4 ms·

"To run The Simplest Federated Wiki, you’ll need your own web server, which Cunningham thinks is an important part of the project." Sounded great till that poi

"To run The Simplest Federated Wiki, you’ll need your own web server, which Cunningham thinks is an important part of the project." Sounded great till that point. He's putting his own nerd centric bias into it. If I'm a history guy, not a tech guy, and I want to "fork", asking me to run my own "server" or whatever is a non-starter.

nicholassmith 14y ago
Smart money says if there's demand for it people will be able to buy custom instances with it for a variable amount of money.
- clinth 14y ago
  Agreed. Github is popular even though git itself is obtuse.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Exactly, you just need to reduce the friction level to a certain point. Saying it requires it's own web server sounds like a chore, but Mac OS X comes with a web server built in. You could in theory run your own local Wiki. Or someone clever could sell cheap instances powered off Amazon/Google/Heroku/cheap VPS host with a custom web frontend that does the heavy lifting. TL;DR good companies make life easy for people who want it without hassle.
- sp332 14y ago
  FTA: To make Federated Wiki easier to adopt, there’s a one-click installer to deploy a server to Amazon Web Services.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Ah I missed that, saved the full thing for later.
    - klint 14y ago
      Here's the one-click installer if you're interested: https://stackhammer.cloudsmith.com/tools/quickdeploy.html#federated-wiki https://stackhammer.cloudsmith.com/tools/quickdeploy.html#fe...
SudarshanP 14y ago
Since we have free accounts on app engine, heroku etc... and even gdrive or dropbox and so on... wont it be easy for someone to write a simple web app or ipad app or something like that allows the masses to run their own wiki's without being technically sophisticated. To an end user the process could be as easy as install app from chrome webstore... specify some minimal data... and you have an app engine account hosting your tiny wiki. If tomorrow you choose to move it heroku, it would as simple as a button click and registering on heroku.
sp332 14y ago
I had the exact opposite reaction to that. "But is it too nerdy to catch on? To run The Simplest Federated Wiki, you’ll need your own web server" How is running a web server nerdy? Does this person not realize that wikipedia is also run on a web server, or that most people will be reading this very article online? The Web is one of the biggest things going on right now and certainly one of the fastest-growing. It concerns me that people aren't even taught the basics of running their own servers. How are you supposed to participate in the Web if you don't even have a web server?
- klint 14y ago
  "Does this person not realize that wikipedia is also run on a web server." The difference is that you don't have to run your own server to edit or otherwise participate in Wikipedia. You don't need your own server to have a blog on Tumblr or WordPress.com. And since Simplest Federated Wiki requires either Ruby/Sinatra or Node.js/Express, you need more than just a shared hosting account to run it, which raises the barrier to entry (though the one-click installer, or PaaS providers, help lower it again). It may eventually be a non-issue if someone builds a "wordpress.com for federated wikis."
- emperorcezar 14y ago
  Not sure if you're serious? It's like saying I should have to know how to lay asphalt to drive on the highway.
  - sp332 14y ago
    Most people should at least know how to drive a car. Well I guess you could use public transportation and still get a large benefit out of the public highway system. But having your own car lets you do things public transport never will. And it would be ridiculous for someone to claim that learning to drive is too nerdy, even if it is pretty complicated and has a lot of arbitrary rules you have to go to classes to learn.
    - emperorcezar 14y ago
      Driving a car is like using a browser. It's not the infrastructure. Servers are infrastructure.

nicholassmith 14y ago

Smart money says if there's demand for it people will be able to buy custom instances with it for a variable amount of money.

clinth 14y ago
Agreed. Github is popular even though git itself is obtuse.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Exactly, you just need to reduce the friction level to a certain point. Saying it requires it's own web server sounds like a chore, but Mac OS X comes with a web server built in. You could in theory run your own local Wiki. Or someone clever could sell cheap instances powered off Amazon/Google/Heroku/cheap VPS host with a custom web frontend that does the heavy lifting. TL;DR good companies make life easy for people who want it without hassle.
sp332 14y ago
FTA: To make Federated Wiki easier to adopt, there’s a one-click installer to deploy a server to Amazon Web Services.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Ah I missed that, saved the full thing for later.
  - klint 14y ago
    Here's the one-click installer if you're interested: https://stackhammer.cloudsmith.com/tools/quickdeploy.html#federated-wiki https://stackhammer.cloudsmith.com/tools/quickdeploy.html#fe...

SudarshanP 14y ago

Since we have free accounts on app engine, heroku etc... and even gdrive or dropbox and so on... wont it be easy for someone to write a simple web app or ipad app or something like that allows the masses to run their own wiki's without being technically sophisticated. To an end user the process could be as easy as install app from chrome webstore... specify some minimal data... and you have an app engine account hosting your tiny wiki. If tomorrow you choose to move it heroku, it would as simple as a button click and registering on heroku.

sp332 14y ago

I had the exact opposite reaction to that. "But is it too nerdy to catch on? To run The Simplest Federated Wiki, you’ll need your own web server" How is running a web server nerdy? Does this person not realize that wikipedia is also run on a web server, or that most people will be reading this very article online? The Web is one of the biggest things going on right now and certainly one of the fastest-growing. It concerns me that people aren't even taught the basics of running their own servers. How are you supposed to participate in the Web if you don't even have a web server?

klint 14y ago
"Does this person not realize that wikipedia is also run on a web server." The difference is that you don't have to run your own server to edit or otherwise participate in Wikipedia. You don't need your own server to have a blog on Tumblr or WordPress.com. And since Simplest Federated Wiki requires either Ruby/Sinatra or Node.js/Express, you need more than just a shared hosting account to run it, which raises the barrier to entry (though the one-click installer, or PaaS providers, help lower it again). It may eventually be a non-issue if someone builds a "wordpress.com for federated wikis."
emperorcezar 14y ago
Not sure if you're serious? It's like saying I should have to know how to lay asphalt to drive on the highway.
- sp332 14y ago
  Most people should at least know how to drive a car. Well I guess you could use public transportation and still get a large benefit out of the public highway system. But having your own car lets you do things public transport never will. And it would be ridiculous for someone to claim that learning to drive is too nerdy, even if it is pretty complicated and has a lot of arbitrary rules you have to go to classes to learn.
  - emperorcezar 14y ago
    Driving a car is like using a browser. It's not the infrastructure. Servers are infrastructure.