• Dessalines@lemmy.ml
    5·
    8 months ago

    Everyone should see how incredibly important this project is, and its potential. Wikipedia is yet another US-controlled and domiciled site, with a history of bribery, scandals, and links to the US state department. It has a near-monopoly on information in many languages, and its reach extends far outside US borders. Federation allows the possibility of connecting to other servers, collaborating on articles, forking articles, and maintaining your own versions, in a way that wikipedia or even a self-hosted mediawiki doesn’t.

    Also ibis allows limited / niche wikis, devoted to specific fields, which is probably the biggest use-case I can see for Ibis early on.

    Congrats on a first release!

    • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      8 months ago

      Wikipedia also releases all content for free download under a permissive license, so I don’t think it’s fair to say that the US government is a meaningful threat to its quality of information, especially over non-English languages that are managed by an independent set of volunteers who could pack up their bags and move everything over wherever they want at any point.

      Still a cool project and technological diversity is good though.

      • ikka@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        8 months ago

        Wikipedia also releases all content for free download under a permissive license, so I don’t think it’s fair to say that the US government is a meaningful threat to its quality of information

        What? How are these two points related at all?

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          8 months ago

          Anyone can fork at any time. The US gov could theoretically hold Wikipedia’s brand and servers hostage, but the actually valuable stuff is already mirrored in a decentralized fashion that is completely unrestricted under US and international law.

          EDIT: Maybe you meant that the US could covertly vandalize Wikipedia? Maybe, if they keep it very low-key. Editors are used to this kind of stuff though, it happens all the time from all governments since they can just, y’know, edit it. Anything actually impactful will be noticed by the editors which will just cause a fork.

          • CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            8 months ago

            Many of the editors are themselves neoliberal American cultural imperialists and proud of it. The issue isn’t direct control so much as an army of useful idiots.

  • joenforcer@midwest.social
    3·
    8 months ago

    This feels like a hasty “solution” to an invented “problem”. Sure, Wikipedia isn’t squeaky clean, but it’s pretty damn good for something that people have been freely adding knowledge to for decades. The cherry-picked examples of what makes Wikipedia " bad" are really not outrageous enough to create something even more niche than Wikia, Fandom, or the late Encyclopedia Dramatica. I appreciate the thought, but federation is not a silver bullet for everything. Don’t glorify federation the way cryptobros glorify the block chain as the answer to all the problems of the world.

    • jeremyparker@programming.dev
      2·
      8 months ago

      So you’re saying you want a federated wiki that uses a blockchain??? Genius.

      Kidding aside, you’re absolutely right. Wikipedia is one of the very few if not ONLY examples of centralized tech that ISN’T absolute toxic garbage. Is it perfect? No. From what I understand, humans are involved in it, so, no, it’s not perfect.

      If you want to federate some big ol toxic shit hole, Amazon, Netflix, any of Google’s many spywares – there’s loads of way more shitty things we would benefit from ditching.

      Edit: the “federated Netflix” – I know it sounds weird, but I actually think it would be really cool. Think of it more like Nebula+YouTube: “anyone” (anyone federated with other instances) can “upload” videos, and subcription fees go mostly to the creator with a little going to The Federation. Idk the payment details, that would be hard, but no one said beating Netflix would be easy.

      And federated Amazon – that seems like fish in a barrel, or low hanging fruit, whichever you prefer. Complicated and probably a lot more overhead, but not conceptually challenging.

        • jeremyparker@programming.dev
          2·
          8 months ago

          Yeah I was thinking more of a paid service, I guess more like Nebula then Netflix, since Netflix just shows TV shows and movies made by big companies. I don’t mind paying for things if they’re good things, and I know the right people are getting the money for it.

      • Natanael@slrpnk.net
        1·
        8 months ago

        There’s a wiki program that natively uses a version control repository, Fossil. You can fork a Fossil wiki and contribute updates back to the original.

        It wouldn’t be too hard to for example create a few Fossil repositories for different topics where the admins on each are subject matter experts (to ensure quality of contributions), and then have a client which connects to them all and with a scheme for cross linking between them

        Peertube already exists for video, it’s more like a different take on bittorrent.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      It only gets corrupted by state department interests if it gets popular, so we must work to make it less popular! (edit: I hope its obvious this is a joke)

  • Salamander@mander.xyz
    2·
    8 months ago

    First of all, congratulations for bringing a baby girl into this world!! You must be really excited! I am very happy for you!

    This looks very cool. I set up a wiki (https://ibis.mander.xyz/) and I will make an effort to populate it with some Lemmy lore and interesting science/tech 😄 Hopefully I can set some time aside and help with a tiny bit of code too.

  • roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
    2·
    8 months ago

    This is a great project. I had the same idea myself, and posted about it, but never did anything about it! It’s great that people like you are here, with the creativity, and the motivation and skills to do this work.

    I think this project is as necessary as Wikipedia itself.

    The criticisms in these comments are mostly identical to the opinion most people had about Wikipedia when it started - the it would become a cesspool of nonsense and misinformation. That it was useless and worthless when encyclopaedias already exist.

    Wikipedia was the first step in broadening what a source if authoritative information can be. It in fact created richer and more truthful information than was possible before, and enlightened the world. Ibis is a necessary second step on the same path.

    It will be most valuable for articles like Tieneman square, or the Gilets Jaunes, where there are sharply different perspectives on the same matter, and there will never be agreement. A single monolithic Wikipedia cannot speak about them. Today, wiki gives one perspective and calls it the truth. This was fine in the 20th century when most people believed in simple truths. They were told what to think by single sources. They never left their filter bubbles. This is not sustainable anymore.

    To succeed and change the world, this project must do a few things right.

    1. The default instance should just be a mirror of Wikipedia. This is the default source of information on everything, so it would be crazy to omit it. Omitting it means putting yourself in competition with it, and you will lose. By encompassing it, the information in Ibis is from day 1 greater then wiki. Then Ibis will just supersede wiki.

    2. There should be a sidebar with links to the sane article on other instances. So someone reading about trickle down economics on right wing instance, he can instantly switch to the same article on a left wing wiki and read the other side of it. That’s the feature that will make it worthwhile for people.

    3. It should look like Wikipedia. For familiarity. This will help people transition.

    • nutomic@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      8 months ago

      Thanks for the support. I think the era of single, centralized sources of information will soon be in the past.

      1. This would be a project on its own, with writing import scripts, hosting an instance etc. Certainly not something I have time for, just like I’m not running a Reddit mirror for Lemmy. If you or someone else wants to set it up, go ahead!
      2. How would you detect that it’s the same article, only from having the identical title? That could fail in lots of ways.
      3. I agree about this.
      • roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
        2·
        8 months ago

        1. I just assumed that would be easy, that you would have one instance with no actual content. It just fetches the wikipedia article with the same name, directly from the wikipedia website. I guess I didn’t really think about it.

        2. I guess that’s a design choice. Looking at different ways similar issues have been solved already…

        How does wikipedia decide that the same article is available in different languages? I guess there is a database of links which has to be maintained.

        Alternatively, it could assume that articles are the same if they have the same name, like in your example where “Mountain” can have an article on a poetry instance and on a geography instance, but the software treats them as the same article.

        Wikipedia can understand that “Rep of Ireland” = “Republic of Ireland”. So I guess there is a look-up-table saying that these two names refer to the same thing.

        Then, wikipedia can also understand cases where articles can have the same name but be unrelated. Like RIC (paramilitary group) is not the same as RIC (feature of a democracy).

        I do think, if each Ibis instance is isolated, it won’t be much different from having many separate wiki websites. When the software automatically links you to the same information on different instances, that’s when the idea becomes really interesting and valuable.

  • Catfish [she/her]@lemmygrad.ml
    2·
    8 months ago

    Crazy how many people can suddenly peer into the future when this post was made! I hope they can use this power for good, maybe save us from horrible tragedies in the future instead of wailing about a Wikipedia alternative. Great work nutomic! I hope folks pitch in to help this project you’ve begun.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      2·
      8 months ago

      Half the comments in this thread are the exact same as when we started working on a reddit alternative lol. “I don’t see why you’re doing this, reddit works fine for me.”

      Also I’m pretty stunned that more people aren’t aware of wikipedia’s many scandals and issues. I suppose if you use a site every day and don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes, you don’t seek these things out.

      • Catfish [she/her]@lemmygrad.ml
        1·
        8 months ago

        I suppose if you use a site every day and don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes, you don’t seek these things out.

        This ignorance is just more reason to continue working on the fediverse to help break these walls down, you are on the right path. o7

  • Manucode@feddit.de
    2·
    8 months ago

    I’m rather sceptical that this can work as a good alternative to Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s content moderation system is in my opinion both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. To create a better Wikipedia, you would have to somehow innovate in that regard. I don’t think federation helps in any way with this problem. I do though see potential in Ibis for niche wikis which are currently mostly hosted on fandom.org. If you could create distinct wiki’s for different topics and allow them to interconnect when it makes sense, Ibis might have a chance there.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      I’m going to use your comment to tell people to download Indie Wiki Buddy. It’s a plug-in for your browser that redirects Fandom to independent alternatives. I highly recommend it.

      • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        8 months ago

        If you think a centralized organization governed by legalism is opaque, just wait until you see a thousand islands of anarchy.

        • ikka@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          8 months ago

          No I think it would actually be great. You could peek at two opposing views on the same article, for example. I’m sure some “instances” would be ripe with disinformation but what’s it to you? Idiots are already lapping up disinformation like candy. It’s not like wikipedia isn’t filled with it already…

              • Umbrias@beehaw.org
                1·
                8 months ago

                Not only is the noise ratio low, this seems like a good lesson in “encyclopedias are not primary sources nor arbiters nor authorities on information.” Yes, people use Wikipedia that way anyway. No, baking in an even lower trust system does not seem like it’s actually a fix to any of Wikipedia’s problems.

          • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
            0·
            8 months ago

            I don’t need opposing views on subjects, I need the most accurate one that’s the best researched and sourced.

            • ikka@lemmy.sdf.org
              0·
              8 months ago

              Good thing Wikipedia articles are always the best researched and sourced!

              In 2023, Jan Grabowski and Shira Klein published an article in the Journal of Holocaust Research in which they said they had discovered a “systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history” on the English-language Wikipedia.[367] Analysing 25 Wikipedia articles and almost 300 back pages (including talk pages, noticeboards and arbitration cases), Grabowski and Klein stated they have shown how a small group of editors managed to impose a fringe narrative on Polish-Jewish relations, informed by Polish nationalist propaganda and far removed from evidence-driven historical research. In addition to the article on the Warsaw concentration camp, the authors conclude that the activities of the editors’ group had an effect on several articles, such as History of the Jews in Poland, Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust and Jew with a coin. Nationalist editing on these and other articles allegedly included content ranging “from minor errors to subtle manipulations and outright lies”, examples of which the authors offer.[367]

              • 367: Grabowski, Jan; Klein, Shira (February 9, 2023). “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust”. The Journal of Holocaust Research. 37 (2): 133–190. doi:10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939. ISSN 2578-5648. S2CID 257188267.
              • ripcord@lemmy.world
                01·
                8 months ago

                I mean, much more often than not, and for the majority of the time, they are.

                What’s the alternative you’re suggesting that would be comparably comprehensive but regularly more reliable…?

  • CameronDev@programming.dev
    1·
    8 months ago

    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 is where ActivityPub comes in, the protocol used by Mastodon, Lemmy, Peertube and many other federated social media projects.

    Thank god Lemmy has no malicious users/bad actors/spam issues…

    Interesting idea anyway. I would be a bit more worried that when important information is siloed onto instances, each instance becomes a point of failure, and thus can be corrupted or lost.

    Good luck :)

    • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
      1·
      8 months ago

      Right? Right now with Wikimedia, everything is hosted in one place and moderated in one place. Having everything spread about in various instances with varying degrees of moderation and rules, and the option to block other instances is not great for information quality and sharing.

      • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
        1·
        8 months ago

        Wikipedia has strict notability requirements, which is what spawned the popularity wikia/fandom which is a pretty terrible user experience.

        Wikipedia also has an infamously pro-neoliberal bias.

        • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          8 months ago

          The neoliberal bias also fucks with the notability requirements. The amount of citation loops on anything even remotely political is absurd.

          • MBM@lemmings.world
            1·
            8 months ago

            Neoliberalism =/= liberalism and especially not leftism (or just “the opposite of conservatism”), which I assume is what Colbert means

          • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
            1·
            8 months ago

            “In every political community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.” - Phil Ochs

          • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            8 months ago

            Neoliberalism is stuff like putting children to work in the coal mines and also includes modern day conservatives (especially the nazi ones, a lot of people don’t realize how the nazi regime was more or less liberalism taken to its conclusion, which is why it took a war for them to face any opposition from the liberal world order, and even then it was only because they bit the hand that fed them)

          • Alsephina@lemmy.mlEnglish
            11·
            8 months ago

            “The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative.”

            - Malcolm X

              • Alsephina@lemmy.mlEnglish
                11·
                8 months ago

                Not at all. We’ve seen this our whole lives, and are currently seeing it with the liberal response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine too. They only support emancipatory movements in theory, but in practice are the same as conservatives: they stop when those people are taking direct action for emancipation, specially when it threatens their own positions.

                "…who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” - MLK

                Liberals didn’t like Mandela’s use of force to overthrow apartheid in South Africa, and they wouldn’t approve of it if it happened now either. The same way they aren’t approving of Palestinian resistance groups like Hamas in their war against the apartheid colony “israel”.

                • Feathercrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  8 months ago

                  I’ve seen fairly universal support from liberal voters both irl and online for Palestine, but not from our politicians.

  • iso@lemy.lol
    1·
    8 months ago

    You’ve picked a nice name :) I’m glad you didn’t choose fedipedia.

    I just created an account on open.ibis.wiki and created “Lemmy” article but it’s not shown on ibis.wiki 🤔 I guess it still has a long way to go, but I think it’s a nice project 👍

  • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafe
    1·
    8 months ago

    The abuse potential this has feels quite concerning. You’ve just given kiwifarms a decentralized tool to host its stalking profiles on people.

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      I’m honestly curious about what abuse potential this has compared to other federated platforms, because “it could be used to host dox” is a complaint that I’ve heard about Lemmy as well.

    • Margot Robbie@lemm.ee
      1·
      8 months ago

      Gabe, KiwiFarm started from the forum section of CWC Wiki (in fact, the name KiwiFarms itself is a corruption of “CWC Wiki Forums”), which was hosted on MediaWiki, so “not letting KiwiFarms host their own wiki” is a ship that has long since sailed.

      I really fail to see how this has more abuse potential than hosting an independent wiki on MediaWiki, even if the content they host there is… not very nice, to say the least. If anything, there is more control against abuse since they would just be defederated.