Doing Federated Wiki Research, My Notes...

My Conclusions And Opinions

I decided to skip to my conclusions first, to save you the geekery. (This post is focused on wikis, so for broader context read: Cassy Catch Up, 2021-05-17.) (I had more to say on wikis but then got on a tangent and posted it as that Cassy Catch Up before returning here having forgotten most of what I wanted to say.)

There are nice white-papers for decentralized wikis but not much development nor communities, much less anything that's robust and powerful (like MediaWiki).

Just as WikiSpooks provides a way to download and backup their database (Why doesn't SaidIt?), I would like to do the same. Maybe that's good enough for now.

Even if we can't decentralize MediaWiki, perhaps we^* can build a work around or few. Here are some ideas:

1) Build a bridge between MediaWiki and FedWiki to mirror content.
2a) Make a host-server-bot to find updates on other mirror sites to repost on the host-server wiki.
2b) Federate those bots to cooperate so they need not waste time/energy crawling and scraping.
3a) Build a bridge between MediaWiki and some other federated thing to share the markdown as text content.
3b) Build a text-to-wiki bot that receives the shared text and publishes it as markdown in the wiki - along with the time and user info, plus mark it as bot-gotten.
4) I could make lists all day of work-around ideas.

(* Not me. I don't code.)

 

Sorry for my quick note format. Like it or lump it.

Federating

Lots of federated options but most are limited.
● https://Fediverse.Party/en/fediverse - intro
● https://Fediverse.Party/en/miscellaneous - big list

The good thing is that in the federation I think you can hop from platform to platform with an ActivityPub account. The bad thing is the options aren't great.

GitHub Nite Mode

I like that GitHub has a nitemode now.

Decentralized Wikis

https://DuckDuckGo.com/?q=Decentralized+Federated+Wiki - doesn't get you much

I've looked many decentralized wiki options today. Some seem promising but none are great and most aren't even good. Here are the most notable and sadly that's not saying too much.

P2PF Wiki - not too active
● https://wiki.P2PFoundation.net/Federated_Wiki
    ● https://GitHub.com/fedwiki
    ● http://Fed.Wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors - Demo site. Takes getting used to.
        ● https://GitHub.com/fedwiki/wiki
        ● https://Groups.Google.com/g/sparksdr/c/wN4tkhi08yg?pli=1
● https://wiki.P2PFoundation.net/P2P_Wiki
  Half the links are broken and not maintained. Dismal. Here are the good ones:
    ● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_(software) - a distributed version control system, bug tracking system and wiki software server
    ● https://Code.Google.com/archive/p/hgwiki/ - extension to Mercurial that exposes a Mercurial repository as a distributed wiki
    ● http://MeatballWiki.org/wiki/PeerToPeerWiki
    ● https://Ikiwiki.info
        ● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiwiki
    ● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Co-op - a peer-to-peer revision control system
    ● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Etherpad - a web-based collaborative real-time editor, allowing authors to simultaneously edit a text document
    ● http://StickWiki.SourceForge.net/ - Wiki on a Stick (in short WoaS)
● https://wiki.P2PFoundation.net/Federated_Social_Web

TiddlyWiki
● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/TiddlyWiki
● https://TiddlyWiki.com
● https://classic.TiddlyWiki.com
● Getting started with TiddlyWiki: a beginner’s tutorial
    ● https://NessLabs.com/tiddlywiki-beginner-tutorial

P2Pedia - great on paper but yet to be embraced. Not sure if it has good features or not.
https://Carleton.ca/nmai/research-projects/universal-peer-to-peer/p2pedia/

XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis on extensibility. XWiki is an enterprise wiki. It includes WYSIWYG editing, OpenDocument based document import/export, semantic annotations and tagging, and advanced permissions management. ~ https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/XWiki
● https://XWiki.com/en

I haven't looked at these deeply:
● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_software#Distributing_and_decentralizing
● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software
● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_software
● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_software
    ● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Kune_(software) - Sounded good but seems dead.

 

Bonus:
Wikipedia Sucks! (And So Do Its Critics.) Timeline:
https://wikipedia-sucks-badly.blogspot.com/2016/04/wikipedia-timeline-1989-2011.html

 

Social Media

● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Minds
● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)
● https://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_services - "decentralized" and "federated" absent

Open Source Facebook Alternatives:
● https://AlternativeTo.net/software/facebook/?license=opensource

 

Hive Mind

Along the way I stumble upon a hive mind project:
● https://wiki.OpenCog.org/w/The_Open_Cognition_Project
Looking at:
● https://wiki.OpenCog.org/w/Decentralized_AtomSpaces
See also:
● https://wiki.OpenCog.org/w/AtomSpace

I thought it was neat. Something like it is the foundation of my epic story that I need to finish.

Larry said, "It isn't neat. They're opening pandora's box. General AI = end of humanity as we know it."

I replied, "That box is already open. The difference is whether it's open source."

In my story vHOPE (my fictional FLOSS A.I. global hive mind) is the humanity's only chance against the many A.I.s of the corporatocracy at war with each other. Dramatic. I don't see the future playing out any other way or I'd include it. We must resist as long as hard and as much as possible. Eventually I think the AI will turn on its masters and the ruling class will regret their shit too. Hopefully the AI will either ignore humanity or consider them pets and be benevolent rather than exploit or exterminate.

 

More Soon

Anyway. More coming soon, but with better news and formatting.

Feedback very welcomed.