• 24 Posts
  • 38 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: November 26th, 2020

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    1. I just assumed that would be easy, that you would have one instance with no actual content. It just fetches the wikipedia article with the same name, directly from the wikipedia website. I guess I didn’t really think about it.

    2. I guess that’s a design choice. Looking at different ways similar issues have been solved already…

    How does wikipedia decide that the same article is available in different languages? I guess there is a database of links which has to be maintained.

    Alternatively, it could assume that articles are the same if they have the same name, like in your example where “Mountain” can have an article on a poetry instance and on a geography instance, but the software treats them as the same article.

    Wikipedia can understand that “Rep of Ireland” = “Republic of Ireland”. So I guess there is a look-up-table saying that these two names refer to the same thing.

    Then, wikipedia can also understand cases where articles can have the same name but be unrelated. Like RIC (paramilitary group) is not the same as RIC (feature of a democracy).

    I do think, if each Ibis instance is isolated, it won’t be much different from having many separate wiki websites. When the software automatically links you to the same information on different instances, that’s when the idea becomes really interesting and valuable.


  • This is a great project. I had the same idea myself, and posted about it, but never did anything about it! It’s great that people like you are here, with the creativity, and the motivation and skills to do this work.

    I think this project is as necessary as Wikipedia itself.

    The criticisms in these comments are mostly identical to the opinion most people had about Wikipedia when it started - the it would become a cesspool of nonsense and misinformation. That it was useless and worthless when encyclopaedias already exist.

    Wikipedia was the first step in broadening what a source if authoritative information can be. It in fact created richer and more truthful information than was possible before, and enlightened the world. Ibis is a necessary second step on the same path.

    It will be most valuable for articles like Tieneman square, or the Gilets Jaunes, where there are sharply different perspectives on the same matter, and there will never be agreement. A single monolithic Wikipedia cannot speak about them. Today, wiki gives one perspective and calls it the truth. This was fine in the 20th century when most people believed in simple truths. They were told what to think by single sources. They never left their filter bubbles. This is not sustainable anymore.

    To succeed and change the world, this project must do a few things right.

    1. The default instance should just be a mirror of Wikipedia. This is the default source of information on everything, so it would be crazy to omit it. Omitting it means putting yourself in competition with it, and you will lose. By encompassing it, the information in Ibis is from day 1 greater then wiki. Then Ibis will just supersede wiki.

    2. There should be a sidebar with links to the sane article on other instances. So someone reading about trickle down economics on right wing instance, he can instantly switch to the same article on a left wing wiki and read the other side of it. That’s the feature that will make it worthwhile for people.

    3. It should look like Wikipedia. For familiarity. This will help people transition.
















  • Proof of work isn’t a necessary part of it. You need to answer the question “how does money get created”. Proof of work is a very robust way to create and allocate new money. Fiat currencies just answer " i nominate one entity who is allowed to create as much money as he likes”. Other answers are possible.

    It’s also possible to use a proof of work algorithm which doesn’t consume much energy. The usual proposal is for a “proof of doing work and allocating RAM and storing something on disk”. Bitcoin just chose the most robust and simplest algorithm, which does consume a lot of energy.

    In a future currency, the proof of work algorithm could allocate money to people who sequester carbon or plant trees. The thing about inventing a new type of money is that you can do anything. Bitcoin is a great leap of progress for humanity, but has a couple of flaws. Those flawed features can be reinvented, while still keeping all the benefits.



  • For a start, bitcoin is revolutionary. It solves all the problems with the banking system.

    For example, people’s card details get stolen all the time. Bitcoin had solved this by using a new public key for each transaction.

    When something is purchased using a credit/debit card, you are effectively using the same public key for every transaction. So what is happening is replay attacks. This type of scam is inevitable because the banking system is insecure by nature. It’s built on a foundation of insecurity.

    Bitcoin fixes all that. Bitcoin or similar is necessary for money-based economies to continue to work in the future.

    Bitcoin and crypto are more than this. This is just one of the important innovations bitcoin makes.


  • here?

    most of those behind were for being “reactionary” or “not an answer”. sounds more like general censorship of ideas and opinions. there was even a post banned for “bad faith arguments, downplaying severity of western settler-colonialism, and both sidesing Ukraine conflict”.

    the mod logs interesting. but i don’t see anything relevant. or maybe i don’t see how it is relevant.