• Firefly7@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    16·
    8 months ago

    Not sure what the use case is for a federated wiki. It lets you… edit a different wiki with your account from your initial one? View pages from other wikis using your preferred website’s UI? Know which wikis are considered to have good info by the admins of the wiki you’re browsing from?

    This is presented as a solution to Wikipedia’s content moderation problems, but it doesn’t do much against that that wouldn’t also be done by just having a bunch of separate, non-federated wikis that link to each others’ pages. The difference between linking to a wiki in the federation network, and linking to one outside the federation network, is that the ui will be different and you’d have to make a new account to edit things.

    I suppose it makes sense for a search feature? You can search for a concept and select the wiki which approaches the concept from your desired angle (e.g. broad overview, scientific detail, hobbyist), and you’d know that all the options were wikis that haven’t been defederated and likely have some trustworthiness. With the decline of google and search engines in general, I can see this being helpful. But it relies on the trustworthiness of your home wiki’s admin, and any large wiki would likely begin to have many of the same problems that the announcement post criticizes Wikipedia for. And all this would likely go over the head of any average visitor, or average editor.

    I don’t know. I’m happy this exists. I think it’s interesting to think about what structures would lead to something better than Wikipedia. I might find it helpful once someone creates a good frontend for it, and then maybe the community can donate to create a free hosting service for Ibis wikis. Thank you for making it.

    • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      8 months ago

      I think this would be immensely helpful for niche topics, but I don’t really see it as much of a direct competitor to Wikipedia. Interwiki links have been a thing for a long time, but they’re not really used that much. They also are used by specialized shortcut syntax instead of using a more intuitive domain name syntax. So let’s say you have a wiki for the Flash TV show and you want to link to an article in the Flash comic wiki. This would be great for that. Maybe have “search related wikis” as an option to search some hand picked wikis?

      But for going head-to-head with Wikipedia, I don’t really see it so much. Part of the success of Wikipedia is that it forces editors to work in a single namespace, debate the contents, use a common set of policies, and so on. There is also a lot of policy, process, human knowledge, and institution built up over the years geared solely towards writing an encyclopedia. If you go to Wikipedia, it may not be perfect, but it will have gone through that process. Trying to wade through hundreds of wikis to find a decent article does not sound like a treat, especially if effort gets spread across multiple wikis.

      Like with Lemmy, I am excited to see where this goes. And nutomic, congratulations with your daughter!

      • Microw@lemm.ee
        6·
        8 months ago

        I think this would be immensely helpful for niche topics

        This.

        I dont know how many people here are aware of Fandom, formerly known as Wikia. Basically what they are trying to do is collecting niche topic wikis in order to profit as much as possible. Very much criticized over the years by contributors for their practices.

        Ibis could be the answer for niche wikis who dont want to be associated with Fandom/Wikia.

        • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          8 months ago

          Fandom was exactly what I was thinking of. Just maybe without having more ads than content. That I’m not a fan of, especially for volunteer supplied content.

          Extra thought on search: add a weighting option so individual servers can be searched, but don’t come up as high in the rankings. So keeping with the superhero theme, have the Flash comic wiki with a 1 weighting and the more general DC comic and Arrowverse wikis with 0.8 weightings.

    • socsa@lemmy.ml
      21·
      8 months ago

      Based on how …certain… Lemmy instances have handled themselves, the intention to deal with “Wikipedia content moderation” here is almost certainly not to make a freer version of Wikipedia, but to make heavily censored content enclaves with the same obvious editorial restrictions concerning certain topics you find on certain large instances.

  • Manucode@feddit.de
    132·
    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
      6·
      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
        61·
        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
          13·
          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.

          • Murdoc@sh.itjust.works
            31·
            8 months ago

            So you’re saying it would rely on each person to stay objective and use good critical thinking, instead of accepting the first thing they read and fall down an echo-chamber rabbit hole? Wikipedia definitely doesn’t always get it right, but it does try to use a form of institutionalized objectivity.

            • ikka@lemmy.sdf.org
              12·
              8 months ago

              So you’re saying it would rely on each person to stay objective and use good critical thinking, instead of accepting the first thing they read and fall down an echo-chamber rabbit hole?

              This is such a rich statement to make from a social media site of all places. My guy have you even looked at what some of the instances on Lemmy believe in? How is a federated wiki site any different?

              but it does try to use a form of institutionalized objectivity.

              By all means use wikipedia if you wish. As I’ve already pointed out in another comment, Wikipedia is often edited by bad or nationalist actors that do go undetected for a while.

          • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
            21·
            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
              41·
              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
                3·
                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…?

                • Christian@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  1·
                  8 months ago

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

                  You don’t see this statement as dogmatic? How do you feel confident in this other than just a feeling?

                  The majority of the time the articles would require actual expertise to make that evaluation with confidence. An individual can take a few minutes to verify the sources, but for so many topics it’s not realistic to rule out omissions of sources that should be well-known, or even rule out that a source given provides an important broader context somewhere nearby that should be mentioned in the article but isn’t. Can you be sure that the author is trustworthy on this subject? It’s not enough to just check a single page mentioned in a book while ignoring the rest of the book and any context surrounding the author.

                  An expert on a very specialized topic could weigh with accuracy in on whether the wikipedia articles on their subject is well-researched and sourced, but that still won’t mean they can extrapolate their conclusion to other articles.

              • bermuda@beehaw.orgEnglish
                2·
                8 months ago

                I don’t think they’re suggesting wikipedia currently is “best researched and sourced,” just that a federated alternative wouldn’t automatically solve that issue.

      • Rolder@reddthat.com
        31·
        8 months ago

        Considering some of the ungodly biased wikipedia alternatives I see tossed around on Lemmy, I’m not too confident Ibis will end up any better.

        Besides, first I’m hearing of Wikipedia losing trust.

        • CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
          21·
          8 months ago

          Imagine it’s post-2001 and George Bush is saying we need to take away Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). You hear there is a controversy around this topic, so you look it up on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article may not even mention the controversy because it came from “fringe sources” or unreliable media, instead its rules mean they only share the message from approved media sources, and that means the article says Iraq definitely has WMDs and something must be done.

          This is how it works now, and always had.

          When I was in college in the second half of the 2000s, we were banned from using Wikipedia as a source due to the way it is built. Many complained but given how many controversies Wikipedia has found itself involved in which includes paid editors, state actors, only being able to use biased journalistic coverage to construct articles, refusing to use other media sources such as established bloggers…

          Trusting Wikipedia at any point was the mistake. It’s not even the Wikimedia foundation that is the issue, it’s the structure of the site. If no approved journalists will speak the truth, your article will be nothing but lies and Wikipedia editors will dutifully write those lies down and lock down the article if you attempt to correct them using sources they personally dislike.

          • Rolder@reddthat.com
            11·
            8 months ago

            I’ve never had issues with Wikipedia not at least mentioning a controversy on a topic if one exists. Got any current examples?

              • Rolder@reddthat.com
                22·
                8 months ago

                Never heard of any examples and certainly no one has provided any in this thread. Just been the usual muh western website is evil by default kind of stuff.

  • joenforcer@midwest.social
    112·
    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
      5·
      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.

      • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
        1·
        8 months ago

        I’ve just realised that I independently came up with the idea for federated services while imagining how to make yt better over 5 years ago.

        Cool!

        • jeremyparker@programming.dev
          3·
          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.

    • 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)

    • socsa@lemmy.ml
      11·
      8 months ago

      I mean we have seen how the Lemmy devs approach certain topics, and it is definitely not with a preference for openness or free exchange of ideas. There are certain topics here which have a hair trigger for content removal and bans, for extremely petty and minor “transgressions,” so the motivation here seems pretty transparent.

    • hamid@lemmy.world
      01·
      8 months ago

      I don’t think the fact that a small group of people who are easy to manipulate by the US government and millions of edits originating from Langley are a small or invented problem. I’m extremely scared of having resources being centralized and controlled by the US propaganda apparatus and think this is a major problem.

  • Safipok@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    8 months ago

    First of all I welcome this idea, and think it’s ok if there’s many different types of encyclopaedia on different perspectives. Now, how will a decentralised wiki deal with something like a rando claiming to be uni professor and inserting thyself in admin position over time? How is activitypub helpful in writing wiki?(Edit credits?)

    Finally a site you might find helpful: https://wikiindex.org/ (https://web.archive.org/wikiindex.org/ as it seems to be down)

  • roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
    8·
    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
      3·
      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
    6·
    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
      71·
      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
        4·
        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

  • antihumanitarian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    8 months ago

    This is almost entirely misdirected. The success of Wikipedia is from its human structures, the technical structure is close to meaningless. To propose a serious alternative you’d have to approach it from a social direction, how are you going to build a moderation incentive structures that forces your ideal outcomes?

    Federation isn’t a magic bullet for moderation, alone it creates fractal moderation problems.

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
      4·
      8 months ago

      When you’re a hammer, all problems look like nails. That’s most engineers’ perspective to social problems.

      Source: am engineer

  • pseudo@jlai.luEnglish
    5·
    8 months ago

    Thank you for that. It will probably work well in pair with Lemmy. The ability to compile a community or instance knowlegde out of the comment section and to an organised wiki will be very nice.

    But if someone here reading as the time and skill, the sofware the fediverse is lacking is tv tracker.

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
    51·
    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!

  • Daz@lemmy.ml
    51·
    8 months ago

    I don’t think a federated wiki is solving any of the problems of wikipedia. You’ve just made a wiki that is more easily spammed and will have very few contributors. Yes, Wikipedia is centralized, but it’s a good thing. No one has to chase down the just perfect wikipedia site to find general information, just the one. The negative of wikipedia is more its sometimes questionable moderation and how its english-centric. This has more to do with fundamentally unequal internet infrastructure in most countries than anything though. Imperialism holds back tech.

    I agree that it might be fine for niche wikis but again, why in the world would you ever want your niche wiki federated? Sounds like a tech solution looking for the wrong problem.

      • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
        31·
        8 months ago

        Self-hosting any wiki software solves the problems of Fandom, surely? I fail to see how federation solves any of Fandom’s issues.

        • morrowind@lemmy.ml
          1·
          8 months ago

          No, for the same reason forums can’t replace reddit. Self hosted wikis have been around before and after fandom. The reason it became popular was giving you all the fandom wikis together, one account, discoverable, user friendly so regulars can contribute. If I have to sign up to every fandom wiki I can contribute to, learn a new interface (likely something old and not mobile friendly) and rebuilt up any reputation to gain extra editing rights… I just won’t.

          Ibis then in theory allows you to use one account, federate your reputation, use one interface, with lots of third party options if you don’t like the official one (if lemmy is any indication) and have discoverability of new wikis.

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

        Wikipedia is good

        until you want to learn about a group or country opposed to the west and then it’s about as educational as stormfront

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      sometimes questionable moderation

      That’s one way of putting it. Another way is “ramrodding the narratives of anglo chauvinists that are to the right of even the neoliberal historical consensus”.

  • spaduf@slrpnk.net
    3·
    8 months ago

    This is super exciting. I think one of the things a lot of people are missing here is the potential for small wikis to augment existing fediverse communities. Reddit’s killer feature has always been the massive treasure trove of information for hobbyists and niche interests. There is huge potential in the fediverse to take advantage of that sort of natural collaborative knowledge building process.