Golden - "decentralized canonical knowledge graph"

[orangepi]

Crypto geek @balajis is investing in a self-professed Wikipedia killer called Golden. Clearly he's been talking to some trolls about how Wikipedia works.

I see a lot of talk about NFTs on their website, and very little in the way of an encyclopedia. Will this go the same way as Everipedia and other "NFT + Wikipedia" projects?

[Giraffe Stapler]

Link, please?

[AndyTheGrump]

Hopefully the crypto-loons will back it heavily. I always enjoy watching train-wrecks, and this one has real potential...

[iii]

Link, please?

Oh man, I am amused.

Link

[iii]

Or... if you wanna see the wiki:

Here's the wiki

Enjoy! You'll have to link your cryptowallet if you want to edit.

[Hemiauchenia]

Or... if you wanna see the wiki:

Here's the wiki

Enjoy!

This is just embarassing.

Looking at the contribution list it seems that some entries have edits going back as far as four years ago. (e.g. https://golden.com/wiki/CRISPR-Cas13d/contributors). Contribution history seems to be extremely sparse on all articles, and the entries feel incredibly bare-bones.

Having had a look at the entries currently up, a lot of them look like non-notable (by Wikipedia standards, anyway) companies, for example the enormous list of Venture Capital firms: https://golden.com/wiki/Venture_capital-R9DM499
Is this just like a venture capital backed version of Kohs MyWikiBiz?

[Midsize Jake]

I like their page-is-loading animation. If I were clever, I might try to do something like that here...

Also, I was surprised to learn that the United States was founded in 1776 by "Port Canaveral," and that its parent organizations are Comau (an Italian engineering company), "Drum Workshop," and Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (a Chinese solar energy firm). Cool!

These kinds of initiatives just need time to get everything right, of course. I'm sure they'll have all the kinks ironed out looooonnnnnng before they run out of VC funding.

Still, if they've really studied Wikipedia to the extent they say they have, they would know that one of the keys to rapid public adoption (aside from Google favoritism, of course) is going all-out on pop culture and entertainment content, so as to take advantage of fan-community energy. This site's article on Doctor Who isn't exactly getting the job done, and in fact it only contains one piece of information, which is that Doctor Who was born in 1963. They don't even give an exact date, which I would think is the least they could do under the circumstances.

[The Blue Newt]

I like their page-is-loading animation. If I were clever, I might try to do something like that here...

Also, I was surprised to learn that the United States was founded in 1776 by "Port Canaveral," and that its parent organizations are Comau (an Italian engineering company), "Drum Workshop," and Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (a Chinese solar energy firm). Cool!

These kinds of initiatives just need time to get everything right, of course. I'm sure they'll have all the kinks ironed out looooonnnnnng before they run out of VC funding.

Jimma will prolly slip them a few bucks to keep it going, and make his encyclopedia look good…

[ArmasRebane]

If they aren't just lying about $40 million in Series B funding, I guess I'll enjoy with dark amusement that money being pissed away.

At least with NFTs I can see where the scam can make money. How are they going to get people to part with their coin for this? Wikipedia is free to use.

[Midsize Jake]

At least with NFTs I can see where the scam can make money. How are they going to get people to part with their coin for this? Wikipedia is free to use.

What they usually tell people is something like, "If Wikipedia were to sell external-link positioning alone (not even banner ads), they'd make billions in revenue every year." Nobody knows if that's true, nor does anyone know the effect on volunteer participation if it became common for articles to include "untouchable" external links in prominent page positions (we can assume the effect would be highly negative on Wikipedia, but on a competing site, who knows). Nobody knows anything. But... we can dream!

What they won't say to these investors is that they can't control Google, and Google isn't going to change their ranking algorithm for a few million bucks, and probably not even a few billion bucks. The amount of marketing and software-development effort required to overcome Wikipedia's Google-favoritism would be Herculean, and the cost would be astronomical — $40 million would barely get you into Stage One of such an effort.

Still, if there's one conceivable benefit to rampant wealth inequality, it's that you can get the nouveau ríche to cough up for all sorts of things and half of them won't even notice the money's gone. If some of those things happen to have redeeming value, maybe we end up with a few nice things that we wouldn't have had otherwise. Most of us would probably prefer to eat and keep our homes warm instead, which is what we'd have if the world's wealth wasn't concentrated in the hands of so few people... but do we really need food and shelter, when we could otherwise have things like AI-driven business-oriented encyclopedias that let people buy well-positioned external links? Maybe it's time for us all to re-evaluate our priorities.

[Konveyor Belt]

Look at any of the articles posted and you'll find "Golden AI" has made a vast majority of the edits, despite not having a user page. It's not even a wiki, it's just a (poor) wikidata scraper. The wikidata pages are even linked in the infoboxes.

[Giraffe Stapler]

Soooooo, I probably don't fully understand what Golden is, but here's my take. It's not a "Wikipedia killer" since it isn't really an encyclopedia in the same sense. Take a look at their page for "Wiki-PR editing of Wikipedia". That's not an encyclopedia article.

The focus of Golden seems to be the knowledge graph. So it's a Wikidata killer. except it isn't, because it isn't looking at the same general facts area that Wikidata covers. It seems to have more of a focus on things investors might want to know. The two could be used together (Golden includes Wikidata ID) but I don't know what you would do when they don't agree on things. I don't believe there is anything preventing Golden from simply hovering up everything in Wikidata if they feel like it, so maybe that's a future goal.

As for making money, they vaguely say that if you enter a triplet (two things and the relationship between them, like Jimmy Wales is the owner of Wikitribune) you are recorded in the giant ledger if all things as the creator of that triplet. I think you may also earn cryptocurrency for doing that, but I'm not sure. Whenever someone uses your triplet, you get paid! Yay! I don't known how this "fractional ownership" is supposed to work in practice. Since you can't copyright or trademark or patent facts, I don't know what prevents anyone (like Wikidata) from copying this data.

There must be something to it, since they convinced people to give them millions, but I don't get it.

[The Blue Newt]

Soooooo, I probably don't fully understand what Golden is, but here's my take. It's not a "Wikipedia killer" since it isn't really an encyclopedia in the same sense. Take a look at their page for "Wiki-PR editing of Wikipedia". That's not an encyclopedia article.

The focus of Golden seems to be the knowledge graph. So it's a Wikidata killer. except it isn't, because it isn't looking at the same general facts area that Wikidata covers. It seems to have more of a focus on things investors might want to know. The two could be used together (Golden includes Wikidata ID) but I don't know what you would do when they don't agree on things. I don't believe there is anything preventing Golden from simply hovering up everything in Wikidata if they feel like it, so maybe that's a future goal.

As for making money, they vaguely say that if you enter a triplet (two things and the relationship between them, like Jimmy Wales is the owner of Wikitribune) you are recorded in the giant ledger if all things as the creator of that triplet. I think you may also earn cryptocurrency for doing that, but I'm not sure. Whenever someone uses your triplet, you get paid! Yay! I don't known how this "fractional ownership" is supposed to work in practice. Since you can't copyright or trademark or patent facts, I don't know what prevents anyone (like Wikidata) from copying this data.

There must be something to it, since they convinced people to give them millions, but I don't get it.

I suspect it’s the same reason Amazon bought Roomba. Even in a venue which claims to discourage POV editing, you can learn an awful lot about yer average wikiteur or -teuse by the articles they work on, and what content they add. LB’s conceit that everyone is an advocate has some examples behind it.

[Zoloft]

Marc Andreessen is a conehead?

[Hemiauchenia]

Marc Andreessen is a conehead?

Considering that he's funding Adam Neumann's new venture only a few years after he was forced out of WeWork following its IPO fiasco https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... n-to-build, that seems about right to me

[Giraffe Stapler]

Marc Andreessen is a conehead?

They don't like to be called that anymore.

[Konveyor Belt]

There must be something to it, since they convinced people to give them millions, but I don't get it.

I think you're overthinking it. All the rage these days is to make money from suckers by pitching "x but Web3". In this case it's Google knowledge graph but Web3. There is nothing more to it then that, because that's all they came up with. Looking at the end product and trying to find a way that they'll make money/be successful from it is a futile effort because there is none. They already made their money on pitching the idea, the viability of the end product has nothing to do with it.

[FelinaLavandula]

This actually might come in handy for my newest screenplay character, Crypto Asshole. I note that regenerative medicine features large on the linked page, and Crypto Asshole indeed works at a regenerative medicine startup, making the protagonist’s life miserable. In short, I’m telling everyone reading this to go write a short story about a shitty crypto company trying desperately to invent Wikipedia 2 after the Ethereum merge in order to squeeze those last few Ethers out of jaded ex-miners.

I find this project very funny. The web design is like a parody of a Web3 scam. All it needs now is a page containing exclusively crypto in-jokes à la Cryptoland.

[Zoloft]

This whole thing is very gaseous and plump.

It will just pop one day.

[Funcrunch]

I searched but did not find a mention of Golden on "Web 3 is going just great". Yet. Maybe Molly White will take note if and when they tank.

[iii]

I did a "deep dive" request for more data from Golden to see if it works as advertised. I decided to choose an area of expertise of mine: "millisecond pulsars".

The Golden Team produced the following after about 10 days.

I have to say I'm somewhat impressed by it. The work is comparable in quality to what is present at Wikipedia at Millisecond pulsar (T-H-L).

[Konveyor Belt]

I did a "deep dive" request for more data from Golden to see if it works as advertised. I decided to choose an area of expertise of mine: "millisecond pulsars".

The Golden Team produced the following after about 10 days.

I have to say I'm somewhat impressed by it. The work is comparable in quality to what is present at Wikipedia at Millisecond pulsar (T-H-L).

It looks like they actually had someone with a Master's in radiation write the bulk of it, which is quite impressive. Having subject experts create articles on demand actually could be a neat business model. Shame about all the crypto stuff though.

[iii]

I did a "deep dive" request for more data from Golden to see if it works as advertised. I decided to choose an area of expertise of mine: "millisecond pulsars".

The Golden Team produced the following after about 10 days.

I have to say I'm somewhat impressed by it. The work is comparable in quality to what is present at Wikipedia at Millisecond pulsar (T-H-L).

It looks like they actually had someone with a Master's in radiation write the bulk of it, which is quite impressive. Having subject experts create articles on demand actually could be a neat business model. Shame about all the crypto stuff though.

Absolutely. The crypto feels pretty gimmicky, but sometimes the gimmicky stuff gets shoved aside if the company matures. Having a group of consultants who produce material like that in similar timeframes could potentially be a disruptor. It's the closest I've seen to a possible competitor to the Wikipedia morass since Citizendium. Of course, that's not saying much.

[Jim]

but sometimes the gimmicky stuff gets shoved aside if the company matures.

Indeed. Time will tell.

That example seems to show they have some potential to be something more than the latest ponzipedia at least
(and perhaps may even want to be, enough to put in the effort).

[orangepi]

I searched but did not find a mention of Golden on "Web 3 is going just great". Yet. Maybe Molly White will take note if and when they tank.

... here comes the pitch ...

[owl be it]

I did a "deep dive" request for more data from Golden to see if it works as advertised. I decided to choose an area of expertise of mine: "millisecond pulsars".

The Golden Team produced the following after about 10 days.

I have to say I'm somewhat impressed by it. The work is comparable in quality to what is present at Wikipedia at Millisecond pulsar (T-H-L).

Try asking them about a subject that doesn't have a Wikipedia article, though

[iii]

I did a "deep dive" request for more data from Golden to see if it works as advertised. I decided to choose an area of expertise of mine: "millisecond pulsars".

The Golden Team produced the following after about 10 days.

I have to say I'm somewhat impressed by it. The work is comparable in quality to what is present at Wikipedia at Millisecond pulsar (T-H-L).

Try asking them about a subject that doesn't have a Wikipedia article, though

Good idea. I do see substantive differences between the Wikipedia article and their work, but most of them can be discoverable through the references in Wikipedia.