Funding Wiki Federation

This is great! Can we get @Nutomic and the PieFed dev in a room with some FedWiki devs to figure out how to get all 3 interoperating? Leading to an FEP on wiki federation?

That could be a big step towards realising this idea;

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I would suggest there is room for funding federated wiki research & development encompassing several software projects. I’d be interested in helping see such project funding emerge.

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If you have ideas how to get funding for Ibis I’m all ears.

Maybe @strypey and @nutomic can come up on a call together and we figure something out. In the meantime, you could start with comparing what you’re doing that’s interoperable, where your ideas diverge, and how to think about this interoperable federated wiki (including maybe Ward Cunningham’s https://fed.wiki).

There are still NGI Zero funding opportunities you can take, and you have better chances if you’re looking for interop.

I did apply for NLnet funding already, hopefully they will make a decision on it soon. By fed.wiki you mean this project? I had a look at the project, but the protocol is barely documented and seems entirely incompatible with Activitypub. The project also hasnt been developed in many years.

Also I dont have time for calls, we can simply discuss here if you have other funding ideas.

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That’s the one.

Not sure where you’re looking, but I see plenty of recent commits here;

This was also true of Diaspora before third-party projects started trying to interoperate with it. All the more reason to communicate with the devs about it.

Can you expand on that?

This feature request seems to be yours: Feature request: support interoperation over ActivityPub · Issue #122 · fedwiki/wiki · GitHub :slight_smile:

It is indeed, it’s one of the many ‘join the fediverse’ issues I filed on different projects after the AP standard was published. Nothing said in Ward’s repy suggests


On the contrary, he seemed keen to learn about AP and wanted to hear from developers familiar with AP about the best way to proceed. Sadly nobody had time to follow up, or I didn’t get the right people’s attention. Then 2020 happened. But maybe now is the time?

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@strypey You clearly failed to understand my previous comments, where I explained that I am unable to work on Ibis due to lack of funding. I have a family to feed so I dont have time to work for free. Same goes for this fediwiki project, I dont have time to investigate and reverse engineer it for free.

But clearly you are very interested in fediwiki, so you should talk with the developer yourself, reverse engineer the protocol, then make a post with your results. If it really is compatible with Activitypub like you suggest, I will definitely try to make it federate with Ibis if and when it gets funded.

Anyway this is enough offtopic posting, if you want to talk more about fediwiki then make a new thread.

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There’s no need to get snippy @nutomic . We understand your situation. You said;

That’s we’re doing here. Exploratory discussion. As @how said;

It might be possible to get funding for a wiki federation FEP(s), and it seems logical to involve the devs of FedWiki and PieFed (which has a wiki component) in a funded wiki interop project.

FWIW, XWiki has ActivityPub integration. I don’t think it has been maintained after the funding ended, but maybe relevant
 ?

https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/ActivityPub%20Application/

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I moved this discussion to its own topic to avoid cluttering the discussion on Ibis.wiki.

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We talked to XWiki about yousing their wiki stack for the ogb a few years ago, they were doing no more dev or support after the #NLnet funding was over, so this path of funding was poured down the drain. It’s a problem of the #NGO dev paths that stops without funding, a waste of charity/public money as none of the funders will cover support and community building. After the dev funding runs out. We have to try and mediate this mess making direction of #geekproblem coding paths and dev as its public money poured down the drain - ideas, thoughts, actions please?

What about this: “If you don’t have a community or are not adding to an existing project with a community, or you aren’t sticking around after the funding runs out” you are likely creating more #techshit to compost, do you think this wording might help?

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Not in the slightest :rofl:

OTOH you do make a good point that funders need to structure grants for AP implementations in a way that discourages using the funding as a salary subsidy. Throwing a minimum effort implementation over the wall to justify the funding, with no intention of maintaining it after the funding expires.

One way to do this would be to give AP implementation grants in clusters, to a handful of projects working on the same problem (in this case wiki federation), and make draft FEPs a deliverable in the grant conditions. This would not only encourage more projects to implement AP, it would make sure something of ongoing use is produced. Even in the worst-case scenario where none of the funded implementations are maintained.

@stevebate makes a good point though, that even if it’s been left to compost (as Hamish puts it), the XWiki implementation, along with Ibis, could be a useful point of reference for a wiki federation FEP(s).

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Unfortunately I think the funding scheme is biased towards development and not maintenance. NGI Commons might work for maintenance, but clearly this has not been a focus of NGI Zero. Nor could it be, since the funding scheme is conceived as project-based, and not community-based. It would require larger amounts to ensure maintenance over time. Which is why OFFDEM is calling for a gathering to discuss permanent funding of free software.

This is a good idea, but why draft? So many drafts get abandoned as well.

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You could make a finalised FEP a deliverable. But my concern is that putting FEP facilitators between grantees and their payday could have inintended consequences. Like financially stressed grantees leaning on facilitators to rush to finalisation, undermining both the collaborative spirit and the rigour of the FEP process.

Even an abandoned draft is better than having to reverse-engineer their code. And if both grantee and FEP facilitators were under no pressure to finalise a supplied draft, hopefully most grantees could enjoy the drafting process enough to stick around and see it through.

I would define “draft” in the grant agreement though. I agree there’s no point in a minimum effort braindump that effectively has to be reverse-engineered itself. I just wouldn’t want grant completion to depend on an open-ended community process that grantees can’t (and shouldn’t) control the timing of.

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In @erlend_sh 's thread on Autonomous identity for the pluriverse based on OAuth/OIDC, I came across a reference to the Noosphere protocol, which describes itself as;

“You can think of it like a world-wide Wiki.”

The repo has been archived, and I can’t find any luggage tags indicating whether the project continues in any form elsewhere. But potentially another group of decentralised wiki implementers to reach out to?

Noosphere / Subconscious was discontinued:

Sure, but what did the developers move on to?

They’re now doing an AI startup :clown_face:

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