Encyclosphere

[Giraffe Stapler]

Encyclosphere is the Thunderdome of encyclopedias - two encyclopedias enter, one encyclopedia exits. Or it is the "encyclopedia layer" of the internet. Or it's a distributed encyclopedia. Or something. Mentioned in another thread, this probably deserves its own discussion.

It is Larry Sanger's new new thing. You can read a piece about it here (by someone who believes Pizzagate is real and Wikipedia is controlled by the deep state).

[Osborne]

linkhttps://larrysanger.org/2019/10/want-to ... closphere/[/link]
Original, better article.

[Randy from Boise]

Developers: start doing exploratory coding. Like what?

Create scrapers to get metadata about encyclopedia articles out of Wikipedia, Everipedia, Britannica, Ballotpedia, etc. Scrape responsibly. Don’t overload servers. ...

Legal beagles:

Advise us on the legalities involved in the aforementioned scraping.

Oy vey.

emphasis added

RfB

[Vigilant]

Another really stupid idea.

[Eric Corbett]

Advise us on the legalities involved in the aforementioned scraping.

Oy vey.

What do you see as the problem with that? Other than that there are no problems with scraping metadata from anything?

[Beeblebrox]

And yet he is stil listed as the CIO of Everipedia. And apparently he is homeschooling his kids in Columbus, Ohio. But clearly he has time to totally spearhead yet another Wikipedia alternative that will mostly just be a mirror of Wikipedia articles.

Also, if you've never been to Ohio, but you imagine it as a depressing landscape of pig farms with the occasional ugly city, it's not all like that but that is exactly what Columbus is like.

[Poetlister]

Larry did manage to launch Wikipedia, so he has some form. And the founders of this site thought highly enough of him to make him a trustee.

[Midsize Jake]

Larry did manage to launch Wikipedia, so he has some form. And the founders of this site thought highly enough of him to make him a trustee.

"This site" meaning Wikipediocracy? Larry Sanger was never a trustee on Wikipediocracy. I think I might have lent him $5 for a sandwich once, but that's not quite the same thing.

[Eric Corbett]

And yet he is stil listed as the CIO of Everipedia. And apparently he is homeschooling his kids in Columbus, Ohio. But clearly he has time to totally spearhead yet another Wikipedia alternative that will mostly just be a mirror of Wikipedia articles.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand what's being proposed. Metadata is data about data, not the data itself.

[Eric Corbett]

Larry did manage to launch Wikipedia, so he has some form. And the founders of this site thought highly enough of him to make him a trustee.

"This site" meaning Wikipediocracy? Larry Sanger was never a trustee on Wikipediocracy. I think I might have lent him $5 for a sandwich once, but that's not quite the same thing.

Did you ever get it back? The money I mean, not the sandwich.

[Midsize Jake]

Larry Sanger was never a trustee on Wikipediocracy. I think I might have lent him $5 for a sandwich once, but that's not quite the same thing.

Did you ever get it back? The money I mean, not the sandwich.

I think he just signed over a controlling financial interest in one of his past projects (I forget which) and we just called it even.

[Beeblebrox]

And yet he is stil listed as the CIO of Everipedia. And apparently he is homeschooling his kids in Columbus, Ohio. But clearly he has time to totally spearhead yet another Wikipedia alternative that will mostly just be a mirror of Wikipedia articles.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand what's being proposed. Metadata is data about data, not the data itself.

I confess I didn't try that hard to understand exactly what it is because it sounds vague and pointless and Larry has just wandered willy nilly from one lame project to the next for some time now.

[DanMurphy]

This reads like the elevator pitch is "Geocities, but for the encyclosphere."

What if all of humanity wrote encyclopedia articles, and rated them, as part of a completely decentralized knowledge network, with no individual, group, corporation, or government in charge of the whole?

We could create a knowledge commons, defined by neutral, open, technical standards and protocols: a network that decentralizes encyclopedias, exactly as the Blogosphere has done for blogs.

This is so stupid it makes me sad.

[Randy from Boise]

This reads like the elevator pitch is "Geocities, but for the encyclosphere."

What if all of humanity wrote encyclopedia articles, and rated them, as part of a completely decentralized knowledge network, with no individual, group, corporation, or government in charge of the whole?

We could create a knowledge commons, defined by neutral, open, technical standards and protocols: a network that decentralizes encyclopedias, exactly as the Blogosphere has done for blogs.

This is so stupid it makes me sad.

It is so stupid that it makes me gleeful.

RfB

[DanMurphy]

The government should be running "this is your brain on blockchain" PSAs.

[Randy from Boise]

At the risk of turning my own brain into scrambled eggs, an attempt at unpacking this...

What if all of humanity wrote encyclopedia articles, and rated them, as part of a completely decentralized knowledge network, with no individual, group, corporation, or government in charge of the whole?

We could create a knowledge commons, defined by neutral, open, technical standards and protocols: a network that decentralizes encyclopedias, exactly as the Blogosphere has done for blogs.

What if all of humanity wrote encyclopedia articles... — An epigone imitation Wikipedia's vapid universalist applause line, "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."

...and rated them... — like Quora or Reddit or Urban Dictionary...

...as part of a completely decentralized knowledge network, with no individual, group, corporation, or government in charge of the whole? — And no indication given of what entity is going to host and distribute this vast agglomeration of independently-produced gunk of assorted quality on assorted topics. Are we imagining a world in which everyone has their own server and holds their own independently-written material, coordinated by no one? Aside from the extremely high (insurmountable) barrier to entry, then why vote? Or is there to be some centralized Keeper of the Voting Score and provider of the links? Where is decentralization then?

We could create a knowledge commons... — Buzzy buzzy buzzy bumblebuzzwords...

...defined by neutral, open, technical standards and protocols... — ...buzzing 'round the knowledge turds... Boy it does sound Internet Patriotic™ though, does it not? I feel like I need to stand up and remove my cap...

...exactly as the Blogosphere has done for blogs. — Gee, I thought Google did that...

What Larry seems to be actually suggesting, underneath this luxurious three foot thick layer of aged guano is this: A centralized website, hosted by him, funded by donations, taking every entry about every topic and sorting the best to the top by unmoderated user upvoting, like a gigantic Urban Dictionary. Don't forget to keep writing those checks! Did you know that if everyone on earth gave the cost of a cup of coffee, we could keep Urban Knowledge Dumpster running without advertising? It's true!

My head hurts...

RfB

[Randy from Boise]

And yet he is stil listed as the CIO of Everipedia. And apparently he is homeschooling his kids in Columbus, Ohio. But clearly he has time to totally spearhead yet another Wikipedia alternative that will mostly just be a mirror of Wikipedia articles.

Also, if you've never been to Ohio, but you imagine it as a depressing landscape of pig farms with the occasional ugly city, it's not all like that but that is exactly what Columbus is like.

...Don't forget random stoplights pointlessly haltering rural highways to nowhere.

RfB

[Moral Hazard]

After Henry B. Mann (T-H-L)'s retirement, Columbus has not been a Midwestern center of number theory, but it does have Peter Orno (T-H-L) (P. Ørno).

[Randy from Boise]

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT COMING OCTOBER 17 FROM SANGER'S KNOWLEDGE STANDARDS FOUNDATION!!!

THE WORLD AWAITS WITH BATED BREATH!!!!!!!

Don't let that lack of anything concrete stop you from giving Larry Sanger money, boys and girls!!!

He's already proudly on the scoreboard for a cool two dollars, much like a fat hobo that has just learned how to play “Camptown Races” on the harmonica!!!

“My foundation needs your bucks, do-dah! do-dah! / Fork them over you stupid fucks, oh the do-dah day!!!"

Come on, give generously!!! Larry needs to eat!!! He named Wikipedia in 2001 after all!!! Feed Larry!!!

RfB

[Randy from Boise]

DID I MENTION THAT LARRY'S FOUNDATION PROVIDING AN UNSPECIFIED SERVICE BECAUSE WIKIPEDIA NEEDS MONEY FOR A WAR CHEST???

WAR CHESTS ARE IMPORTANT!!! SERIOUSLY, LARRY NEEDS YOUR MONEY TODAY!!! PLUS LIBRAPAY REALLY WORKS!!! COME ON, DONATION RULES ARE STRICT, HE WON'T TAKE MONEY FROM JUST ANYBODY!!! HE NEEDS IT FROM YOU!!!!!!!

Please please please please please please give Larry money!!!!!!!!!!!!

RfB

[Randy from Boise]

AND THE KNOWLEDGE STANDARDS FOUNDATION IS PRESENT ON INSTAGRAM, TOO, JUST IN CASE YOU WANNA CHECK OUT SOME ARTSY POORLY LIGHTED, LO-RES, LO-CONTRAST PHOTOGRAPHS OF BOOKS!!!

DON'T FORGET TO DONATE!!!!!!!

RfB

P.S. That company logo with one big circle on top of three little decentralized circles really says it all, does it not?

[C&B]

P.S. That company logo with one big circle on top of three little decentralized circles really says it all, does it not?

Wuf wuf larry

[Randy from Boise]

So even though he bravely led an international Facebook strike on a recent national holiday, Larry loves social media enough to have set up a Twitter feed and an Instagram account for his fantastic new Knowledge Standards Foundation. But what about this encylosphere.org that he links to in the sig of his Twitter user page?

It's a colorful splash screen with no registration instructions and a sign-in pop-up with no space for user names, only for an individual password.

#PotemkinVillage

RfB

P.S. It appears that this fantastic site going live on 10/17/19 is the big event in the making. I'm so excited that I think I'm gonna pee myself.

[Randy from Boise]

I was thinking for a bit this morning that the new Sanger money-making scheme was going to be akin to a porn site aggregator, with links to various porn sites encylopedias and user ratings for each. This would be arguably useful and achievable — a navigational circle of actually existing encyclopedias. But, no, I was right the first time — this ding ding seems intent on building an Urban Knowledge Dumpster™ with user upvoting and downvoting of individual articles mirrored from multiple encyclopedias housed on different servers. He seems to want to establish a uniform standard for such internet encyclopedias to make this sorting technically feasible.

Leaving aside for the moment the argument how utterly centralized and potentially problematic such an aggregator appendage would be, let's give some space to the fat, harmonica-playing hobo to make his case. This is 16-part Twitter thread from September 19, 2019:

Knowledge is very powerful. More specifically, authoritative statements of what is known on various subjects are powerful. How? Such statements can be used to influence elections, justify policies, and articulate controversial points of view—in effect to gain, wield, and build and consolidate power. The power to declare what is known is nearly the power to rule the world. No small group—no person, corporation, oligarchy, or cadre of insiders—should wield such power.

We believe in democracy: we believe that political power is best spread out, not concentrated in the hands of a few, where it is apt to be abused. We should also believe, therefore, in epistemic democracy: the power to declare what is known should also be very widely distributed. So the power to declare what is known should not be concentrated in the hands of Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, The New York Times, governments, or any such exclusive groups.

The history of publishing, including Internet publishing, makes all too clear that the authority to declare what is known is wielded by selfish, powerful interests to advance their own agendas, which always unsurprisingly have the effect of consolidating their own power. Epistemic power should be spread out among the public. But how? We can imagine an Encyclosphere, which does for encyclopedias what the Blogosphere (and its defining technical standards) did for blogs—not an app, but the encyclopedia layer of the Internet.

The democratic promise of the Encyclosphere is that, by meaningfully decentralizing the publishing and rating of encyclopedic content, we will spread epistemic authority out among the public, disempowering giant, and sometimes abusive, corporations and totalitarian governments.

I argue that the root problem about encyclopedias and knowledge resources generally today is that they are in the hands of big centralizing organizations—even as it becomes increasingly normal to use such resources to push a political and cultural agenda.

Wikipedia, for example, has become more strikingly biased as the years have passed, representing Establishment and moneyed interests, and increasingly rejecting any challenges from outsiders. But such challenges are absolutely essential to the advancement of knowledge. Ordinary smart people and good writers are essentially prevented from participating meaningfully in, or even having significant input on, "the official story" according to most knowledge resources. What happened to the "encyclopedia anybody can edit"?

It's the world's biggest encyclopedia. But if you want to contribute, you must work on exactly one article and negotiate about what it says with whoever is already there—anonymous volunteers frequently with enormous amounts of time on their hands, for some reason.

That's not how it should work. How should a more democratic Encyclosphere work?

* Writers should be able to publish their own articles wherever and whenever they want, without asking anyone.
* Readers around the world should be given easy and unfettered access to those articles.
* Raters—either the general public, or people that others should be able to identify as experts—should be able to rate those articles.
* Users should be able to sort and re-sort articles according to all ratings, or selected ratings.
* The control over whose ratings to pay attention to should always be in the hands of the user.

This way we can, in a decentralized and democratic system, do an end run around Google and Wikipedia.

Sound good? I'm going to need your help starting a nonprofit democratic movement to make this a reality. So get ready. Announcement soon.

Lots of fertilizer to shovel here, but let's get started...

The power to declare what is known is nearly the power to rule the world. No small group—no person, corporation, oligarchy, or cadre of insiders—should wield such power. — The problem with politics today is that the "alternative facts" of reactionary nationalist political actors, in many cases dezinformatsiia, are being given equal footing among targeted readers as is factual information. It is the decentralization of informational authority that is empowering the Trump movement, for example. It's all good and well to argue for mass, popular participation in the assembly of factual information (e.g. Wikipedia in theory and in its best practice); it is quite another to have "truth" be popularly sourced by upvoting.

So the power to declare what is known should not be concentrated in the hands of Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, The New York Times, governments, or any such exclusive groups. — Here Sanger sloppily conflates the rough-and-tumble, publicly accessible, multiple authorship of Wikipedia, the authoritative journalism of one leading newspaper, state-controlled information, and the corporately owned message-board-like free-for-all of Facebook and Twitter. These are not all the same thing, nor are the attributes and problems of each of these things remotely similar. Also, Sanger neatly sidesteps the role of Google and the various web browsers in the distribution of information. That's a complete 'nother kettle of fish, and at least as important.

...by meaningfully decentralizing the publishing and rating of encyclopedic content, we will spread epistemic authority out among the public, disempowering giant, and sometimes abusive, corporations and totalitarian governments. — We are seeing just how easy it is for authoritarian governments to shut down the flow of information from sources they wish to stifle. It would be just as simple for them to shut down access to Sanger's Centralized Rating System for Decentralized Information Sources; even easier for them if his mirror were to eclipse the presence of the individual sites themselves.

Wikipedia, for example, has become more strikingly biased as the years have passed, representing Establishment and moneyed interests, and increasingly rejecting any challenges from outsiders. — Now we get to the root of the problem as The Great Sanger sees it: "Those nasty Wikipedians wouldn't genuflect to ME. I'll show them! Those Wikipedians are mean to my alternative medicine/anti-vax pals! Those bastards!" He is Captain Ahab, now nearly 20 years into his quest to kill the great white whale that done bit off his leg...

It's the world's biggest encyclopedia. But if you want to contribute, you must work on exactly one article... — Unmitigated bullshit. An outright lie.

...and negotiate about what it says with whoever is already there—anonymous volunteers frequently with enormous amounts of time on their hands, for some reason. — What are you trying edit, Larry? What are you trying to change? What particular point of view are you trying to push and why? We Wikipedians are quite reasonable towards those who come in good faith to add factual, sourced information or to improve article wording (outside of a couple of well-known dysfunctional hotspots, cough cough, Israel-Palestine, cough cough...) You misrepresent the situation faced by most potential contributors about most existing or potential subjects. The worst case scenario is not the norm, it is the worst case scenario. The norm is mundane. The norm is boring. The norm is editors you have never heard of before adding information about subjects you don't care about. But you've got a pointed POV up your fat ass and you're pissed off because you are not able to "share" it with humanity... Isn't that right, Larry???

Ordinary smart people and good writers are essentially prevented from participating meaningfully in, or even having significant input on, "the official story" according to most knowledge resources. — Again, complete bullshit, although I don't discount the possibility that St. Larry believes this is true in his delusional fever dreams...

* Writers should be able to publish their own articles wherever and whenever they want, without asking anyone. — No argument here. There are all sorts of online information channels that would welcome good work, or one should start their own.

* Readers around the world should be given easy and unfettered access to those articles. — As mentioned above, you've got no solution for this and might have the unintended consequence of making it worse, in the extremely unlikely chance that your mad scheme were to advance past the VITALLY IMPORTANT fundraising stage...

* Raters—either the general public, or people that others should be able to identify as experts—should be able to rate those articles. — Why? Do we vote on truth? Who appoints the "experts" and how do you square this with your loud declaration of adherence to the principles of democracy and decentralization?

* Users should be able to sort and re-sort articles according to all ratings, or selected ratings.
* The control over whose ratings to pay attention to should always be in the hands of the user. — A quicksorting mechanism for the fascists to advance dezinformatsia, political memes, and their dubious "alternative truths."

More time than I should have wasted on Sanger's Fantastic Money Making Scheme No. 37™...

RfB

[Poetlister]

This reads like the elevator pitch is "Geocities, but for the encyclosphere."

What if all of humanity wrote encyclopedia articles, and rated them, as part of a completely decentralized knowledge network, with no individual, group, corporation, or government in charge of the whole?

We could create a knowledge commons, defined by neutral, open, technical standards and protocols: a network that decentralizes encyclopedias, exactly as the Blogosphere has done for blogs.

This is so stupid it makes me sad.

It is so stupid that it makes me gleeful.

RfB

This sounds fairly similar to Wikipedia, except that there is not much rating of articles there. Loads of people writing articles with nobody in charge.

[Eric Corbett]

Certainly there's very little in the way of quality control on Wikipedia, but if there was it wouldn't be able to boast of having 5.7 million (crappy) articles, and the WMF wouldn't be able to drag in the donations as a result.

But I can see a place for some intelligently curated "authority" on the quality of various versions of accounts of topics in various encyclopedias, given it's not done by merely crowd sourcing, and fairly assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each. Sadly though, given Sanger's history, what he's likely proposing is just more crowd sourcing nonsense. I believe that Everipedia, for instance, that get-rich-quick-by making-editors-pay scam effectively does exactly that already, so the only new thing here is these mysterious new proposed standards.

[Randy from Boise]

This sounds fairly similar to Wikipedia, except that there is not much rating of articles there. Loads of people writing articles with nobody in charge.

It would be much worse, with varying interpretations of "truth" being ranked (and potentially subject to manipulation) and a completely open gate to character assassination in lieu of WP's BLP policy, which, like that policy or not, does massively curtail such abuse.

Most of Sanger's ideas are just stupid. This one is stupid and potentially dangerous.

Of course, it's all about the Benjamins with him, which is almost certainly as far as this scheme is ever gonna get.

t

[Randy from Boise]

But I can see a place for some intelligently curated "authority" on the quality of various versions of accounts of topics in various encyclopedias, given it's not done by merely crowd sourcing, and fairly assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each. Sadly though, given Sanger's history, what he's likely proposing is just more crowd sourcing nonsense. I believe that Everipedia, for instance, that get-rich-quick-by making-editors-pay scam effectively does exactly that already, so the only new thing here is these mysterious new proposed standards.

That's not what he proposes. In his twitter Sanger very literally (and ironically, given his conservative politics) pinches the "Let 1,000 flowers bloom, [let 1,000 schools of thought contend]" line from Mao. He is proposing the accumulation of the content of multiple encyclopedias and then upvoting or downvoting multiple articles on the same topic. See: Urban Dictionary.

Of course, the chances of Mr. Doofus getting from half-baked scheme to completed project are near nil. But do be alert to what he is advocating, it has noting to do with "intelligent curation."

RfB

[Vigilant]

How much must it suck for Sanger to be a 'dollar store Jimmy Wales'?

[Eric Corbett]

He is proposing the accumulation of the content of multiple encyclopedias and then upvoting or downvoting multiple articles on the same topic. See: Urban Dictionary.

That doesn't seem to me to be what he's proposing but as you say, it's hypothetical anyway, as it'll never get off the ground.

[Mason]

We will try to build a "war chest" over the years and keep expenses low. If this must be a hobby until we can pay staff, so be it. We won't give up. Unlike some of @lsanger's previous projects, this is not "an experiment." We are in this for the long haul.

I would be curious to know why this project isn't "an experiment."

I appreciate the self-awareness, at least, that acknowledges that Dr Sanger is known for flaking out of these projects after starting them, but am not seeing yet why this project will be different.

It seems both Wales and Sanger are regretting that when they found that miraculous "next big thing" genie that granted their wishes for a wildly popular and influential website, they forgot to make their third wish "and make us rich beyond our wildest imaginations." Now they are spending their fifties desperately trying to find that genie again so they can rectify their omission and take their rightful place among Bezos and Zuckerburg, who did remember to make that third wish. Wales is frantically hunting for the genie in the "Wiki*" forest and Sanger in the "*pedia" forest, but the genie has long since moved on, and whatever lucky SOB stumbles across him next will be nowhere near either of those places.

[Beeblebrox]

this sounds exactly right.

[arthur]

With their continual subsequent failures, it should be apparent to all that Wales & Sanger just got lucky with WP.

The fact that basement-dwellers bound to a simple set of rules will produce something superficially resembling an encyclopedia was waiting to be discovered, and the pair fell upon it by accident.

In a way, WP is reminiscent of Conway’s ‘game of life’: Conway found that ‘cells’ on a plane bound to a simple set of mathematical rules will produce something superficially resembling biological life.

Conway gave us a mathematical curiosity, WP, a social curiosity—in neither case could what is produced be mistaken for the real thing.

[Poetlister]

But I can see a place for some intelligently curated "authority" on the quality of various versions of accounts of topics in various encyclopedias, given it's not done by merely crowd sourcing, and fairly assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each. Sadly though, given Sanger's history, what he's likely proposing is just more crowd sourcing nonsense. I believe that Everipedia, for instance, that get-rich-quick-by making-editors-pay scam effectively does exactly that already, so the only new thing here is these mysterious new proposed standards.

The trouble is that while for some topics there are good online alternatives to Wikipedia, such as Britannica and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, there are vast swathes where Wikipedia provides the only coherent articles. Maybe it would not be hard to produce better articles using fairly readily available sources, but nobody has done so yet. This project would end up with literally millions of Wikipedia articles as the best available.

[Eric Corbett]

Excluding the BLPs, which are of dubious value anyway, I'm not convinced that's true.

But much depends on the metadata that Encyclosphere intends to be a repository for; if it's just votes for or against some version of an article then I'd agree it's of no value whatsoever.

[Beeblebrox]

The fact that basement-dwellers bound to a simple set of rules will produce something superficially resembling an encyclopedia was waiting to be discovered, and the pair fell upon it by accident.

Ah the tired old "Wikipedians live in their mother's basements" trope...
And I'm not sure where anyone would get the idea that the rules are simple.

[Eric Corbett]

The "basement dweller" trope is indeed tiresome and tired, but the rules of Conway's game are indeed very simple.

An even more compelling example for me of how apparently complex behaviour can emerge from a few simple rules is boids, a simulation of flocking behaviour.

[Osborne]

With their continual subsequent failures, it should be apparent to all that Wales & Sanger just got lucky with WP.
The fact that basement-dwellers bound to a simple set of rules will produce something superficially resembling an encyclopedia was waiting to be discovered, and the pair fell upon it by accident.
In a way, WP is reminiscent of Conway’s ‘game of life’: Conway found that ‘cells’ on a plane bound to a simple set of mathematical rules will produce something superficially resembling biological life.
Conway gave us a mathematical curiosity, WP, a social curiosity—in neither case could what is produced be mistaken for the real thing.

That's an academic level analysis of this unlikely, yet apparent phenomenon called wikipedia.

[Osborne]

Ah the tired old "Wikipedians live in their mother's basements" trope...
And I'm not sure where anyone would get the idea that the rules are simple.

Actually he was referring to the creators of WP, including Larry and Jimbo.
We can safely assume, that the owners and governors of WP, including Beeblebrox live above ground, in a higher caste of society, where the profits of WP land.

[Randy from Boise]

We will try to build a "war chest" over the years and keep expenses low. If this must be a hobby until we can pay staff, so be it. We won't give up. Unlike some of @lsanger's previous projects, this is not "an experiment." We are in this for the long haul.

I would be curious to know why this project isn't "an experiment."

I appreciate the self-awareness, at least, that acknowledges that Dr Sanger is known for flaking out of these projects after starting them, but am not seeing yet why this project will be different.

It seems both Wales and Sanger are regretting that when they found that miraculous "next big thing" genie that granted their wishes for a wildly popular and influential website, they forgot to make their third wish "and make us rich beyond our wildest imaginations." Now they are spending their fifties desperately trying to find that genie again so they can rectify their omission and take their rightful place among Bezos and Zuckerberg, who did remember to make that third wish. Wales is frantically hunting for the genie in the "Wiki*" forest and Sanger in the "*pedia" forest, but the genie has long since moved on, and whatever lucky SOB stumbles across him next will be nowhere near either of those places.

Nice post.

Bezos and Zuckerberg made "make us rich beyond our wildest imaginations" their first wish, actually.

I think JW's third wish was for a hot brown-haired chick and Sanger's third wish was for a new ping pong table.

RfB

[Poetlister]

The trouble is that while for some topics there are good online alternatives to Wikipedia, such as Britannica and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, there are vast swathes where Wikipedia provides the only coherent articles. Maybe it would not be hard to produce better articles using fairly readily available sources, but nobody has done so yet. This project would end up with literally millions of Wikipedia articles as the best available.

Excluding the BLPs, which are of dubious value anyway, I'm not convinced that's true.

Whether or not they have any value, they will show up on Encyclosphere. Also, there are articles on many thousands of insignificant villages, geographical features and asteroids.

[Randy from Boise]

OMG, we missed The Great Savior's project launch on Oct. 17...

https://larrysanger.org/2019/10/introdu ... closphere/

RfB

[Beeblebrox]

Wow, it's so inspiring, it's... literally nothing? Sign up for news about the thing that doesn't exist?

[Randy from Boise]

But you can send a message when you sign up. That's good, right?

I particularly love how he puts his own name in as the default for the sign up name. Never let it be said that our hero does not hold himself in the highest possible esteem...

RfB

[Mason]

No small group of elites deserves the power to declare what is known for all of us

Oh, where to start.

[Beeblebrox]

I know, this is the exact opposite of his previously "strongly held belief". But that dumb idea didn't work so now he strongly believes in a different dumb idea that, from the look of it, is an even bigger failure.

[Poetlister]

No small group of elites deserves the power to declare what is known for all of us

I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean. Does he mean "No small group of elites deserves the power to declare on behalf of all of us what is or is not known"?

[Randy from Boise]

Translation: "I really fucking hate Wikipedia."

RfB

[Beeblebrox]

I mean, the free Cuban cigars and endless supply of 16-year-old Islay single-malt Scotch in the admin lounge are nice perks, but I don't feel all that elite.

[Randy from Boise]

I mean, the free Cuban cigars and endless supply of 16-year-old Islay single-malt Scotch in the admin lounge are nice perks, but I don't feel all that elite.

That guy is one of the most butt-hurt people associated with WP in any capacity, ever.

He basically predicted doom when he was pushed aside by the rabble when WP was 25,000 entries on a website. (Or quit because of the rabble, same thing.) He was proven enormously wrong in his prediction and has become a Captain Ahab-like figure ever since.

A very nerdy, weak Captain Ahab, mind you.

RfB