4 ms·

You'd just branch the article, or tag it - much like you do in git.

by chris_wot 8y ago

mirimir 8y ago
Right. So could that ever happen in Wikipedia as it stands? As it is now, there's pressure to merge forks, right?
- chris_wot 8y ago
  It wouldn't. Someone would need to develop an alternative. It could work - just use the existing Wikipedia, but branch it. In essence change Wikipedia to a decentralized model.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    OK, Wikipedia uses open-source software, so one could clearly branch that. And given Creative Commons licensing, I suppose that one could clone the entire site, as the basis for an alternative. Providing attribution, and marking changes, would be somewhat hairy, but conceivably doable. And indeed, I see that Larry Sanger has been championing a blockchain-based alternative, Everipedia.[1] Wikipedia calls it "commercial".[2] And I see that its business model relies so far on ads and sponsorship notices. However, I gather that they didn't just clone existing Wikipedia content. But accounts are invite-only, and I don't do either Telegram or Reddit. I wonder why they didn't use Wikipedia content. Maybe they don't want to use Creative Commons licensing. Edit: Damn, Telegram wants a mobile number, which Mirimir doesn't have. So is there another way to get an invitation to Everipedia? 0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ 1) https://everipedia.org/ https://everipedia.org/ 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everipedia
- textaural 8y ago
  In 2002 there was an attempt to fork the Spanish Wikipedia. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-spanish-fork https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-spanish-fork. There was a lot of internal pushback to the forking, but they did it. But the technical and economic issues of keeping a fork of Wikipedia up and running was one of the biggest obstacles. Wikipedia requires huge amounts of infrastructure (both technical and human maintained).
  - Kim_Bruning 8y ago
    The technical infrastructure to run a fork isn't that horrendous. The real challenge is to build a community that actually wants to work on it. For Wikipedia forks, you face a big uphill fight against the network effect. Smaller wikis sometimes have been successfully forked though. And true: Spanish Wikipedia DID pull it off, I guess due to being early. :-)

You'd just branch the article, or tag it - much like you do in git.

mirimir 8y ago

Right. So could that ever happen in Wikipedia as it stands? As it is now, there's pressure to merge forks, right?

chris_wot 8y ago
It wouldn't. Someone would need to develop an alternative. It could work - just use the existing Wikipedia, but branch it. In essence change Wikipedia to a decentralized model.
- mirimir 8y ago
  OK, Wikipedia uses open-source software, so one could clearly branch that. And given Creative Commons licensing, I suppose that one could clone the entire site, as the basis for an alternative. Providing attribution, and marking changes, would be somewhat hairy, but conceivably doable. And indeed, I see that Larry Sanger has been championing a blockchain-based alternative, Everipedia.[1] Wikipedia calls it "commercial".[2] And I see that its business model relies so far on ads and sponsorship notices. However, I gather that they didn't just clone existing Wikipedia content. But accounts are invite-only, and I don't do either Telegram or Reddit. I wonder why they didn't use Wikipedia content. Maybe they don't want to use Creative Commons licensing. Edit: Damn, Telegram wants a mobile number, which Mirimir doesn't have. So is there another way to get an invitation to Everipedia? 0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ 1) https://everipedia.org/ https://everipedia.org/ 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everipedia
textaural 8y ago
In 2002 there was an attempt to fork the Spanish Wikipedia. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-spanish-fork https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wikipedia-spanish-fork. There was a lot of internal pushback to the forking, but they did it. But the technical and economic issues of keeping a fork of Wikipedia up and running was one of the biggest obstacles. Wikipedia requires huge amounts of infrastructure (both technical and human maintained).
- Kim_Bruning 8y ago
  The technical infrastructure to run a fork isn't that horrendous. The real challenge is to build a community that actually wants to work on it. For Wikipedia forks, you face a big uphill fight against the network effect. Smaller wikis sometimes have been successfully forked though. And true: Spanish Wikipedia DID pull it off, I guess due to being early. :-)