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

241–250 of 266 posts

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#241

Post by mckn1ght »

hagbard_c wrote: post #239
lolc wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked for something that is equally implausible. So I take it you think people feeling non-binary is equally or more implausible than the biblical flood? Do people not identify as non-binary? Or are they lying about their feelings? Don't give me the "contentious" spiel. I don't care what some reader of Conservapedia may think. I'm asking you.

> I'm asking you. No ad-hominems, or rather you are looking at this as a 'liberal' would while I described a scenario in which a 'conservative' looks at the mentioned article and concept. In the "conservative's" opinion what is written there is just as implausible as what is written in the Conservapedia article on the 'truth' of the flood story. Both Wikipedia as well as Conservapedia are biased which is what this wa…

> Both Wikipedia as well as Conservapedia are biased

Both-sidesing this when you have already been presented with indefensible nonsense such as “e=mc^2 is liberal claptrap” is shameful. That page hasn’t been edited since mid-2022. There’s an entire article called “liberal claptrap” linked to from that statement that has remained unedited for 7 months. It shouldn’t even exist.

That garbage is not constructive and has no place in respectable discourse.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#242

Post by rglullis »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #222
rglullis wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corr…

> deeply centralized institutions, the overall system continues to work

Until they don't. You are comparing the worst of decentralized systems (rug-pulls) with the average-to-best-case of institutions that centralize power (western democracy governments) when we should be talking about the extreme cases: autocracies and dictatorships.

> hardly a replacement for the existing institutions.

Why do people can only think in binary terms? No one is calling for the "replacement" of the institutions. The idea is to build decentralized systems as a hedge against the centralized one.

You are repeatedly giving the "so you are saying..." line and it's starting to feel like you are purposefully misunderstanding the point.

> Plenty of people are unbanked

For their own choice or because they were excluded of the system? Wouldn't it be good to have an alternative that we could have as hedge against them?

> plenty of people left Reddit

Not enough to cause it to implode, and not enough to bring a critical mass to any alternative.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#243

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

lenerdenator wrote: post #146
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.

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…

"I'll write a new UNIX shell... with blackjack!... and hookers!"

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#244

Post by npteljes »

SpecialistK wrote: post #208
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.

I agree. I feel like it's a combination of labor of love, and the effort of organizing a community. I also think that with Wikis specifically, it needs to allow something that the original doesn't. For example this is why fandom wikis are popular, because they allow "in-universe" explanations and notability is only required in terms of the universe discussed. Or RationalWiki, which has a specifically different style guide, and an opinionated slant. Or Encyclopedia Dramatica, which allows... well not the healthiest things, but still, I consider it a successful project, compared to the ghost towns of other Wiki initiatives. And neither of these wikis aim to be alternatives to the original Wiki, which is also very important.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#245

Post by lolc »

hagbard_c wrote: post #239
lolc wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked for something that is equally implausible. So I take it you think people feeling non-binary is equally or more implausible than the biblical flood? Do people not identify as non-binary? Or are they lying about their feelings? Don't give me the "contentious" spiel. I don't care what some reader of Conservapedia may think. I'm asking you.

> I'm asking you. No ad-hominems, or rather you are looking at this as a 'liberal' would while I described a scenario in which a 'conservative' looks at the mentioned article and concept. In the "conservative's" opinion what is written there is just as implausible as what is written in the Conservapedia article on the 'truth' of the flood story. Both Wikipedia as well as Conservapedia are biased which is what this wa…

If I called you a fringe US conservative, that would be ad-hominem. We haven't gotten there because we're stuck at the question you are deflecting.

In my view, Conservapedia is an encyclopedia only by medieval standards. It is not useful to me except for entertainment and maybe if I wanted to write US cable news ad copy. What is it to you? Do you refer to it when you want to know about historical floods?

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#246

Post by npteljes »

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…

>but replaces the 'progressive' bias with a 'conservative' one.

Now this implies that this "conservative" bias is on a level of the "progressive" one. As if there are two sides, these two, and that the "conservative" has equal, if not more, merit than the "progressive" one. It's the false balance.

Funnily enough, Conservapedia has the article on it. But opening it reveals that it's not that rationality suddenly penetrated the conserva-universe, it's just that they project they exact thing they do onto the "liberals".

https://www.conservapedia.com/False_balance

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#248

Post by ChrisKnott »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #172
ChrisKnott wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This isn't "anything remotely political" is it, it's a highly contentious culture war issue among the chronically online. I was disputing the claim actually made, not a different claim you appear to have understood I was making.

For what it's worth, I agree with that KYM's opening paragraph is better and less-biased than Wikipedia's.

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#249

Post by jeegsy »

lenerdenator wrote: post #146
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.

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…

> where you can push an insane description of a topic and present it as reality is the point

Fair enough and indeed there are many examples. However I think good faith/steelmanning needs to come back in our discourse. It strikes me as an 'insane' description to suggest that the problems with Wikipedia can be properly captured by their resistance to 'insane' descriptions

Re: Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative

#250

Post by dghlsakjg »

hirako2000 wrote: post #193
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.

In any case the point made was that centralized systems always corrupt. Challenge it and dare finding one example that didn't get corrupted. Also it is unjust to name crypto/Blockchain as an example of decentralized system that gets corrupted. All corruption story in fact are centralized , but labelled as crypto, or touch the field of crypto but nonetheless are very centralized. E.g mtgox, bitconnect, Celsius, FTX. I…

You’re asking for things that you plan to “no true Scotsman”. If I name an institution you will claim it doesn’t count because it isn’t big enough, or that it actually is corrupt by your measure.

You have already done this with crypto. I.e. The corruption that occurs in crypto doesn’t count because those weren’t true crypto projects.

So in the spirit of the challenge. Tell me how the Adventure Cycling Association is corrupt?

Post reply on HN