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.

You make a lot of points. To explain all of those things, I would news to make a very long post. i think i will do that when i get time.

Oh like a security for further borrowing? Could be.

How do you mean “a powerful tool”? Tool for what?

The argument is mostly valid. But the real point is that capital gains tax needs to change. That would solve the stated problem, without reducing home ownership.

As a result, a majority of the population is literally invested in seeing the value of homes always go up.

This is actually not true. In general, ome owners do not benefit from global house price increases.

Yes block chains predate bitcoin and are very useful. Git uses them. A currency is a perfect use case for a block chain. You need to robustly store balances and transactions so they can’t be tampered with.

I would say it’s insane to have a currency which is not block chain based. Too easy to fiddle your finances.

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.

is there any evidence that this actually happens, or would happen?

all i ever see is humans being blocked or frustrated by the bot. i have never seen any kind of malicious spamming that could have been prevented by such a bot. spammers are normally thwarted by human mods.

the bot seems obsolete.

The lemmy devs and users are rigidly against hate speech / free speech. they are afraid it will push away many users who are more sensitive, and ruin the quality of discussion. they don’t tolerate free speech instances.

but who knows, they might be right.

This is exactly what happens. The highest quality land in a country is used for tillage. The less productive parts are used for grazing. This is how farmers make the most money. They’d be fools to use productive land for grazing and grow crops on poor land.

greenhouse gases and water usage are different issues i didn’t address here.

the usa is one of the “few parts of the world” i was talking about, that it is a bad example of sustainable farming.

yes lots of people cant understand that others can have other ideas about the world. in fact the historical norm for humans is for everyone in the same community to believe the same thing. this time of ideological diversity we live in is anomylous.

of someone says “i believe the earth is flat” most people will not accept that immediately. it’s triggering.

people are triggered by alien ideas. it’s not bad. it’s just being human.

that’s true in a few parts of the world. it may not be valid at all, depending where op is from. in general livestock is the most sustainable land use food.

people have lots of different reasons. some don’t like the idea of killing a big animal with feelings and expressiveness. some because of how farms abuse or torture animals in some countries. some think Anibal farming is worse for the environment. some have religious prohibitions. some think it’s bad for your health. some people don’t like the taste or can’t afford it but don’t want people to think they are weird so they tell people they have a principled argument for it.

In general we are open for constructive feedback

My one big fear right now is that a mod could delete my words, and they would be lost forever.

Sometimes I write long essays here. They are ideas that I think are important and original. I write them so people will be able to read them many years into the future.

It’s important that anything deleted by a mod or an admin can be saved by the creator afterwards.

I’d argue it’s necessary that nothing can ever be fully deleted, if you want people to ever write anything important here.

That’s why historically most of the most important world-change essays were written to newspapers. Once a newspaper is published, it is available forever. It can never be expunged.

Who says otherwise? Same people who say the UK won WW2?

The USSR put the first satellite and the first man in space. The USA was so embarrassed about losing the space race they made a huge effort to go to the moon, to save face. You could say they won the “moon race” if you like. But I don’t think anybody else was racing.

Very interesting. It shows that Lemmy was always a political project. It was always meant to advocate certain politics and discourage others.

IMO this is not what new users expect. So we keep seeing these posts of people realising, and being shocked, and sometimes rage-quitting.

Only a certain portion of people will stay with Lemmy after that realisation, and the others will flee. Is that what you want? (again just IMO)

If not, is there a way to make this political vision more evident, to try to stop this effect?

TBH I’m against the politics of Lemmy. But (IMO again) despite that it’s still a valuable project, and maybe a historically important one.

They might just be full of alt-right because they are small and few. If there were more free-speech spaces they would fill with normal people, so you wouldn’t notice the alt-right, like you don’t in bigger platforrms today.

More free-speech plaforms could be a good thing. Like wikipedia and openstreetmaps - as long as the normal people drown out the crazies, it works brilliantly, much better than a more tightly controlled space.