Wikipedia fork: InfoGalactic

[Poetlister]

InfoGalactic seems to have begun as a complete copy of Wikipedia. However,

Infogalactic is an Internet-based, free-content encyclopedia project that is a dynamic fork of Wikipedia and improves upon the online encyclopedia's model of openly editable content. Infogalactic's pages are interlinked in order to connect the user to related pages with additional information, and are categorized in a variety of ways, including Relativity, Notability, and Reliability to allow the user to prioritize his personalized perspective.

Infogalactic is written collaboratively by volunteers who contribute and edit without compensation. Anyone with Internet access can create and make changes to Infogalactic articles, except in limited cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism. Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or with their real identity.

The foundational principles by which Infogalactic operates are very different from the Five Pillars of Wikipedia. These principles are known as the Seven Canons of Infogalactic.

[thekohser]

Of note, Vox Day (T-H-L) is InfoGalactic's overlord.

[Kelly Martin]

Of note, Vox Day (T-H-L) is InfoGalactic's overlord.

Oh, dear lord.

They could easily give Conservapedia a run for the money for "most insanely run Internet encyclopedia".

[Vigilant]

Of note, Vox Day (T-H-L) is InfoGalactic's overlord.

Oh, dear lord.

They could easily give Conservapedia a run for the money for "most insanely run Internet encyclopedia".

Rationalwiki

[ats]

Of note, Vox Day (T-H-L) is InfoGalactic's overlord.

Oh, dear lord.

They could easily give Conservapedia a run for the money for "most insanely run Internet encyclopedia".

Rationalwiki

This. It will be hard for anyone to unseat Rationalwiki for "most insanely run Internet encyclopedia". Rationalwiki is literally "rules? what rules? its a tuesday so this is ok, but thursday it won't be"

[Randy from Boise]

I think this is a Gamergate side project.

It will be off-line in six months to a year.

RfB

[Ca$hBag]

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/10/1 ... ternative/

[AndyTheGrump]

Duplicate thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8050

[Zoloft]

Duplicate thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8050

Merged.

[Poetlister]

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/10/1 ... ternative/

Oh well, if Breitbart has a good word for it, it must be awful.

[Michaeldsuarez]

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/10/for-ladies.html

You can now order T-shirts.

[Zoloft]

One of their people sent me a link to the blog:

Just thought you'd appreciate knowing about this https://infogalactic.blogspot.com

[Midsize Jake]

It looks like they've got the entire Wikipedia database running under cheap hosting. They probably assumed they could get away with it because the number of page requests will be negligible in comparison, but it's still a huge database. Page loads for articles appear to take 5-10 seconds, and anything that isn't cached, like search results or diffs, is taking upwards of 30 seconds per page.

Just to rewrite all the rules and guidelines and such would take a paid staff several months - I'm guessing they've deleted most of that stuff, but that would lead to a whole bunch of new problems for them should the whole thing actually get some traction and people actually start doing things with it. Which, I assume, it won't, especially once page loads start taking longer than a minute each.

[Vigilant]

It looks like they've got the entire Wikipedia database running under cheap hosting. They probably assumed they could get away with it because the number of page requests will be negligible in comparison, but it's still a huge database. Page loads for articles appear to take 5-10 seconds, and anything that isn't cached, like search results or diffs, is taking upwards of 30 seconds per page.

Just to rewrite all the rules and guidelines and such would take a paid staff several months - I'm guessing they've deleted most of that stuff, but that would lead to a whole bunch of new problems for them should the whole thing actually get some traction and people actually start doing things with it. Which, I assume, it won't, especially once page loads start taking longer than a minute each.

An interesting project would be to port the database to a modern platform and strip out all the shit that shouldn't be in a real encyclopedia, looking at you My Little Pony and Porn Stars.

Use a proven, commercial service like AWS to host it.
Index the crap out of it and replicate the caching worldwide.
I'll bet that 90% of the article reads are a pretty small and predictable set.

[Poetlister]

An interesting project would be to port the database to a modern platform and strip out all the shit that shouldn't be in a real encyclopedia, looking at you My Little Pony and Porn Stars.

That would be a huge job, requiring competent people. It's not just the duff articles. Half the articles on proper encyclopaedic topics would need trimming.

[greyed.out.fields]

On its front page:

Infogalactic is designed around the idea that the user should be permitted to decide what information is relevant to him, not 500 ideologically-driven thought police.

Well, I guess that makes quite a statement. None of your SJW "gender inculsive language" soft-cockery here. And I believe there are about 800 ideologically-driven thought police on active duty. (While you're keeping the place ideologically pure, you also get to do cool things like read deleted stuff.)

[Michaeldsuarez]

One of their people sent me a link to the blog:

Just thought you'd appreciate knowing about this https://infogalactic.blogspot.com

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/10/wikipedia-where-information-goes-to-die.html

[GlwnDwr]

Yes indeed! Thank you for bringing this extremely important point to our attention.

[Midsize Jake]

Infogalactic’s anti-bias architecture will permit users to select their preferred perspective and automatically see the version of the subject page that is closest to it based on a series of algorithms utilizing three variables, Relativity, Reliability, and Notability. This means a supporter of Hillary Clinton will see a different version of the current Donald Trump page than a Donald Trump supporter will, as both users will see the version of the page that was most recently edited by editors with perspective ratings similar to his own.

That's not "anti-bias architecture," that's "pro-infobubble architecture."

They're well aware that no left-leaning persons are going to participate in a Breitbart-run Wikipedia alternative, cheap hosting or no cheap hosting. Even if any did participate, this scheme still wouldn't work properly, because all a right-wing person would have to do is make a minor copy-edit to an article most recently "skewed ideologically" by a left-wing person, and now the right-wingers are seeing the left-wing version all of a sudden and they're all horribly upset that their infobubbles have somehow been penetrated by pro-Muslim demonic Communist infiltrators.

I'm also going to take a wild guess here and say they're not going to give people an easy way to see which version of any given article would be the one they'd see if their "ideological rating" were different.

In theory, something like this might be a good idea if they could get enough buy-in from people with a range of ideologies, but the only way they could do that successfully would be to not be Breitbart.

[thekohser]

Watch out... Infogalactic might get a little more traction, now that BlazingCatFur has provided additional coverage.

[Randy from Boise]

It looks like they've got the entire Wikipedia database running under cheap hosting. They probably assumed they could get away with it because the number of page requests will be negligible in comparison, but it's still a huge database. Page loads for articles appear to take 5-10 seconds, and anything that isn't cached, like search results or diffs, is taking upwards of 30 seconds per page.

Just to rewrite all the rules and guidelines and such would take a paid staff several months - I'm guessing they've deleted most of that stuff, but that would lead to a whole bunch of new problems for them should the whole thing actually get some traction and people actually start doing things with it. Which, I assume, it won't, especially once page loads start taking longer than a minute each.

An interesting project would be to port the database to a modern platform and strip out all the shit that shouldn't be in a real encyclopedia, looking at you My Little Pony and Porn Stars.

Use a proven, commercial service like AWS to host it.
Index the crap out of it and replicate the caching worldwide.
I'll bet that 90% of the article reads are a pretty small and predictable set.

Actually, the web encyclopedia that might actually be able to make a financial go of it would be one with nothing but My Little Pony and Pornstars.

http://www.mylittleponyandpornstars.org

RfB

[Poetlister]

http://www.mylittleponyandpornstars.org

RfB

Good thinking. Should Wikipediocracy snap up that domain name?

[AndyTheGrump]

Isn't the 'and' in the domain name redundant, per rule 34?

[Randy from Boise]

Isn't the 'and' in the domain name redundant, per rule 34?

I suspect that it's the alpha and the omega of MLP fandom, actually...

RfB

[Tears of Ovid]

Hi, I'm an administrator on the InfoGalactic project. For those who don't know, the project is a complete fork of Wikipedia founded in late 2016 with professional backers and currently one corporate partner. The ambitious aim of the project is to replace Wikipedia, or "be to Wikipedia what Facebook was to MySpace" as they put it.

We aim to create a more objective Wikipedia with methods to filter out Wikipedia's bias issues, dysfunctional individuals and power players, 'rules lawyering', and the like, as well as vastly improve on Wikipedia's badly outdated interface and software which is killing its community and decreasing its viewer count as more people turn to Smartphones for internet browsing.

I'd be interested in discussing the project with members here as well as hearing their insights and feedback from their own Wikipedia experiences. Thank you very much.

[Poetlister]

Obviously, you have a huge job ahead of you. Just keeping up with changes on Wikipedia will be hard enough.

[Tears of Ovid]

Yes it's going to be interesting to see if it lives up to its expectations. Anyone looking for an alternative to Wikipedia is welcome to join.

[Hex]

Lol, alt-right ads on the front page. Stroll on, Nazi.

[Zoloft]

Current Ad:


That would make most people walk away from your site, never to return. Sad!

Checked one article: Hillary Clinton

It hasn't been updated since October. Sloppy. She's still leading in the polls.

[Alison]

I clicked over and picked a random page;

Pizzagate is a crowdsourced investigation by independent researchers and commentators into an alleged connection between child sexual abuse and people closely associated with Hillary Clinton. The investigation began in October 2016 after

vs. Wikipedia's;

Pizzagate is a debunked[2][3] conspiracy theory that emerged during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle alleging that John Podesta's emails, which were leaked by WikiLeaks, contain coded messages referring to human trafficking and connecting a number of restaurants in the United States and members of the Democratic Party with a fabricated child-sex ring.

Ok - nice POV fork. Pity you don't advertise it as that.

[Kingsindian]

Perhaps this thread should be merged with the other thread.

I have a question: how is Infogalactic planning to be a store of "true, relevant and verifiable" facts? From what I understand, the aim is to get each person a personalized view of the topic. Wouldn't this lead to cherry-picking facts and clickbait?

[Tears of Ovid]

Lol, alt-right ads on the front page. Stroll on, Nazi.

No, as a Buddhist of Semite heritage I think I'll stay right where I am an and laugh at your cultural and world ignorance, like I've come to expect from the average American who gets most of their knowledge about political philosophy and history from Fox News or MSNBC. How about that, sociopath?

I doubt for example, you know anything about the differences between fascist political theory and the political theory of Islamism in nations such as Saudi Arabia. So please don't flatter yourself by thinking someone of your obvious lack of education would be welcome at our project, me being an individual of post-graduate humanities and philosophy education myself.

[Tears of Ovid]

Ok - nice POV fork. Pity you don't advertise it as that.

We do advertise it as an attempt to remove Wikipedia's bias policies and violations of their NPOV, so why did you say that?

For example in regards to the Alefantis claims, we consider the Wikileaks to be a reliable source of information (while some of the more spurious claims bordering on conspiracies were of course histrionic, the Wikileaks themselves did reveal Alefantis sending some inappropriate emails about children, as well as displaying bizarre artwork about children on his social media, which is what propted suspicions about him).

For example, here are a few posts by Alefantis from his social media profiles which were later deleted; whether or not he's guilty of the more heinous accusations, he was indeed posting some mildly disturbing things which could have given reasonable people a cause for investigation:

[PizzaGate stuff removed]
--

While on Wikipedia the only sources used in the article about the Alefantis allegations are Snopes.com (which is unreliable), a Fox News segment (which was later discredited as having incorrect and incomplete information). For example in the second of the pictures above, the odd Facebook comments mentioning "killroom" were edited from the Fox News script.

Unfortunately Wikipedia's policy can be gamed to discredit "non-mainstream" sources as unreliable in order to push a POV, despite being thoroughly inconsistent.

If you'd like I can link to some edits by Wikipedians regarding some "edit wars" over the Alefantis allegations, where some were flat-out admitting to having POV but believing this was a "special case" in which they thought that ignoring the POV policies was acceptable for the "greater good".

[Tears of Ovid]

Current Ad:


That would make most people walk away from your site, never to return. Sad!

Most people as in who? If you're talking about uneducated basement dwellers with no outside knowledge of the world other than perhaps MSNBC or some 'altnerative media' source like Salon.com, then perhaps you're right.

But we're not targeting fringe demographics like that, just normal thinking people.

I'm not very familiar with this Milo Character, but since Simon and Schuster is publishing a book by him, it appears that 'most people' wouldn't have a problem with him, as opposed to some fringe minority of partisan activists who get most of their knowledge of the world from the internet, hence their mental distortions about "most people", a la Dunning-Krueger.

should_simon_schuster_be_publishing_milo_yiannopoulos_book_a_slate_debate.html

The fact that the ad in question says "#1 bestseller" more or less contradicts the "most people comment" anyway. I mean you're not honestly saying that this represents most functional people in the real world, with careers, marriages, friends, and lives outside of the computer, are you?

[Hex]

Mr. Tears needs to learn that the correct response to being accused of something in a forum post doesn't include sending an insulting private message to the accuser. Especially not when the accuser is board staff.

We wish him well in his future personal development.

[Kingsindian]

I have a question: how is Infogalactic planning to be a store of "true, relevant and verifiable" facts? From what I understand, the aim is to get each person a personalized view of the topic. Wouldn't this lead to cherry-picking facts and clickbait?

I am not sure if Mr. Ovid saw my post, but I am still interested in the answer.

[thekohser]

I have a question: how is Infogalactic planning to be a store of "true, relevant and verifiable" facts? From what I understand, the aim is to get each person a personalized view of the topic. Wouldn't this lead to cherry-picking facts and clickbait?

I am not sure if Mr. Ovid saw my post, but I am still interested in the answer.

Consider that his capability of answering may now be removed.

[Anroth]

Can we get an answer to the question 'How many headshots does Hex have?'.

I admit it's been bothering me for awhile.

[Hex]

Can we get an answer to the question 'How many headshots does Hex have?'.

I admit it's been bothering me for awhile.

There are some things that we will probably just never know.

[Zoloft]

Can we get an answer to the question 'How many headshots does Hex have?'.

I admit its been bothering me for awhile.

From Tears of Ovid's perspective, one, right in the forehead.

I'm going to remove a couple links. We don't want to give link SEO to PizzaGate crap.

[tarantino]

An image search shows Tears of Ovid tried to use a Moslem woman's pic to represent himself on his wikipedia user page. He's now of course blocked.

[Kingsindian]

The banning seemed a bit hasty to me. Perhaps it would have been sufficient to disagree with the political tendencies of the poster. I am not sure they would have lasted too long here anyway, but whatever, I am not a mod.

My question was apparently answered on the WS forum in response to some other post. It seems they envision more top-down editorial control, more moderation and stricter vetting of contributors. They also envision the site being for-profit (funded by ads), but as far as I can see, they don't plan to pay contributors.

Theoretically, there are two ways in which it could turn out. The first (with very strict and sensible moderation) is that it is a worse Britannica model, because the contributors are not known to be domain experts and neither do the moderators have any relevant editing expertise. The second way (with less strict and less sensible moderation) is for it to become a clickbait and confirmation bias machine.

The second is more likely, in my opinion. Neither outcome is consistent with being a store of "true, relevant and verifiable" facts.

Practically, I read the Pizzagate article and found that it's chock full of non-sequiturs and BLP violations sourced to dubious sources. For instance, here is a quote:

This interest in art connected the Podestas to Comet Ping Pong pizzeria owner James Alefantis ("Jimmy Comet")[13] and Biljana Djurdjevic[14], whose art depicts children in sexually abusive situations.[15]

The last reference (#15) is to a image on sl.img which is a broken link. Even if it wasn't broken, who made the determination that the picture depicted sexual abuse of children? Such a serious charge should not be made with such flimsy evidence.

[Kingsindian]

(From the WR forum):
Article in Wired about Infogalactic and "liberal bias" in Wikipedia. Apparently, TDA was also interviewed by the author, though he wasn't quoted in the final version. It ends with the following:

It’s true that the reach and impact of right-wing encyclopedias like Infogalactic and Metapedia remains muted, for now. Yet their mere existence is a sign that the appeal of a centralized forum for hashing out the truth is fading. Wikipedia might find that its days at the top are numbered.

It quotes, among other things, a 2014 paper by Greenstein and Zhu which I have also mentioned here. The same authors have some follow up work.

[Kingsindian]

It was also discussed on the Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group. The reaction was mostly dismissal. One person made the curious comment:

Hahaha Vox Day. He'll be as successful at this as he was at rigging the Hugos.

From the article on Sad Puppies (T-H-L) (which was not by Vox Day; he was the originator of the similar Rabid Puppies).

For the 2015 Hugos, the Sad Puppies and overlapping Rabid Puppies slates swept several entire categories of nominations, with all except one of those categories then being voted "No Award" at the Hugos.

So Mr. Franklin is saying that Infogalactic will be successful at sweeping entire categories of Wikipedia pages, which will be (to translate to Wikipedia) stubbed or deleted?

Be careful what you wish for...

[thekohser]

Article in Wired about Infogalactic...

Look in the comments and note how much spare time someone called "Factsaremyreligion" seems to have.

[Poetlister]

Article in Wired about Infogalactic...

Look in the comments and note how much spare time someone called "Factsaremyreligion" seems to have.

Where would the Internet be if there weren't all these people with far too much spare time? Indeed, this site might not be necessary because Wikipedia would be very quiet.