4 ms·

I think this could lead to a lot of interesting possibilities but I'll focus on one. Lets say you're on Wikipedia and for example want to know about the assass

I think this could lead to a lot of interesting possibilities but I'll focus on one. Lets say you're on Wikipedia and for example want to know about the assassination of J.F.K, the Wiki article contains most of the stock facts and so on, but lets say you want to know about the really crazy and out there conspiracy theories of Hoover and aliens and so on, a federated system would allow people to set their own page up and you can continue through to it. The sort of content that sends most Wikipedia moderators into catatonic seizures indexed and available. There's plenty of other uses out there, I just think it's an interesting point that it'll allow anyone with enough time on their hands to create an archive of what they think is relevant as a counterpoint to what someone else thinks is relevant. Don't like the standard descriptor? Normally you'd have to fit a wiki mod, fork it off and have it as a counter point.

derleth 14y ago
> The sort of content that sends most Wikipedia moderators into catatonic seizures indexed and available. The reason it is anathema to the Wikipedia concept is because Wikipedia wants its name on good content, not Alex Jones JOOZ-DID-IT (Oh, and Aliens-Big-Pharma-Bilderberger-USPS-Did-9/11 Too) bullshit, unless such bullshit is clearly marked as coming from a specific minority viewpoint. I think that's a great reason to keep the crap on the current version of Wikipedia to a minimum: The world is confusing, especially when there are people like Alex Jones out there trying to make it more confusing to sell more videos. Having something where you have a good chance of getting the Sane People Version of controversial (or only-controversial-because-of-the-crazies) topics is invaluable if you want somewhere to start. Especially if it's a topic that books aren't really written about, like specific health scams. So the Federated Wiki universe will need some way to mark specific forks of articles as being from a given group of people, so people aren't mislead into thinking that the sane editors approve of the version of reality Alex Jones is selling the gullible.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Exactly, the mods are there to keep the crazy out but occasionally you need to reference some of the more outlandish things for various reasons and letting people for things off into tinfoilhatswiki.net would be good for the mods sanity and useful for people who need to reference the over the top stuff. Not sure how the link direction would work, but I'm sure there's a way.
- klint 14y ago
  I agree that some way to remove links to forks that are spam or that you find reprehensible is a good idea, but the whole point of forking instead of editing is that the forks aren't approved. As I said elsewhere, I (nor the people I quoted) meant to represent this as an alternative to Wikipedia itself. I'd see it more as some that a wiki farm like Wikia could use to allow editors to put more of their own perspective into an article (that's my opinion, not the Smallest Federated Wiki developers' opinion).
  - derleth 14y ago
    > the forks aren't approved. I get this. My whole point is that it needs to be very obvious where a fork comes from and what else the people responsible for it are responsible for.
tokenadult 14y ago
Lets say you're on Wikipedia and . . . you want to know about the really crazy I am a Wikipedian. I edit sporadically these days, after being really active when I first started editing. Before I began editing, I read whole books about the history of Wikipedia and its internal processes. Because of the anarchy of how Wikipedia started out, with the typical Wikipedian having NIL research and editing experience (not even the research and editing experience implied by getting an undergraduate degree at a research university), you can find plenty of crazy on Wikipedia already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars And of course blatantly false assertions about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have already stood on Wikipedia for a long time. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04seelye.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04seelye.html... http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-11-wikipedia-apology_x.htm http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-11-wikipedia-apolo... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Hoax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy... The Deletionpedia experiment, http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page which seems to have fizzled out, was an archive of pages deleted from Wikipedia, in an attempt to make volunteer Wikipedia editors ("Wikipedians") more accountable for deleting articles. The result of the Deletionpedia experiment was to show that most content that is deleted from Wikipedia well deserves to be deleted, and probably doesn't serve any reader in any useful way anywhere on the Internet. The Internet is already flooded with counterpoints. It's bad enough that in important subjects (for example, medical research) most of the best published literature is not available on the Internet (it is still behind publisher paywalls), while a lot of scam artists flood the Internet with websites that exist only to sell something that cheats consumers. I do look forward to seeing how Ward Cunningham's experiment develops. MeatballWiki introduced some thoughtful discussion of online communities to the broader online world, http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/OnlineCommunity http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/OnlineCommunity and that was enabled by the innovation of wiki sites, that any user could edit a webpage already posted on the site. There is a place for wikis, and some wikis are very helpful, http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Wiki/index.php/Main_Page but the last thing the world needs is more content forks for crazy points of view that get edited off of Wikipedia.
nfg 14y ago
I've always found you can learn a surprising amount about a subject by reading it's wikipedia 'Talk' page.

derleth 14y ago

> The sort of content that sends most Wikipedia moderators into catatonic seizures indexed and available. The reason it is anathema to the Wikipedia concept is because Wikipedia wants its name on good content, not Alex Jones JOOZ-DID-IT (Oh, and Aliens-Big-Pharma-Bilderberger-USPS-Did-9/11 Too) bullshit, unless such bullshit is clearly marked as coming from a specific minority viewpoint. I think that's a great reason to keep the crap on the current version of Wikipedia to a minimum: The world is confusing, especially when there are people like Alex Jones out there trying to make it more confusing to sell more videos. Having something where you have a good chance of getting the Sane People Version of controversial (or only-controversial-because-of-the-crazies) topics is invaluable if you want somewhere to start. Especially if it's a topic that books aren't really written about, like specific health scams. So the Federated Wiki universe will need some way to mark specific forks of articles as being from a given group of people, so people aren't mislead into thinking that the sane editors approve of the version of reality Alex Jones is selling the gullible.

nicholassmith 14y ago
Exactly, the mods are there to keep the crazy out but occasionally you need to reference some of the more outlandish things for various reasons and letting people for things off into tinfoilhatswiki.net would be good for the mods sanity and useful for people who need to reference the over the top stuff. Not sure how the link direction would work, but I'm sure there's a way.
klint 14y ago
I agree that some way to remove links to forks that are spam or that you find reprehensible is a good idea, but the whole point of forking instead of editing is that the forks aren't approved. As I said elsewhere, I (nor the people I quoted) meant to represent this as an alternative to Wikipedia itself. I'd see it more as some that a wiki farm like Wikia could use to allow editors to put more of their own perspective into an article (that's my opinion, not the Smallest Federated Wiki developers' opinion).
- derleth 14y ago
  > the forks aren't approved. I get this. My whole point is that it needs to be very obvious where a fork comes from and what else the people responsible for it are responsible for.

tokenadult 14y ago

Lets say you're on Wikipedia and . . . you want to know about the really crazy I am a Wikipedian. I edit sporadically these days, after being really active when I first started editing. Before I began editing, I read whole books about the history of Wikipedia and its internal processes. Because of the anarchy of how Wikipedia started out, with the typical Wikipedian having NIL research and editing experience (not even the research and editing experience implied by getting an undergraduate degree at a research university), you can find plenty of crazy on Wikipedia already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars And of course blatantly false assertions about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have already stood on Wikipedia for a long time. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04seelye.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04seelye.html... http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-11-wikipedia-apology_x.htm http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-11-wikipedia-apolo... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Hoax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy... The Deletionpedia experiment, http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page which seems to have fizzled out, was an archive of pages deleted from Wikipedia, in an attempt to make volunteer Wikipedia editors ("Wikipedians") more accountable for deleting articles. The result of the Deletionpedia experiment was to show that most content that is deleted from Wikipedia well deserves to be deleted, and probably doesn't serve any reader in any useful way anywhere on the Internet. The Internet is already flooded with counterpoints. It's bad enough that in important subjects (for example, medical research) most of the best published literature is not available on the Internet (it is still behind publisher paywalls), while a lot of scam artists flood the Internet with websites that exist only to sell something that cheats consumers. I do look forward to seeing how Ward Cunningham's experiment develops. MeatballWiki introduced some thoughtful discussion of online communities to the broader online world, http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/OnlineCommunity http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/OnlineCommunity and that was enabled by the innovation of wiki sites, that any user could edit a webpage already posted on the site. There is a place for wikis, and some wikis are very helpful, http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Wiki/index.php/Main_Page but the last thing the world needs is more content forks for crazy points of view that get edited off of Wikipedia.

nfg 14y ago

I've always found you can learn a surprising amount about a subject by reading it's wikipedia 'Talk' page.