Ibis

Currently, Ibis is branding itself as a decentralized competitor to Wikipedia, and honing in on questions about Wikipedia's moderation. The most common rationale for the federation I've seen is that on contentious topics you'll be able to have different articles with different perspectives on controversial topics.

But whereas federation makes sense to replace something like Twitter/YouTube, which are platforms and services, Wikipedia is a project. In something like microblogging, the service is separate from the content, as the users generate content and the experience is one of taking in different streams/creators in one feed. Federation works well there since social media is designed as a network.

An encyclopedia is more singular in how its used. The appeal of Wikipedia one place/article to act as a starting point for a topic, as opposed to having to cross-reference like ten articles each of which arguing a different thing.

However, Wikia (now named Fandom) is an entirely different story, as it is a platform. The local knowledge of various communities, fandoms, political groups, and technical tables is, despite the content entirely coming in-house, being hosted on proprietary platforms. Whether that be Google Docs, Reddit sidebars, or Wikia, this is where people are storing very vital information and links. Piracy megathreads, medical and scientific information for transgender individuals, political communities' sources list, obscure niches, etc, these are the sort of stuff which find themselves at the mercy of platforms.

The nature of this environment is one where there's a lot of room for competition, far less need for a massive network effect, and a lot of very disparate, smaller, communities which can move over with minimal hassle if we reach out to them.

Having a decentralized FOSS platform whereby people without much technical knowledge (which is the case for a lot of these people) can register on an instance and set up a wiki would do a lot of good and run into fewer logistical issues IMO. Gradually pick off and absorb these smaller wikis, rather than straight gunning to replace the everything-encyclopedia.

• fix mobile css layout by @mstcl
• Add follow instance button in article nav (fixes #31)
• Dont allow / in article title (fixes #25)
• Include domain when generating diff link (fixes #23)
• Minor changes to create/edit article page (fixes #24)

As a long time Wikipedia editor and administrator (might as well get my biases upfront) I am unsure it is a good idea to target Wikipedia. I can understand why, ideologically, this seems like a good idea (and I am sure there's many a thesis written on its inherent biases) but Wikipedia has the longevity, momentum and sheer weight of users that mean it would be impossible to catch it up and the last point is key because it's also a vital part of it's defences against bad actors. That's not to say it doesn't have its problems and I haven't edited in a while (as I was in a place where I didn't need any extra drama in my life), so it's good that this tool is out there for people to create an alternative it's more that I can see better uses for the already impressive wiki software you've created. And one key use would be as a plug-in to an existing Fediverse service, rather than a standalone wiki.

A while back I suggested that what Lemmy needed was an integrated wiki - I dubbed it Lemmywiks. I've mentioned it a time or two since as it seems the solution to a few issues people have raised. In the meantime I have mulled over the idea (to the point I was rolling my sleeves up to bodge together a proof-of-concept) and it goes a little like this (apologies in advance for the brain-dump):

It piggybacks off the Lemmy authentication (why it's a plug-in not a standalone) and the bulk of the wiki would be divided up under each community.

Community wiki pages

So:

c/hats

Would get:

w/hats

With all the various pages then being under that:

w/hats/faqs

w/hats/links

And really whatever the community requires - some might not need any pages at all. Well they all get one:

w/hats

Is the main/index page and replaces the text in the community's sidebar. As they are both markdown it is a straight switch. That sidebar page now becomes the main portal into the community's pages (if they want any), although you can also add markdown like the wiki links so [[links]] under hats goes to:

w/hats/links

It's up to each community to decide what pages it wants and the beauty of a wiki is that it is flexible enough to accommodate most things a community requires.

To get around the issue of there not being enough users to monitor edits on pages, I'd suggest they are treated like requests on Github and users can submit edits that Mods would approve or reject. Hopefully, this system would alao encourage communities to recruit more Mods, perhaps even have one or two focused on the wiki.

This system of community wikis would, it is hoped, also encourage more single topic focused instances - we have ones for Star Trek, RPGs, books, etc and there's no reason there couldn't be ones for Star Wars, films (there was one that is no more), action figures, etc, etc. A greater diversity of instances has to be a good thing.

In the comments, people have mentioned that this would be ideal for taking on the wikis/fandom wikis and integrating with focused instances would make this possible.

Instance wiki pages

In a similar manner, the main sidebar of the instance is also the front page of the instance wiki pages, structured thusly:

w/lemmy_world/

These pages would only be editable by the Admins and would largely be for all the various bits of documentation the instance needs - legal and policy as well as a potential breakdown of the instance's communities by category. For example, I help Admin feddit.uk and we have communities focused on football clubs, regions, etc. Being able to have:

w/feddit_uk/football-communities

w/feddit_uk/regional-communities

Would really help with discoverablity and may also help with Lemmy's SEO.

Not just Lemmy

My original idea was a wiki plug-in for Lemmy because I am on here the most, and Ibis coming from one of the Lemmy devs makes this an even better test case. However, it would work equally well for other services. Obviously the above structure would be what is required for kbin/kbin but it could be of use for Mastodon (especially instances with a specific focus) or pretty much any Fediverse service, if only for being a repository for their documentation. As I've said, the flexibility of a wiki means that, once you give people the tools they can take it off in any direction they require.

People have questioned why Ibis needs to be federated at all, but it becomes vital when Ibis is a plug-in to other services rather than standalone. For example, I Mod communities on lemmy.world as well as my home instance and I could edit wikis on all communities from my main account.

I probably forgot some stuff but that should be enough to chew over for now.

I was a little skeptical about Ibis, mainly for practical/technical reasons, not philosophical differences (link).

But something today really changed my mind as to the necessity of figuring out those practical/technical hurdles... I discovered that Wikipedia has widely cited associated site "WikiSource" as its only source for the contents of Salvador Allende's final speech before his death, and now that widely referenced page has been deleted from the site, for "Copyright violation", despite the fact that it almost certainly wasn't, and even if it were, no person in their right mind would ever claim it as such. On the wikipedia side, there's been no updates to the many references to that page, and on the WikiSource side, no serious discussion on the implications of just nuking that highly relevant to the public interest speech from their site, and no coordination between the two to say, fix all the broken links they just created?

They cite some Chilean copyright law, copied from the spanish language WikiSource, but then somehow come to the opposite conclusion that the esWS people did! This was a user-submitted english translation too, so they threw out all of that user's work over a speculative claim by some friggin internet janitor and didn't think that might be relevant. And none of this would have ever come up if they didn't try to become their own source, rather than citing independent websites and other sources... So. Fucking. Stupid.

And this is after they had the EXACT same discussion 10-12 years ago. It was deleted, and then later restored, based on the EXACT same line of chilean law. But someone decided it was time for a revisit a few months back and now all the links to it are dead again. Just in case, idk, the family of salvador allende decides to sue wikipedia? fat fucking chance

Also to add insult to injury, the first line of their "Copyright Discussions" page is as follows:

This page hosts discussions on works that may violate Wikisource's copyright policy. All arguments should be based entirely on U.S. copyright law.

I get that due to treaties chilean law is probably relevant here but this is all just a wank-off between Um Actually moderators so it still made me rage a little

Anyhow thankfully archive.org aren't such dweebs and I can share with you here the contents of the speech:

I know this is far from the worst thing Wikipedia has ever done, but it really got to me, and I feel an organization with its priorities in order would never behave this way. And in a federated system, not only could I use an instance with its priorities in better order, but also other sites would have likely mirrored the content.