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Ibis as a Fediverse plug-in

As a long time Wikipedia editor and administrator (might as well get my biases upfront) I am unsure it is a good idea to target Wikipedia. I can understand why, ideologically, this seems like a good idea (and I am sure there's many a thesis written on its inherent biases) but Wikipedia has the longevity, momentum and sheer weight of users that mean it would be impossible to catch it up and the last point is key because it's also a vital part of it's defences against bad actors. That's not to say it doesn't have its problems and I haven't edited in a while (as I was in a place where I didn't need any extra drama in my life), so it's good that this tool is out there for people to create an alternative it's more that I can see better uses for the already impressive wiki software you've created. And one key use would be as a plug-in to an existing Fediverse service, rather than a standalone wiki.

A while back I suggested that what Lemmy needed was an integrated wiki - I dubbed it Lemmywiks. I've mentioned it a time or two since as it seems the solution to a few issues people have raised. In the meantime I have mulled over the idea (to the point I was rolling my sleeves up to bodge together a proof-of-concept) and it goes a little like this (apologies in advance for the brain-dump):

It piggybacks off the Lemmy authentication (why it's a plug-in not a standalone) and the bulk of the wiki would be divided up under each community.

Community wiki pages

So:

c/hats

Would get:

w/hats

With all the various pages then being under that:

w/hats/faqs

w/hats/links

And really whatever the community requires - some might not need any pages at all. Well they all get one:

w/hats

Is the main/index page and replaces the text in the community's sidebar. As they are both markdown it is a straight switch. That sidebar page now becomes the main portal into the community's pages (if they want any), although you can also add markdown like the wiki links so [[links]] under hats goes to:

w/hats/links

It's up to each community to decide what pages it wants and the beauty of a wiki is that it is flexible enough to accommodate most things a community requires.

To get around the issue of there not being enough users to monitor edits on pages, I'd suggest they are treated like requests on Github and users can submit edits that Mods would approve or reject. Hopefully, this system would alao encourage communities to recruit more Mods, perhaps even have one or two focused on the wiki.

This system of community wikis would, it is hoped, also encourage more single topic focused instances - we have ones for Star Trek, RPGs, books, etc and there's no reason there couldn't be ones for Star Wars, films (there was one that is no more), action figures, etc, etc. A greater diversity of instances has to be a good thing.

In the comments, people have mentioned that this would be ideal for taking on the wikis/fandom wikis and integrating with focused instances would make this possible.

Instance wiki pages

In a similar manner, the main sidebar of the instance is also the front page of the instance wiki pages, structured thusly:

w/lemmy_world/

These pages would only be editable by the Admins and would largely be for all the various bits of documentation the instance needs - legal and policy as well as a potential breakdown of the instance's communities by category. For example, I help Admin feddit.uk and we have communities focused on football clubs, regions, etc. Being able to have:

w/feddit_uk/football-communities

w/feddit_uk/regional-communities

Would really help with discoverablity and may also help with Lemmy's SEO.

Not just Lemmy

My original idea was a wiki plug-in for Lemmy because I am on here the most, and Ibis coming from one of the Lemmy devs makes this an even better test case. However, it would work equally well for other services. Obviously the above structure would be what is required for kbin/kbin but it could be of use for Mastodon (especially instances with a specific focus) or pretty much any Fediverse service, if only for being a repository for their documentation. As I've said, the flexibility of a wiki means that, once you give people the tools they can take it off in any direction they require.

People have questioned why Ibis needs to be federated at all, but it becomes vital when Ibis is a plug-in to other services rather than standalone. For example, I Mod communities on lemmy.world as well as my home instance and I could edit wikis on all communities from my main account.

I probably forgot some stuff but that should be enough to chew over for now.

6 comments

  • I agree that it would make sense to integrate a wiki into Lemmy. However that's much more complicated than a standalone project, because it needs to integrate well with all the existing features. Plus it means more work for all the Lemmy developers, while Ibis could be handled by a completely separate dev team.

    Also having Ibis tightly integrated with Lemmy would automatically limit the userbase to existing Lemmy users. The potential userbase for an independent project is much bigger.

    That said it would be good if Ibis can optionally integrate with Lemmy, but I'm not sure yet how that would work. The most straightforward option would be to treat Ibis articles as normal Lemmy posts, but maybe that doesn't make the most sense.

    • An Ibis article could probably just be considered a post to Lemmy. At least for a read-only view from Lemmy. The questions are: 1. How to show attribution/authorship and 2. Can articles be started or edited on Lemmy?

      For 1, probably makes the most sense to show 'Last edited by XYZ on date.time'. showing more than 1 author gets complicated and would probably be better served by a hyperlink to ibis itself.

      For 2, it probably shouldn't be possible. Maybe a workaround could be that ibis and Lemmy could (optionally) have a unified login system - so your Lemmy account would be good for an Ibis account if your admins chose to install ibis alongside Lemmy.

      • Showing authorship would be quite tricky because there might be dozens of editors, and the Lemmy ui simply doesnt have space for that. Editing articles from Lemmy would also be tricky , so yes some type of single signon would make more sense.

6 comments