement?

It needs to be on the blotchein! What, too soon?

You know, technically i feel like wikipedia already is. Each revision of a pageis hashed, and they form a sequence in time. Isn't that the definition of block chain?

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#224

Post by bawolff »

chris_wot wrote: post #63
bawolff wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems mentioned aren't even real problems: - jimbo making CoI edits. He got caught, and edits were reviewed for appropriateness. System worked as it was supposed to - college drop out on arbcom (for those not in the know, arbcom is kind of like an internal court to solve user disputes. They are not allowed to solve content disputes or say what an article should say, only user behaviour problems). How is that a…

There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of decent editors who have stopped contributing due to toxic, non-productive people. This could be a way for them to continue contributing in a less toxic environment. The problem with Wikipedia is not consumption of content, but the contribution of content.

Wikipedia has certainly not solved the problem of getting huge groups of people to get along (especially when the people aren't getting paid and are instead presumably motivated by ideology). However i don't think anyone else has either.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#225

Post by ambigious7777 »

abeppu wrote: post #188

So, I agree that I don't think a software project solves the problems the post starts out with. However, I wonder if the project can be used to solve other issues? For example, I think there's a spectrum of knowledge-base like solutions, but the middle of the spectrum is often poorly served: - wikipedia: global, canonical reference material. Is very good, and we almost all use it in some fashion. - confluence/notion/…

git? not sure exactly what you're trying to say here, but you could do some stuff with git

have a local repo of your own notes, a hosted repo serving as the communal ref. if you want to make updates, commit and push --, you can cherry pick the sections you want.

i recall seeing something like mediawiki (but it stored articles as plaintext) a while back, you could use that for a web-based portal too

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#226

Post by vintermann »

tsukikage wrote: post #114
vintermann wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderation is fine, but it must not be confused with censorship. Moderation is when stuff is filtered out for you, because you don't want to see it. If you got to see it by mistake, you would agree that you didn't want to see that - maybe because it was factually wrong, maybe because it was disgusting, maybe because it was just irrelevant. Doesn't matter. All moderation is justified in terms of what the user wants to…

The distinction you are trying to make is impossible to make in practice. I don't want to see holocaust denial bullshit. Others might not have a problem with seeing it. Every sufficiently large space will contain at least one person who wants to post it and is therefore OK with seeing it. Is it moderation or censorship when a space I share with those people decides not to carry such content? The mods may not want to…

In many cases it's easy to make the distinction. Many will not hesitate to admit that they suppress things because of the effect they fear it will have on the audience. Not just the effect it will have on the appeal of the venue, or the image of the company, or whatever.

And I'm not even saying all censorship is necessarily wrong. There's one very obvious case where you keep people from seeing things because you fear the effect it will have on them (which is censorship), but it's generally accepted, and that is when the people in question are children.

Yeah, it's hard to judge people's sincerity. Do you really just worry that your space will be overrun with nazis/terfs/communists because you don't want to see that shit yourself, or are you afraid that they'll convince others? But that doesn't mean the distinction isn't worthwhile. Most of all, it's necessary to apply to yourself. It's a critical question you have to ask yourself, if people trust you to moderate for their benefit.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#227

Post by bawolff »

matt_heimer wrote: post #94
j_maffe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to share details/sources for this claim? I haven't experienced any of this toxicity while editing there myself.

I think AARoads might be a good example. https://slate.com/technology/2023/12/wikipedia-road-highway-... To me the main argument for decentralized wikis is when a community wants to capture deep subject focused knowledge. It's why I created https://wiki.osdev.org . Wikipedia is great but at it's core it will always be an Encyclopedia with a large breadth of knowledge. Specialization in a field is best handled elsewhe…

Ultimately though, i still think the existing system works well here.

Wikipedia wants to be a specific thing with a specific scope. Where that line should be is debatable, but it will eventually be drawn somewhere. No matter where you draw it, someone will be on the other side of it.

However, mediawiki is open source. The licenses of content are cc-by-sa (similar to gpl). You can start your own wiki. Similarly licensed content can be moved back and forth if rules change.

Perhaps this is just manual "federation" in a sense, but the ecosystem supports it. I persinally believe this is one of the reasons why mediawiki as an open source project should be a core part of Wikimedia's mission.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#228

Post by bawolff »

dagw wrote: post #59
bawolff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk if it was the first. Microsoft encarta was a pretty big player in that space back in the day.

Was Encarta ever released online? I only remember the CD-ROM version.

Yes, i think starting around 1999 so quite a bit after the cdrom releases. Admittedly that is only 2 years before wikipedia.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#229

Post by bawolff »

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…

There is a big difference between claiming that at some point in the last 5000 years there was almost certainly a big flood, and it plausibly inspired the bible story, versus claiming the specific details of a story from 5000 years ago are definitely literally correct.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#230

Post by omeid2 »

tsukikage wrote: post #55
omeid2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderation is not a feature; it is a limitation imposed by powers that be for you if you want to conduct business. Moderation is not a feature.

It is not appropriate to advertise in most online spaces for much the same reasons it is not appropriate to barge into a restaurant and walk from table to table peddling your wares to the customers. Spam is not an acceptable "business", and discussion spaces are not a plaform for spam.

You misunderstood. Moderation is the price you must pay if you want to operate an online business because it is often the law.

I don't care for removing spam, but funny enough, the most moderated platform allow you to go table to table peddling your wares, for a cost.

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