The_Lemmington_Post

The_Lemmington_Post , 2 months ago

The idea of a federated, decentralized Wikipedia alternative is intriguing, but implementing it successfully faces major hurdles. Federating moderation policies and privileges across different instances seems incredibly complex. I believe it would also require some kind of web of trust system. Quality control is also a huge challenge without centralized oversight and clear guidelines enforced universally.

While it could potentially replace commercial wiki farms like Wikia/Fandom for niche topics, realistically replacing Wikipedia's dominance as a general reference work seems highly ambitious and unlikely, at least in the short term. But as they say - shoot for the stars, and you may just land on the moon.

That said, ambitious goals can spur innovation. Even if Ibis falls short of usurping Wikipedia, it could blaze new trails and pioneer federated wiki concepts that feed back into Wikipedia and other platforms. The federated model allowing more perspectives and focused communities is worth exploring, despite the technical obstacles around distributed moderation and content integration. The proof-of-concept shows the core pieces are in place as a starting point.

The_Lemmington_Post , 2 months ago

Yeah, you are right. I've always remembered it this way because it makes more sense to me.

The_Lemmington_Post , 2 months ago

More critically, the proof-of-concept so far appears to lack any real work on moderation tools or implementing a web of trust system. These would be absolutely vital components for a federated encyclopedia to have any chance of controlling quality and avoiding descending into a sea of misinformation and edit wars between conflicting "truths." Centralized oversight and clear enforced guidelines are key reasons why Wikipedia has been relatively successful, despite its flaws.

Without a robust distributed moderation system in place, a federated encyclopedia runs the risk of either devolving into siloed echo chambers pushing various agendas, or becoming an uncoordinated mess making it impractical as a general reference work. The technical obstacles around federating content policies, privileges and integrated quality control across instances are immense challenges that aren't obviously addressed by this early proof-of-concept.

While novel approaches like federation are worth exploring, straying too far from Wikipedia's principles of neutral point-of-view and community-driven policies could easily undermine the entire premise. Lofty goals of disrupting Wikipedia are admirable, but successfully replacing its dominance as a general reference work seems extremely unlikely without solving these fundamental issues around distributed content governance first.

The_Lemmington_Post , 2 months ago

Where? I haven't heard any of that.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 3 months ago

The benefit of this is that only individuals who are interested will progress up the trust level ladder. If you are indifferent, you will have the same experience as currently. I believe this benefits everyone involved.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 3 months ago

People keep mentioning StackOverflow even though I specifically mention Discourse. The two do similar things but one does it right and the other doesn't. I don't really understand how it would be inconvenient to create accounts. If you are active and behave you get moderation privileges otherwise you get the same experience as you do now.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 3 months ago

Yeah, this seems to favor people who stick to one account, but I also enjoy seeing some of the regular posters here. Even though I like creating new accounts, I wouldn't mind if they were given moderation privileges to share the workload. I'm unsure about the implementation details, so I can't comment on the protocol. What I do know is that Reddit moderation sucks, while Discourse moderation rocks.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

Karma promotes shitposting, memes and such, I've yet to see that kind of content on Discourse.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

Trust lvls themselves are just Karma plus login/read tracking aka extra steps.

Trust Levels are acquired by reading posts and spending time on the platform, instead of receiving votes for posting. Therefore, it wouldn't lead to low-quality content unless you choose to implement it that way.

The Karma system is used more as a bragging right than to give any sort of moderation privilege to users.

But in essence is similar, you get useless points with one and moderation privileges with the other.

If you are actually advocating that the Fediverse use Discourse’s service you have to be out of your mind.

You are making things up just so you can call me crazy. I'm not advocating anything of the sort.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

My post was meant lightheartedly about gamifying content tagging, not seriously advocating for increased corporate control of the internet.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

Some sort of appeal process to deal with human bias and punish moderators abusing power and remove their privileges would help address concerns about potential troll moderators.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

Where is the rule that says this is a serious sub? You are just making things up. Get the stick out of your ass. Any sub can have lighthearted posts unless they state otherwise.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

Go fuck yourself already. And no I'm not wrong you just can't read. Those discussions you mention don't need to be however you want them to be.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

Why would I cry, shithead? You are just an annoying internet rando.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

I've based the idea on Discourse which has very good moderation. I don't know why everyone is talking about StackExchange, did I mention it anywhere?

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

I don't know how that works. Why would have to do anything to participate in the discussions? The curation can be done by whoever wants to do it.

The_Lemmington_Post OP , 2 months ago

Yeah, and the FOSS alternative Codidact isn't any better. What's the point of asking for solutions for bugs when even an LLM can solve that already? I want proper solutions to actual problems so that I can find everything in there, not just troubleshooting bugs.