Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative
A new project called Ibis aims to be a federated, ActivityPub-based alternative to Wikipedia, where many independent wikis synchronize articles and can diverge on contentious topics. Commenters question whether federation, git-style diff merging, or CRDTs meaningfully improve on Wikipedia’s social and moderation problems, warning it may instead fragment knowledge, amplify bias, and make trust and discovery harder. Many see Wikipedia—despite toxicity for contributors and documented controversies—as a remarkably successful centralized model that is difficult to replace, and criticize Ibis’s early technical execution (especially its unusable mobile interface) as a sign it is not yet a credible alternative.
Technical model & federation
- Ibis uses ActivityPub to sync articles between instances via ordered diffs, with Git‑style conflict resolution rather than CRDTs.
- Several argue CRDTs are overkill for wikis, since concurrent real‑time editing is rare and semantic conflicts still require humans.
- Others worry that automatic, CRDT‑style merging could silently produce nonsensical or semantically wrong articles.
- Some commenters say this is not meaningfully different from “just the web” plus links and existing identity protocols; others point out federation adds interoperable protocols, decouples content from any single server, and can enable “forked but still synchronized” wikis.
Comparison to Wikipedia
- Many see Wikipedia as a “wonder of the world” and believe replacing it is unnecessary or unrealistic.
- The launch article’s reliance on old scandals is criticized; some argue Wikipedia’s track record compares favorably to almost any project of its size.
- Others highlight serious issues: toxic editing culture in some areas, entrenched “kingdoms” of power users, harsh newcomer experience, and exclusion via notability policies.
Moderation, bias, and trust
- Skeptics question how federation improves trustworthiness; it may just create many biased, conflicting versions of the same topic.
- Some see that plurality as a feature: different instances can reflect different viewpoints rather than one “official” truth.
- There is extensive debate over moderation vs. censorship, the inevitability of corruption in centralized institutions, and whether decentralization meaningfully mitigates it.
- Several note that unsolved social problems (politics, bias, harassment) won’t be fixed by protocol changes.
Practical concerns & UX
- Major criticism: the demo site renders very poorly on mobile and doesn’t work without JavaScript; this undermines claims of being a serious Wikipedia alternative.
- It currently has almost no content; people expect at least an import or sync from Wikipedia.
- Importing Wikipedia wikitext is non‑trivial because of heavy template and Lua usage.
Use cases, alternatives, and viability
- Some see more promise in federated or specialized wikis (local communities, fandom, deep technical domains) than in a general encyclopedia replacement.
- Existing solutions cited: self‑hosted MediaWiki, Miraheze, wiki.gg, file‑based wikis with rsync, IPFS/Kiwix, and topic‑focused wikis.
- Several note that previous Wikipedia forks and “alt‑wikis” rarely achieve critical mass; sustaining content requires a large, ongoing editor base, possibly even paid editors.