Currently, Ibis is branding itself as a decentralized competitor to Wikipedia, and honing in on questions about Wikipedia's moderation. The most common rationale for the federation I've seen is that on contentious topics you'll be able to have different articles with different perspectives on controversial topics.

But whereas federation makes sense to replace something like Twitter/YouTube, which are platforms and services, Wikipedia is a project. In something like microblogging, the service is separate from the content, as the users generate content and the experience is one of taking in different streams/creators in one feed. Federation works well there since social media is designed as a network.

An encyclopedia is more singular in how its used. The appeal of Wikipedia one place/article to act as a starting point for a topic, as opposed to having to cross-reference like ten articles each of which arguing a different thing.

However, Wikia (now named Fandom) is an entirely different story, as it is a platform. The local knowledge of various communities, fandoms, political groups, and technical tables is, despite the content entirely coming in-house, being hosted on proprietary platforms. Whether that be Google Docs, Reddit sidebars, or Wikia, this is where people are storing very vital information and links. Piracy megathreads, medical and scientific information for transgender individuals, political communities' sources list, obscure niches, etc, these are the sort of stuff which find themselves at the mercy of platforms.

The nature of this environment is one where there's a lot of room for competition, far less need for a massive network effect, and a lot of very disparate, smaller, communities which can move over with minimal hassle if we reach out to them.

Having a decentralized FOSS platform whereby people without much technical knowledge (which is the case for a lot of these people) can register on an instance and set up a wiki would do a lot of good and run into fewer logistical issues IMO. Gradually pick off and absorb these smaller wikis, rather than straight gunning to replace the everything-encyclopedia.

I'm seeing across various instances that registration is going through manual approval as an anti-bot measure. As someone whose also run Fedi instances, I know how bad the bot problem is.

I do think invite links can get around this though. If we allow existing users to simply send a referral/invite to their friends (and have a tracker on who is inviting who), that'll do a ton to both mitigate spam registration and allow people to join quickly.

The more obstacles we put in the way of registration, the more people will be dissuaded and go away. We've seen it with Mastodon (and now there's this whole reputation of it being too complicated). We have a window here to fix stuff if we're fast. People will eventually forget about the Reddit API and put up with it if we don't offer a compelling alternative when the iron is hot.

I'm considering making a GitHub issue, if anyone has any thoughts or plans to work on it, let me know. I have a decent amount of connections on the Fedi and if enough people are serious about getting this ASAP, I can help out with the logistics/coordination.

test

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1109122

> Today, we are taking the first step in building out an initiative to create opportunities for people to help build the Fediverse and create an organizational structure which can allow developers to coordinate their efforts where most needed. > > We call upon anyone with both the skills and motivation to join us and the Guild we are starting, Guild Alpha. Read the announcement linked to learn more and find out how you can participate! > > > If anything discussed here has your interest or you want to help grow free-software and the Fediverse, fill out this form to let us know! > >

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1109122

> Today, we are taking the first step in building out an initiative to create opportunities for people to help build the Fediverse and create an organizational structure which can allow developers to coordinate their efforts where most needed. > > We call upon anyone with both the skills and motivation to join us and the Guild we are starting, Guild Alpha. Read the announcement linked to learn more and find out how you can participate! > > > If anything discussed here has your interest or you want to help grow free-software and the Fediverse, fill out this form to let us know! > >

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1109122

> Today, we are taking the first step in building out an initiative to create opportunities for people to help build the Fediverse and create an organizational structure which can allow developers to coordinate their efforts where most needed. > > We call upon anyone with both the skills and motivation to join us and the Guild we are starting, Guild Alpha. Read the announcement linked to learn more and find out how you can participate! > > > If anything discussed here has your interest or you want to help grow free-software and the Fediverse, fill out this form to let us know! > >

Today, we are taking the first step in building out an initiative to create opportunities for people to help build the Fediverse and create an organizational structure which can allow developers to coordinate their efforts where most needed.

We call upon anyone with both the skills and motivation to join us and the Guild we are starting, Guild Alpha. Read the announcement linked to learn more and find out how you can participate!

If anything discussed here has your interest or you want to help grow free-software and the Fediverse, fill out this form to let us know!

Alternative youtube link if not working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYjBaiczDkM

A discussion on the recent incidents in which climate protestors targeted some paintings, as part of a larger conversation on direct action and bureaucracy.

A tutorial on how to edit videos in a fashion where you can draw over them.

A tutorial on how to edit videos in a fashion where you can draw over them.

A tutorial on how to edit videos in a fashion where you can draw over them.

Found this while going through Funkwhale, some pretty good songs here and also from the artist in general.

This video is meant moreso to serve as a pitch to those who are already interested in promoting these values. The focus is really on giving more organization to free culture projects and initiatives.

Really what’s needed more than anything else is drive, but if you have any skills or projects you’d like to share, let us know.

If PeerTube isn't working, the video is also hosted on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyjdzkZZOHk

Questions have been raised about how exactly we can get a community of people to go from just subscribing to actually helping out. Various proposals have come and gone, and I figured I'd throw in my two cents and also use this thread as an opportunity.

The most common type of proposal I've seen has relied on some sort of paid marketing or financial incentives for contributors. In my view, this is a poor foundation to start with, as it gets people in this mindset that without money they can't do anything, and even if we had money, we'd just be encouraging people to only do things for money. As we've seen with all these other alternative social media sites, throwing money at the problem doesn't create organic communities.

We have to incentivize by creating a sense of community and mutual accountability. Working on this should feel rewarding and fun, as if you're a part of something. In that sense, this initiative isn't just for the purpose of marketing but also a way of prefiguring the vision of the Open Web.

The first step has been taken in that we have a Discord/Matrix server which allows for closer and more real-time communication, but I do think it's time to take another step in ensuring people participate: tasking people.

In this thread, put down your skills and any ideas you have (if any). I (and hopefully other people in this thread) will try to come up with suggestions of what you can do. By tasking people and having them report on their progress here, that'll create a sense of accountability.

If you're convinced you have no skills of use, doesn't matter, post anyways. What we need is engagement and commitment, and one of the biggest obstacles to that so far is people being convinced they're useless.

This place hasn't gotten much activity and it looks like the admin hasn't been active for years. I've started another community at [email protected] (although it probably would've been wiser to just request ownership of this one but too late now.)

If you want to promote your own stuff, I'd recommend doing so there.

One of the biggest strengths of the fediverse (and free software) movements is how it brings people to collaborate and to spur that, we need spaces to organize. I see here and across the fediverse that people want to help out but don't know how.

I've just started a set of Matrix rooms (with a bridged Discord server so that the chat platform doesn't get in the way of people wanting to participate) where people can do the following:

• strategize on how to best promote the fediverse
• collaborate on their free-culture/federated projects and find people to help
• promote their own fediverse content, find fediverse creators to follow, and offer feedback to others'

The video has been uploaded and the server is up. If you have any ideas, any ways you'd like to help, or just want to chat, join!

I really do believe this is gonna be crucial to pulling off our task. Real-time chat is more personal and live so it's easier to collaborate and build a community.

If you're interested, join here:

• Discord
• Matrix

Gonna continue to seed the community with some of my posts periodically to keep activity going. If you have content you'd like to share or thoughts on existing content, make sure to post!

Issue #1 in a series of mine where I review Fediverse content to help highlight creators. From a few years back, will probably post these periodically to help get the community rolling.