What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

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TMC1982
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What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by TMC1982 » Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:28 pm

I recently signed up for Everipedia. This is how it's described:
Everipedia is “Everyone’s Encyclopedia”. “Everipedia offers a space for you to dive into anything you find interesting, connect with people who share your interests, and contribute your own perspective.”

The about page does not provide a clear explanation of how this site differs from Wikipedia and/or how they plan to make sure that the mistakes of Wikipedia are not repeated in this site.
Here are the pros and cons of Everipedia:
Pros:
  • More articles than Wikipedia; To this date this is the largest English encyclopedia;
    Editor’s work is rewarded by assigning the "IQ" which can be converted to bitcoins (and $);
    Improved user interface than Wikipedia;
    Has much less rules than Wikipedia. Namely: (1) articles should be encyclopedic in style; (2) articles should have external references. Nice. Easy to remember. The author of this review made a few Everipedia entries that will never be accepted by Wikipedia authoritarian editors (and that was tested!). The articles simply had sense without many external “independent” reviews (which take no time to fake or create by hiring freelance editors). They simply make sense to me as a scholar. It appears that they make sense to the Everipedia staff too. Good.
    Will be a decentralized blockchain-based encyclopedia
Cons
  • More difficult to receive an account (first you need register at reddit/telegram and request it;
    The interface is still buggy. The author detected at least 2 bugs while editing articles;
    Not easy import of mediawiki test. No easy export;
    This is likely due to large spam and a limited number of editors who can control what is going on;
    No android application to view articles.

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Re: What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by TMC1982 » Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:51 pm

Another alternative that I just found is Wikimass.

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Re: What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Apr 14, 2021 7:13 pm

As I've said before: that is okey-dokey with me and I wish them the best. Although I still think using a blockchain is unnecessary for a public reference. It's a "hip jargon" thing to slap on internet functions right now; in ten years it might be an outdated joke, one never really knows.

Not counting specialist databases like EOL or Medline, or god-help-us Fandom.com; or the blatantly right-wing wikis (infogalactic, Conservapedia); or the blatantly left-leaning ones (Wikipedia being the only major survivor oddly enough); or the blatantly insane ones (RationalWiki); or the joke ones (why is Uncyclopedia still in operation?); there are always alternatives.

Britannica is still in business. Sorry, they want $.

Larry is starting ANOTHER WP alternative, Encyclosphere. If he's smart he'll just scrape WP content selectively like Everipedia (where he worked for a couple of years). He's tried before with Nupedia and Citizendium and failed both times. One really can't expect actual experts to show up and grind content--I think you must put up with at least a few manic-phase ADHD sufferers to generate "excitement". Wikipedia is a success in terms of publicity, not in generating a reference work.

The Chinese-language encyclopedia at Baike.com is probably controlled/censored by the CCP.

Ever heard of Intellipedia? No one has, because only people with security clearances can see it. I bet there's all kinds of interesting political stuff in there. JWICS is even more secretive.

Scratch around and you'll find all kinds of wikis and suchlike.

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Re: What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Apr 14, 2021 7:39 pm

TMC1982 wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:51 pm
Another alternative that I just found is Wikimass.
You can NOT trust anything posted on Quora. It is run by Jimbo Wales and some of his looney fanboys. You will note that Spencer put a LOT of space to complaining about Conservapedia. Note that WP admin Tom Morris showed up to offer his useless blather, along with several other WP fans. Typical Quora crap.

Also note that the guy who wrote the longest comment on that Quora entry was indef-blocked by Courcelles over some petty nonsense. Accurate:
I got sanctioned at WP:ANI - their community sanction process. It's like something out of a book by Lewis Carroll. Anyone can nominate any other editor in Wikiopedia to be sanctioned at any time, without any warning or build up. You are in the middle of a conversation somewhere and then suddenly get an alert that someone has taken out a case against you. Also, they don't wait for you to turn up before voting on the sanctions against you. I got there within an hour of the notice being placed on my talk page, and already had one vote to indef block me, before they heard anything from me. From then on, the way it continues is like something out of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”. It’s like the episode with the Queen of Hearts, as it is presented in the original manuscript "Alice's Adventures Under Ground", “No!” said the Queen, “first the sentence, and then the evidence!”
PS: lots of disgruntled WP editors started their own wikis. Encyc.org was pulled down after the owner was doxed here. Greg Kohs is still running his business-oriented MyWikiBiz. There were a couple dozen others--mostly gone or sitting unused. Fred Bauder's Wikinfo is moribund, Everything2 is an unusable mess.

Wikimass is apparently run by someone in Nigeria. And is also dead.

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Re: What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:06 am

Let's start with asking the question, what the fuck are people even reading Wikipedia for?

I guarantee the vast majority of the dumbfucks who read Wikipedia are not even looking for factually correct information. If they were, Wikipedia would not have been so succesful, because they would have got really fucking bored of this being a pretty repeatable cycle.....

1. Have a query that pops into your brain
2. Find a relevant Wikipedia page
3. Either/or:
-Realise it doesn't answer your query, shut the computer and go do something else
-Realise it does answer your query, so move on to step 4.
4. DO WHAT THE FUCKING WIKIPEDIA DISCLAIMER TELLS YOU TO DO AND ACTUALLY CHECK IT ISN'T BULLSHIT USING THE SOURCE PROVIDED
5. One of the following.....
-Realise Wikipedia hasn't even provided you with a way of checking it isn't bullshit, so shut the computer and go do something else
-Realise that your check has revealed the Wikipedia information was either just plain wrong, or a gross distortion of the facts, probably for political reasons, so shut the computer and go do something else
-Realise that your check seems to have verified the information on Wikipedia, but you're not sure what to do now because some kind soul has previously informed you about the citogenisis problem, so shut the computer and go do something else
-Realise that the fact is correct, once you have also verified the fact in a source that you 100% know cannot be the product of citogenisis, and so go open a bottle of champagne, because congratulations, you just won a fucking pub quiz, you absolute meff.

Wikipedia only has two distinct customers - the lazy and the stupid.

No alternative is needed. They have what serves them best. Goop for the goobers.

For everyone else, encyclopedias, books, journals and newspapers didn't stop being a thing just because Wikipedia was invented. You might have to pay to get good information, but get the fuck over it, because no, you don't live in the Soviet Union, and knowledge isn't actually free, due to a little thing I like to call, the cost of production. If someone says they can give it to you for free, the cost is probably being extracted from your dumb ass in some other more painful way. Like the regularity with which you're gonna find a fact you found on Wikipedia, is just plain bullshit.

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Re: What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by TMC1982 » Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:29 am

I don't know if you're going to agree with this observation, but do you think that one of the biggest problems with Wikipedia is that some "editors" are extremely territorial? In other words they seemingly really don't care about facts. They actually care about being in charge of this or that page. So amending an article they want control of is, to them, like moving around the furniture in their house.

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Re: What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:39 am

TMC1982 wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:29 am
I don't know if you're going to agree with this observation, but do you think that one of the biggest problems with Wikipedia is that some "editors" are extremely territorial? In other words they seemingly really don't care about facts. They actually care about being in charge of this or that page. So amending an article they want control of is, to them, like moving around the furniture in their house.
It's well known that territorialism (in Wikipedia terminology, ownership) is a major problem with the Wikipedia model.

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Re: What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Apr 15, 2021 4:36 am

Jake Is A Sellout wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:06 am
1. Have a query that pops into your brain
2. Find a relevant Wikipedia page
3. Either/or:
No no no.....it goes more like:

1. Have a query
2. Google it
3. Google probably feeds you the WP article as item #1

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Re: What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by TMC1982 » Sat Apr 24, 2021 5:24 am

Wikipedia depending on who you ask, is really only good for general overview stuff. Apart from a minority of articles, it's seemingly been declining in quality for a number of years because the number of "smart people" who were willing to invest their time has been declining. After a while, they likely realized that it's not worth the time and trouble battling people over their edits.

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Re: What are the best alternatives to Wikipedia?

Post by sammywalker » Sat May 08, 2021 7:24 pm

ericbarbour wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 7:13 pm
Britannica is still in business. Sorry, they want $.
They do offer some content for free.

Another option is World Book Online. It's offered free through a lot of US libraries. Libraries sometimes offer specialized encyclopedias online as well.

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