i think people underestimate the impact having access to wikipedia has had on the world. really an amazingly important part of the internet and the sharing of knowledge
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
76 points (97.5% liked)
Fediverse
27837 readers
122 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole is worse than going down a Street View rabbit hole. Ahh I can spend an entire day doing it!
Good old wiki walking, you never realize what you're doing until a few hours in, and even then you can't stop.
You're right, although if you ever get the chance to browse a real physical encyclopedia, it's a unique experience.
Not practical, but it's a bit like playing a record or playing a game on a real NES. It's a unique experience.
I have a full 2007 set of Encyclopedia Brittanica in the same room as my vintage computer collection. I browse it occasionally.
Oof, felt this right in the geriatric millennials.
Mfer I was doing assignments where I had to scroll through index cards to find the encyclopaedia, then hand write out the essay.
It’s weird when you go from being the disruptor demographic to realising that when your 5 yo kid jokes about the 80s it’s as far away in time to him as the 1940s we’re to me - for him it’s a 2d, pre-Alexa, analog dystopia.
And I’m only 42.
I bought several physical encyclopedias as a a result of my Wikipedia addiction. Having physical encyclopedias to fall back on is a plus, as their information can't be taken down by deletionists. I also got the Encarta isos off archive.org running in 86box.
I got suckered by an encyclopedia salesman when I was younger. It was one of the biggest wastes of money of my young life. I had no need for it at that time and later, when I could have used it, I had the internet (or Internet with a capital I back then) and college libraries.
I just love the fact that Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia using the money he made in softcore internet porn.
Jimmy Wales does sound like a porn name.
It's got a Jackie Treehorn vibe to it.
This is great to see. I love when big players make moves into the fediverse, because it educates the masses. I'm a nobody on the internet advocating for privacy, security, and ethical social media... and I can advocate til my fingers bleed.
But when companies, publications, celebrities, and others of influence do this, it creates awareness and opens their mind up a bit into the platforms, why they're important, etc. And even if they don't understand federation at first, at least it's a touchpoint. A bit of exposure into how we can have a better, open, and private web.
I really enjoy Mastodon so much more than twitter
The quality of the discussion is miles away from Twitter. People are nice and a lot less of toxicity. Mastodon is amazing as Lemmy.
There was a scientific paper I read semi recently that showed that researchers who post on Mastodon get much higher quality interaction than on Twitter (and I think a few other social-media type places, but it was mainly Mastodon vs Twitter). There was overall less interaction on Mastodon (unsurprisingly), but also that this difference has been diminishing as Mastodon grows. My takeaway is that if you want engagement, go Mastodon.
I highly prefer quality to quantity. It's better for then mental health.
Unpopular opinion? Mastodon is a better Twitter than Lemmy is a better Reddit.
So many duplicated communities in Lemmy makes managing subscription impossible.
Reddits quality main appeal also is its past threads whereas on Twitter is rarely about what was tweeted but rather what’s the latest thing that’s happening.
Lemmy will need time and it might never replace reddit. But I look forward to the quality interactions with everyone here!
They are not duplicated (just the same name) and it's not impossible to subscribe to them all with a few clicks.
Use https://lemmyverse.net/communities and simply search for communities and subscribe to them.
I read somewhere this is an upcoming feature. Let's say you subscribe "memes" then you got shown all communities named "memes" from federated servers combined.
From a product perspective, I really disagree.
Twitter’s value is/was that it was ubiquitous. Everyone (important) was there and it was the only Twitter-like thing that there was. Even the Pope tweets. I guarantee you the Pope will never be on Mastodon. Not that any of us necessarily care about updates from the Pope or Lebron James or whoever, but your favorite journalist was, and the developers of all your favorite indie iOS apps were, and if you live in a city, your local public transit authority was likely there as well. Twitter was really the only place for microblogging type of content.
On the other hand, Reddit is, by nature, just a centralized collection of forums, which I think is far more easily recreated in a decentralized way. You already have posts organized into communities, now with Lemmy we’re just adding another layer of organization on top of that. As another commenter said, much of Reddit’s value is that it was the place where someone asked the same question you now have and so you can read those answers, but Twitter’s value really is for real time communications.
The issue I see with both frankly is search. It can be kinda hard with either to find the community/discussions that are interesting and relevant to you, but hopefully that will improve.
I guarantee you the Pope will never be on Mastodon
Doubt that. Vatican uses Linux, if it gets popular enough they're for sure going to have their own Mastodon instance. When you're a big org like them, control matters more than dollar amounts. A recruiting and comms tool that they own end-to-end, except for the protocol (that they can block or mod anytime)? They'd love it. Having a Vatican.va Mastodon handle if you work for them would probably carry cachet with Catholics.
You’re insane if you actually believe that this will happen, but also I hope it does. I reckon they’re more likely to change their position on homosexuality.
This adds a lot of legitimacy to the fediverse
I'm just going to take the opportunity to talk about that Wikipedia is free, it doesn't have advertisement, all the data is freely accesible and your privacy is respected, is just maintained by donations and the community. Just looking around other platforms I think they do an amazing job, so consider to donate today to keep it that way.
they have more than enough money to keep the server running for decades. not to say you don't need to donate, but you don't need to impulse donate every time the big header appears.
I donate about 100 USD a year, give or take. I figured it's worth it for as much as I use Wikipedia
As someone who can't afford to donate, I appreciate you.
To be fully transparent I donate 1 dollar a day, I just appreciate what they do, and I would like to have more services that are able to keep it that way, sadly that is not the case.
I think all big orgs, NGOs, news agencies should do this.
Yes! Also Governmemt agencies.
The Dutch government had created a mastodon server
Beautiful to see Wikipedia throwing their weight into it! Just beautiful to see this spiraling.
that's excellent! I wonder if they'll keep their WT Social network going. Does anyone use it?
Great news!
I hope custom algorithms become an option. I like chronological feeds but would love to have chronological feeds that show me a post based on my likes after 3 posts or so. It would make it much easier to discover new blender artists like is possible on twitter
I came up with an idea (on my alt account ^.^) to improve discoverability... it's more focused on instance or group discovery, though it may be doable for users with a probabalistic reverse index for efficiency. See: https://infosec.pub/post/429743