[Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Erik Aas]

Hello,

this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great project
and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding of
the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I wonder
if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.

Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or edit
an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article. When an
article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are online)
responsible for storing that article.

Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?

Best,
Erik
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Kim Bruning]

Closest to what you're assking would be this new design
for federated wiki by Ward Cunningham:
http://fed.wiki.org/

(May still have some bugs.)

No idea if realistic to convert.

sincerely,
Kim Bruning


On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:41:27AM +0200, Erik Aas wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great project
> and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding of
> the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
> Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I wonder
> if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.
> 
> Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
> store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or edit
> an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article. When an
> article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are online)
> responsible for storing that article.
> 
> Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?
> 
> Best,
> Erik
> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Kevin Payravi]

Welcome to the list, Erik! This is my first post, too.

I don't think the lack of funding for server maintenance is of concern at
all, let alone a severe threat. The 2015-16 plan
 calls for $65
million in spending, with 40% going towards engineering (which in addition
to the servers includes testing, improvements, updates, API work, and all
that jazz). That leaves 60% going towards all the other stuff (management,
legal, grants, HR, communications, etc.). Keeping the servers alive isn't a
severe threat. The threat is keeping the Foundation and community healthy
and active, and spending the money right to make that happen.

Kevin Payravi
W: www.kevinpayravi.com
E: kevinpayr...@gmail.com
P: (330) 554 - 3397

On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Kim Bruning  wrote:

> Closest to what you're assking would be this new design
> for federated wiki by Ward Cunningham:
> http://fed.wiki.org/
>
> (May still have some bugs.)
>
> No idea if realistic to convert.
>
> sincerely,
> Kim Bruning
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:41:27AM +0200, Erik Aas wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great project
> > and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding of
> > the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
> > Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I wonder
> > if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.
> >
> > Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
> > store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or edit
> > an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article. When
> an
> > article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are
> online)
> > responsible for storing that article.
> >
> > Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?
> >
> > Best,
> > Erik
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
> --
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> 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
You can spend money only once. What a distributed Wikipedia brings is
redundancy in a meaningful way. Anyone can provide some space and bandwidth
in this way and when data is local, it means that the response time will be
superior.

When the data is not centrally maintained, it becomes hard to censor.

When we are to keep the "community" healthy an infusion of money by not
needing a centralised server farm means that we can spend money on
community features like proper support for Wikisource or for a user
interface that is as good as Reasonator for Wikidata.

Business as usual does not mean that business as usual is optimal.
Thanks,
 GerardM

On 4 January 2016 at 07:43, Kevin Payravi  wrote:

> Welcome to the list, Erik! This is my first post, too.
>
> I don't think the lack of funding for server maintenance is of concern at
> all, let alone a severe threat. The 2015-16 plan
>  calls for $65
> million in spending, with 40% going towards engineering (which in addition
> to the servers includes testing, improvements, updates, API work, and all
> that jazz). That leaves 60% going towards all the other stuff (management,
> legal, grants, HR, communications, etc.). Keeping the servers alive isn't a
> severe threat. The threat is keeping the Foundation and community healthy
> and active, and spending the money right to make that happen.
>
> Kevin Payravi
> W: www.kevinpayravi.com
> E: kevinpayr...@gmail.com
> P: (330) 554 - 3397
>
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Kim Bruning  wrote:
>
> > Closest to what you're assking would be this new design
> > for federated wiki by Ward Cunningham:
> > http://fed.wiki.org/
> >
> > (May still have some bugs.)
> >
> > No idea if realistic to convert.
> >
> > sincerely,
> > Kim Bruning
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:41:27AM +0200, Erik Aas wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great
> project
> > > and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding
> of
> > > the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
> > > Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I
> wonder
> > > if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.
> > >
> > > Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
> > > store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or
> edit
> > > an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article.
> When
> > an
> > > article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are
> > online)
> > > responsible for storing that article.
> > >
> > > Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Erik
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
> > --
> > [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
> > gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
> > 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72
> >
> > ___
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> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Pierre-Selim]

2015-09-23 10:41 GMT+02:00 Erik Aas :

> Hello,
>
> this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great project
> and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding of
> the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
> Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I wonder
> if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.
>
> Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
> store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or edit
> an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article. When an
> article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are online)
> responsible for storing that article.
>
> Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?
>

Basically you would like Wikipedia to work as git works for source code ?

I guess it's feasible given enought ressources. However I think it's not
gonna be ready anytime soon :)


>
> Best,
> Erik
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> 




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Edward Saperia]

Hi Erik,

This might be interesting to you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:HaeB/Timeline_of_distributed_Wikipedia_proposals

*Edward Saperia*
Founder Newspeak House 
email  • facebook  •
 twitter  • 07796955572
133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG

On 23 September 2015 at 09:41, Erik Aas  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great project
> and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding of
> the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
> Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I wonder
> if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.
>
> Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
> store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or edit
> an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article. When an
> article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are online)
> responsible for storing that article.
>
> Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?
>
> Best,
> Erik
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Fæ]

Hi Erik,

If you compare the annual reports by the Wikimedia Foundation of
donated funds against the basic annual cost of running the servers,
these are only a tiny fraction of the total. There's no lack of
funding for the basics, so this is not a risk at the moment.

A closely related discussion has been a global crowd-sourced form of
creating multiply redundant snapshots of all our data, especially of
all the images on Wikimedia Commons. If, say, America was knocked
off-line one day due to meteor strike or the zombie apocalypse, the
rest of us in our post-apocalyptic Europe could easily recreate the
projects on new emergency servers. Probably in Germany ;-) This is an
easier proposition than maintaining a live "mirror". Note that small
portable versions of the text of Wikipedia exist, the idea being that
you can take it as a reference work when you are offline and not need
any special kit.

Fae


On 23 September 2015 at 09:41, Erik Aas  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great project
> and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding of
> the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
> Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I wonder
> if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.
>
> Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
> store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or edit
> an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article. When an
> article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are online)
> responsible for storing that article.
>
> Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?
>
> Best,
> Erik

-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Tomasz Ganicz]

Many years ago, there was an idea to organize Wikipedia in usenet/nntp
style (i.e. multiple servers conected via a dedicated protocol, and one can
set up another one if he/she has enough resources and skills) - but I guess
it would very hard to organize, as it all need to be live-synchronized. In
usenet - texts are created by single person and only once, and then sent to
relevant group, and then it is distributed to all servers and users who
subscribe this group. In Wikipedia - any article can be edited by anyone at
any time, and readers are interested in the final result which the effect
of collaborative writing. Otherwise there will be various article versions
splited across various servers.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet



2015-09-23 10:41 GMT+02:00 Erik Aas :

> Hello,
>
> this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great project
> and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding of
> the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
> Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I wonder
> if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.
>
> Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
> store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or edit
> an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article. When an
> article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are online)
> responsible for storing that article.
>
> Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?
>
> Best,
> Erik
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 




-- 
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http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Denny Vrandecic]

To the best of my knowledge, the two leading candidate technologies for a
decentralized Wikipedia - git and blockchain - would both not scale to
Wikipedia's requirements.

(But I am not an expert in distributed technologies, merely looked into
these two for exactly this use case.)
On Sep 23, 2015 4:59 AM, "Tomasz Ganicz"  wrote:

> Many years ago, there was an idea to organize Wikipedia in usenet/nntp
> style (i.e. multiple servers conected via a dedicated protocol, and one can
> set up another one if he/she has enough resources and skills) - but I guess
> it would very hard to organize, as it all need to be live-synchronized. In
> usenet - texts are created by single person and only once, and then sent to
> relevant group, and then it is distributed to all servers and users who
> subscribe this group. In Wikipedia - any article can be edited by anyone at
> any time, and readers are interested in the final result which the effect
> of collaborative writing. Otherwise there will be various article versions
> splited across various servers.
>
> See:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
>
>
>
> 2015-09-23 10:41 GMT+02:00 Erik Aas :
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great project
> > and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding of
> > the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
> > Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I wonder
> > if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.
> >
> > Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
> > store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or edit
> > an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article. When
> an
> > article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are
> online)
> > responsible for storing that article.
> >
> > Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?
> >
> > Best,
> > Erik
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
>
>
>
>
> --
> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
> http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
> http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Decentralised Wikipedia

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
At the time Andrew S. Tanenbaum had a working model for decentralised
Wikipedia. This model was taken through its paces using models specifically
created for its type of use. The WMF was not able, willing, never mind to
provide traffic data to fine tune the model.

It would scale.
Thanks,
GerardM

On 23 September 2015 at 10:41, Erik Aas  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> this is my first post to this list. I think Wikipedia is a great project
> and am impressed by how well it works. It seems the (lack of) funding of
> the project is one of the more severe threats to its continued success.
> Since (I assume) the biggest cost is the maintenance of servers, I wonder
> if there are there any plans of making Wikipedia decentralised.
>
> Let me elaborate. I'm thinking of a system where many users each would
> store a small part of the encyclopedia. A user wanting to look up or edit
> an article connects to another user who has a copy of that article. When an
> article is updated the update is sent to all other users (that are online)
> responsible for storing that article.
>
> Are there any efforts to accomplish this? Would it be feasible?
>
> Best,
> Erik
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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> 
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