Asklemmy

43897 readers

916 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

-1

What would be a good name for a federated Wikipedia? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Let's say someone created a Wikipedia clone with Activitypub support, so you can freely read and edit articles on other servers. Basically the same way that Lemmy works. What would be a good name for such a project? Bonus points if the name goes with a cute animal mascot.

Edit: Here you can see the names of existing Fediverse projects.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What is Wikipedia failing at currently that decentralizing it would make better?

Just like reddit (and many other services), its a centralized US-based service, has a history of scandals and conflicts of interest, has ties to the US state department, and is dominated by a small group of editors (despite its perception as being a universal unbiased knowledge store).

There's definitely a need to decentralize knowledge, move it away from US control, and allow the collaboration that activitypub provides.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Federation, by it's very nature, is "if I don't like you, I can just make my own instance and do whatever I want". How will you find objective truth when people can't even agree within their own country? You really think we won't just end up with LeftyWiki and RightyWiki and CommieWiki and FacistWiki? Because federated code would encourage this. You're literally adding problems when your problem is people based, not code based.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Why is having alternative sources of information that can collaborate a bad thing?

Why are you even on lemmy, rather than reddit, if you'd rather have a single isolated source of communication?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There are plenty of Wikipedia articles which are not objective, particularly when it comes to politics or history. Of course federation means there would be many different wikis. That makes sense, for example different countries should have their own independent wikis, instead of using one controlled by a different nation.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes, we can have a US wiki, a Russia Wiki, a China Wiki, a North Korea Wiki, and none of them will agree with each other and you will have reduced an encyclopedia into worthless anecdotes and opinions.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

you will have reduced an encyclopedia into worthless anecdotes and opinions.

It is Wikipedia then.