Announcing Ibis, the federated Wikipedia Alternative : solarpunk

[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

... doesn't this already exist?

I mean to say, anyone can already start a website and call it a wiki, set whatever policies they want, synchronize with other websites via RSS feed or whatever, and open it to editing by anyone and everyone (or no one) they choose.

And anyone does. There are hundreds of thousands of wikis out there.

The point of decentralization and federation was to merge the benefits of personal websites - privacy and personal control of your data - with the communication and collaboration powers of centralized social media. So your account is hosted on your instance and under your control and then you can go post on a thousand other instances with that same account. And I don't think it's failed in that.

But wikis are already personal websites. And if somebody wants to federate a wiki they can host it on the same server they have their Lemmy instance on and put a link on the Lemmy homepage.

And the idea that a bunch of people hosting their own wikis with no correction or accountability mechanisms will be less corrupt and have less disinformation then those same people working together to build consensus on the same website? Not persuasive, is all I'm saying.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I can see the benefit for when different groups of Wikipedia editors have differing policy opinions where for an average user both the fork and the original are perfectly fine but now information is in both places or worse some in one and some in the other, especially for cross linking purposes. Wikipedia can hyperlink to wookiepedia for star wars stuff and wookiepedia can hyperlink to the aaroads wiki when referencing highways for example. It all become one much larger wiki effectively.

On the other hand, part of the draw of Wikipedia is the extremely high editing and page creation standards that has led to such a high quality source of information

Edit to add a positive and a negative:

I can see a federated wiki being very good for project wikis especially when linking to other projects, as well as for some level of redundancy

But also this is being developed by one of the 2 Lemmy developers, who still haven't implemented many of the needed moderation and administration tools for Lemmy

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

All good points, except the existing software does not have that developers name attached to it.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Am I the only person concerned that one of only two developers on Lemmy has started a new, massive undertaking, basically building a new lemmy?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I was able to complete a proof of concept in a relatively short time of four months

Interesting that they don't have time to add decent moderation tools, but do have time for this.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

Its free, open source software folks. Its fine to not be happy about a projects direction, but these comments are really treading the "I payed them $0 and I demand my moneys worth!" line.

He spent 4 months working on another free, open source project bexause he wanted to. That's perfectly fair on his part. Working for $0 on things you want to work on is a sane and basic right we all have. The work may even help lemmy in an as yet unknown way.

You are as equally free as the lemmy dev to work on moderation tools. The fact that you have put in the same amount of work as the dev should tamp down the criticism a ways.

Now if you donate to the lemmy devs directly, fire away. If you want to contribute directly, Rust is an excellent programming language that fits very well with the solarpunk ethos. It's incredibly efficient, so code uses less power than alternates, it's memory safe, so it by default eliminates 75% of the most common computer bugs, leading to safety, stability and reliability of the products it runs on, and its community is enthusiastic, which should ensure its longevity for decades to come. Learning it might be a good avenue if you want to help lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm not concerned because a person is choosing how they spend their spare time. I'm concerned because a person only has so much free time, and Lemmy development is already struggling.

Also the premise of it being free changes when people are paying specifically these two devs thousands of dollars to work on Lemmy, but that's not what I'm concerned about.

The other lemmy dev has side projects that don't concern me (such as an android keyboard). I'm specifically concerned about this Wikipedia project because they already know they can't keep up with the demands of Lemmy and now they want to build a second federated platform.

Again, not concerned about them choosing to spend their time on this, but I am concerned about Lemmy the software and it's road map out of beta.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I think thats a valid stance overall, but as is often the case with useful FOSS, there are thousands of demands with only so many people actually helping in anyway. The demands can easy overwhelm a dev who at some point made something useful "just because." To go from "I wanted to make something that helped" to "I have 5000 people making demands" is an immense strain, and one that kills FOSS, even very good FOSS, all the time.

I think if you are one of the people donating money, you can have more direct issues, because you are paying into lemmy to make it better. I think if you submit pull requests or bug reports or write documentation for lemmy, you can lean into complaints more.

If you are on lemmy, offering nothing to improve it, then you need to temper your frustrations a ways and realize the devs are just as entitled to not have the "thing you want done" as anyone else.

They very well may have needed to take a break from lemmy dev to avoid burnout, or maybe they are waiting on the their peer or something else to push forward on "feature X." Maybe this federated wiki has future lemmy features they wanted to test. None of us know, and honestly anyone not lending a hand doesnt have the right to demand anything.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

at some point i hope people do start to realize that open source means they get worked on by people, when they feel like it.

that cuts both ways. for some things it's great, for some things it's not. the end result can be great, but sometimes it takes a REALLY long time to get there.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Something something could, something something should. Centralized Wikipedia is not a problem in need of a solution.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Says you. The dev disagreed and did the work. Even if hes wrong, it's good that he tried to bring change, to give people options.

Isn't changing things and trying to help the world what solarpunk is about?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

With the same level of logic and proof, I feel free to say that since you've never made a film, released an album or published a novel, you're not allowed to criticise any of them or the people who have.

edit: It should be noted that @[email protected] edited their post after my reply to remove the bad arguments as well as the accusations originally levelled at @[email protected] and me, accusations that couldn't possibly be backed up. It now reads more reasonable and balanced.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I certainly have never used a free product to criticize that product while contributing nothing and demanding more from the people giving it away for free.

"This food is terrible, and the portions are so small!"

The minute I use a free film to complain about said film, you'll have a point. Until then, this is just you making excuses for your entitlement.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

just remember, at some point, two dudes had a barroom bet. one of them insisted that 'anyone can make a movie'. in the course of proving his point, he spent $19,000 and made a film that some consider to be one of the worst movies ever made.

he was right though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

You mean Manos: The Hands of Fate? I wondered if you were talking about The Room at first.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

i wouldn't sweat it, they really didn't build lemmy either. :D

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

To be fair, building a platform like Lemmy is a shit tonne of work. It's not built yet, and it's not their fault tens of thousands of redditors decided to start using an unfinished product.

However, this is exactly why I'm concerned. If they were making a little calculator app or something then no concerns. But they are trying to build another federated service like Lemmy. If it takes off like Lemmy, how can they possibly give attention to both?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

We have a work in progress wiki here https://wiki.slrpnk.net

I completed the account integration with Lemmy yesterday and we will likely make an official announcement for it in the next monthly post.

But basically every community on slrpnk has their own namespace on it and moderators of those communities have edit rights.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

today I learned - that's a hella cool project. keep it up

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The wiki looks great! i was so excited to see some of the things I wrote in the code of conduct

As always thanks for all the work you do running the instance :)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

On Reddit a lot of communities had wikis to explain some core concepts. I feel this might be good alternative for this kind of stuff for lemmy. Especially if user accounts can be synced.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Seems broken for me:

1000010196

Edit: It's fixed!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Yeah, it hasn't been optimised for mobile. Just a proof of concept I'm pretty sure

Solarpunk