I do think the question of targeting though has an impact on what we design features in mind with and also what kind of usecases we pitch to people, which in turn will shape the sort of content and communities that show up. So there's value in figuring out this question.
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.
Devs stated it's not a priority but if someone else were to do the work and make a PR, they would not be opposed to including it.
Not invite-only, but invite as an option to bypass the usual manual approval process. Captchas from my experience aren't effective, as PeerTube hCaptchas have been bypassed.
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.
Guild Alpha A Social Coding initiative Today, we are taking the first step towards building an initiative based on the concept of “Software Guilds”. We hereby announce the formation of Guild Alpha, a “bootstrap guild” of sorts, intended to serve as a starting point. We call upon anyone with both th...
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! > >
Guild Alpha A Social Coding initiative Today, we are taking the first step towards building an initiative based on the concept of “Software Guilds”. We hereby announce the formation of Guild Alpha, a “bootstrap guild” of sorts, intended to serve as a starting point. We call upon anyone with both th...
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! > >
Guild Alpha A Social Coding initiative Today, we are taking the first step towards building an initiative based on the concept of “Software Guilds”. We hereby announce the formation of Guild Alpha, a “bootstrap guild” of sorts, intended to serve as a starting point. We call upon anyone with both th...
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! > >
This video was mostly a test to see if I could make video essays while cutting down on the time investment. Also I experimented with a bunch of different aspects in presentation. In retrospect, the results were mixed. I have a blog where I do more in-depth write-ups on political topics, I’d highly r...
Alternative youtube link if not working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYjBaiczDkM
In this video, I discuss the attempted vandalism of Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Monet's Les Mueles as part of a larger discussion on political action. Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@tomat0 Transcript and Credits: https://blog.tomat0.me/sq993s7ktg Blog: https://blog.tomat0.me/main/ YouTube Video: h...
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.
Today we do a quick dive to answer the question: where is the feature to schedule posts (toots) on Mastodon? Link to Mastodon scheduler apps: FediPlan (recommended): https://plan.fedilab.app/ scheduler.mastodon.tools: https://www.scheduler.mastodon.tools/ GitHub issues: Scheduling Posts: https://git...
A video exploring the brief history of scheduling posts as a feature on Mastodon, in which ways it has been implemented, and progress being made to implement it.
This video was mostly a test to see if I could make video essays while cutting down on the time investment. Also I experimented with a bunch of different aspects in presentation. In retrospect, the results were mixed. I have a blog where I do more in-depth write-ups on political topics, I’d highly r...
Alternative youtube link if not working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYjBaiczDkM
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 !selfpromo@lemmy.ml (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.
Isn't instance-blocking alone sufficient for being able to prevent the environment from being overrun? I understand the hesitancy to platform reactionaries, but as it stands the network effect is easily the biggest hurdle the Fediverse is going to face. Right-libertarians and actual reactionaries might be a net negative on the main instance, but as far as the software itself goes, numbers are numbers, and could end up making a world of difference.
Let them form their own circlejerks away from everyone else and have slur-blocking be on a per-instance basis, after all that's why the federated design works so well.
Tomat0 @lemmy.ml Theorist of the Fediverse. I run a chatroom focused on helping to build the foundations for the Fediverse to grow. Links are at the bottom of this doc.