[HN Gopher] The Wikimedia Foundation joins Mastodon and the Fedi... ___________________________________________________________________ The Wikimedia Foundation joins Mastodon and the Fediverse Author : Kye Score : 240 points Date : 2023-07-17 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (wikimedia.social) (TXT) w3m dump (wikimedia.social) | Invictus0 wrote: | [flagged] | jfghi wrote: | In addition to being the most useful website ever made. | consumer451 wrote: | Agreed. The librarians of Alexandria would be bereft in a | tempest of envious tears. | | edit: Upon review it may not be clear that I am being 100% | genuine. Wikipedia is one of humanity's greatest creations. I | donate, and will continue to do so. | Jonnax wrote: | It's only on this site, ironically a forum run by a venture | capitalist firm, that I've seen so much anti sentiment about | Wikipedia's funding. | wpietri wrote: | Just to put it in perspective: Even if every dime given of the | $150m raised by the Wikimedia Foundation this year were wasted, | something am sure is not the case, the amount of money set on | fire by WeWork is more than 100x larger. | scrollaway wrote: | You can buy 1/293rd of Twitter with that $150M! | LegitShady wrote: | Wework never begged me for money though. | wpietri wrote: | Wikipedia only asks for money from its users. I promise | that if you had used WeWork, they would also have asked you | for money eventually. They're bad at business, but not that | bad. | luuurker wrote: | All you need is a domain and a server to host your own Mastodon | instance. | riffic wrote: | you don't even need to use the Mastodon software to be a | participant in the wider Mastodon ecosystem. A WordPress site | with a plugin can be part of the Fediverse. | dragontamer wrote: | Some of the largest Mastodon instances are run on $100/month | class servers (ex: mastodon.world). | | Its actually ridiculously cheap. | fluxem wrote: | Why does Wikipedia need Twitter/Mastodon? | nunobrito wrote: | Plus points for running their own server. Now just missing to add | Nostr to make sure those texts continue to be available one day | in case the server goes down or gets censored in parts of the | globe. | marksomnian wrote: | Some background at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T337586 | ChrisArchitect wrote: | Did they write anywhere else about what they're actual plan for | this instance is? A whole new service to operate and | moderate... are they maintaining their other social platform | accounts etc. | marksomnian wrote: | There's some (vague, nonspecific) goals in the Google Doc | linked on the phab ticket (though someone did point out that | the doc was created weeks after the ticket was filed). | Kye wrote: | I've heard the process inside organizations of getting approval | to do a new social media thing can be involved. It's | interesting to see one of those discussions out in public. | aaronharnly wrote: | Yes, I take some solace from the fact that most of the | comments on the ticket are in the nature of: | | - "Wait, I don't think Team X can do this, it needs to be | approved by Team Y and then handed to Team Z", followed by | | - "I thought our policy was not to do this?" | | - "No there's no policy not to do this" | | - "Well maybe the policy was that we do do not this" | | - "Does Team Z even get notified about tickets here?" | | etc... | neilv wrote: | How I try to avoid most institutional knowledge and | communication problems like that is with... a trusted wiki. | | They should ask around, see if anyone in the organization | is familiar with wikis and could help them get started. | ploum wrote: | Imagine for a second what the discussions could be for the | official European institutions to open their own instance? | | https://social.network.europa.eu/explore (and yes, it was | created early 2022, before Musk takeover of Twitter) | Kye wrote: | They also have a PeerTube instance. | | https://tube.network.europa.eu/videos/overview | riffic wrote: | transparency aside it's amazing how fast they were able to | roll this. | | Heads up but if anyone's got questions about the Mastodon | software, community, wider ecosystem et cetera you're more | than welcome to hop into the unofficial Mastodon subreddit | and ask away. saying this as one of the /r/Mastodon mods. | ruffsl wrote: | Is there a community on Lemmy for Mastodon mods and admins? | Hosting support discussions about Fediverse platforms on | Fediverse platforms seems like an opportunity to dog food | more it's development. | riffic wrote: | On Mastodon itself people like to use the #MastoAdmin | hashtag. | | Good point about Lemmy. I remember reading the Discourse | software was considering federation/ActivityPub support | but haven't seen any traction there. | riku_iki wrote: | I guess "joins" means created account.. | thewataccount wrote: | Beyond the fact that they created an entire instance - | | > I guess "joins" means created account.. | | I do think this statement would be accurate, you are "joining" | if you create an account. | | At least I don't see an argument for how creating an official | account wouldn't count as "joining" - although it's admittedly | boring if that's all they did. | Kye wrote: | That's what I had in mind when writing a suitable title. They | joined the Fediverse by making their own instance, then | joined Mastodon by creating an account on that instance. | riku_iki wrote: | > I do think this statement would be accurate, you are | "joining" if you create an account. | | I personally was confused, and initially thought Wikimedia | joined corresponding orgs, became codebase contributor, etc. | But maybe that's me not familiar with his topic. | als0 wrote: | ...and their own server... | jayknight wrote: | Well, they're running their own mastodon instance at | wikimedia.social. | libraryatnight wrote: | Even if that were the case, and others have pointed out it's | not, what would your point be? | WolfeReader wrote: | More than that, in this case. They're hosting an entire | instance. | proactivesvcs wrote: | Yeah, joined by renting masto.host's service. Nothing against | masto.host but Wikimedia are not running their own server, or | really their own instance. It's a net positive but it's not the | decentralised, independent example that it could be. | Aeolun wrote: | Yeah, I read the headline and was briefly completely mystified | until I opened the article. | | This reads like the title of s 'Beautiful journey... chosen to | join [company]' post. | honest635 wrote: | Huge if true | jheriko wrote: | [flagged] | riffic wrote: | cool, it's an opportunity for you to discover something of | interest then. | WolfeReader wrote: | The same comment could be made for the majority of articles on | HN. Maybe look up the words you don't know, and learn something | new. | [deleted] | blisterpeanuts wrote: | The Wikipedia Twitter page has a lot of followers, but engagement | is very low, and most of the tweets are random topics. | | What advantages does a mastodon feed provide? | | In my opinion, if Wikipedia is seeking more social media | engagement, they should focus on the big platforms: Facebook, | Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. | nunobrito wrote: | That's the easy route. The reason why those platforms are | avoided is mostly because of the Wikimedia/wikipedia commitment | to promote open source and privacy respecting platforms. | | Arguably none of those are world-famous with a positive note | for those attributes. | WolfeReader wrote: | Each of those platforms you mentioned is corporate-controlled. | The "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is probably more | interested in engaging with open-source, non-centralized tech | when possible. | rsynnott wrote: | As you say, they have a Twitter. Twitter could, at this point, | vanish up its own arse at any moment. It was largely unusable | for about three days recently. It remains pretty broken for | non-logged-in people. Backup plans are hardly surprising. | | Frankly, anyone who uses Twitter for anything more than | entertainment should be looking at backup plans at this stage. | CSSer wrote: | It's even really sad to see that there's a lot of embedded | Twitter content around the web that has been either breaking | or disappearing for one reason or another too. | dragontamer wrote: | > What advantages does a mastodon feed provide? | | Allowing anonymous users to read posts, vs Twitter which | requires a log in these days. | | ----------- | | Lets reverse the discussion. What does Twitter offer Wikipedia | that Mastodon does not? Since Wikipedia's engagement is largely | readers / followers with very little comments, the read-only | experience is king, is it not? | | Mastodon therefore offers a better reading experience, as it | doesn't have advertisements, it isn't going to randomly go down | (stability of Mastodon has improved a lot while the stability | of Twitter is declining), running your own Mastodon instance | allows for any size posts (no need for Wikipedia to pay Twitter | Blue to get 2000-character posts. Wikipedia can just configure | Mastodon to allow 2000 or 20,000-character posts), etc. etc. | | Why should Wikipedia stick to 250-character posts on a website | that can't be read by anonymous users that will shove ads into | your face in between posts? | | > YouTube | | Does Wikipedia even have substantial video content to share on | Youtube? | | > Instagram | | I guess you mean Threads, which is the closest analog to | Mastodon and Twitter. I haven't used Threads though so I'll | defer to other posters. | | > Facebook | | Way too closed and insular. Facebook is focused on smaller | groups and smaller social networks. Its like the "login" | problem for Twitter but a hundred-times worse. | LordDragonfang wrote: | >What does Twitter offer Wikipedia that Mastodon does not? | | Though it may not seem like it to the highly-technical | terminally-online, twitter is still very much the Schelling | point[1] for social media communication. People, by default, | will look for communications from (and attempt to get the | attention of) large entities on twitter (especially during | events like the main website going down). This is a _huge_ | deal that needs to be accounted for when listing what the | platform "has to offer". | | (Of course, the way things are going, this may change in the | future. This is by no means a _bad_ move by the WMF. The | future is uncertain, though, and it 's just worth being | realistic about the value twitter still holds in the | present.) | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) | dragontamer wrote: | Only if you look at people with Twitter accounts. | | Someone like me, who has always relied upon nitter to get | Twitter information (and now that API access is locked off | and anonymous browsing is disabled... I'm no longer welcome | to Twitter). | | Its ridiculous that Twitter looked upon the grand social | network of Quora and thought... "We should copy that | model". Closing off access to the website is the literal | opposite direction, it will kill Twitter faster than any | other decision made thusfar. | orwin wrote: | > Allowing anonymous users to read posts, vs Twitter which | requires a log in these days. | | Now it allows you to read the linked tweet, but not the | response/thread, so it's basically useless for stuff that | interested me still on Twitter (and tbh, Nitter was 10 times | better than Twitter UI for stuff that interest me) | Kye wrote: | The same reason the EU does, among many other organizations and | companies. It's a backup and alternative, not too much work to | run if it's only for people on the inside, and cross-posting is | as simple as checking a box in a growing number of social media | management tools. | nologic01 wrote: | There are potentially intriguing synergies down the line, beyond | establishing a social presence. | | Fediverse platforms could integrate links to wikipedia content in | a native way, somewhat similar to openstreetmap. | | The reverse is more speculative but potentially more | groundbreaking. It would be a parallel "fedipedia" platform that | would somehow distill, organize and preserve the various bits and | pieces of useful information and knowledge that is being | generated in social media platforms. | | One of the sadest outcomes of the adtech based walled garden era | is how decades of human interaction and information exchange ends | up in a sort of digital landfill. | | We need to think more boldly about the next web and the shape of | the digital commons. | Angostura wrote: | I'd be interested in seeing what they do with https://wt.social/ | | I don't feel like it has gained a lot of traction. Perhaps it | could be migrated to a Lemmy/Kbin/Their own ActivityPub | implementation | riffic wrote: | wt.social isn't a Wikimedia Foundation site: | | > WT.social is owned and operated by WikiTribune Ltd ("we", | "us") | | https://wt.social/terms-and-conditions | egor-zhgun wrote: | It's interesting whatever they'll federate with Meta or not. | smoldesu wrote: | Considering how they already have an active Wikimedia Facebook | account, I don't think they'd object to federating with Meta. | pornel wrote: | This makes a lot of sense for organizations. They control the | servers. They own the domain. This is how the Web is supposed to | work. | stasm wrote: | > They own the domain. | | It seems like a wasted opportunity to set up a new domain (in | this case: wikimedia.social) rather than use an existing one | with a subdomain, e.g. social.wikimedia.org or | social.wikimediafoundation.org. With a new domain I still have | to do the work to verify whether the domain is indeed owned by | the Wikimedia Foundation. | Kye wrote: | It can accrue reputation the same way Wikipedia.org did while | providing a spot to add other things like PeerTube without | worrying about the security peculiarities that led to them | choosing this route in the first place. | | https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T337586#8920625 | marksomnian wrote: | There's some background at | https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T337586 - a wikimedia.org | subdomain was out of the question due to security concerns | (it'd involve giving a third party a SSL certificate for | wikimedia.org) [1], and wikimediafoundation.org was ruled out | because it could cause confusion about volunteers' | relationship to the Foundation [2] | | [1]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T337586#8932905 [2]: | https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T337586#8936483 | j1elo wrote: | From your first link, it seems the decision to use a | different new domain stems from difficulties getting the | server's HSTS policy right, and it even seems they had a | similar issue in the past with having the store as a | subdomain [1]. | | If that's true, for a use case as functionally basic as | having a store and a social instance in their respective | subdomains, it looks to me like a complete failure of HSTS, | a case of technology causing problems that shouldn't exist | to begin with. | | [1]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T337586#8920625 | marksomnian wrote: | It's not linked there (or on any Wikitech pages I can | find), but I can imagine there's a secondary concern of | *.wikimedia.org cookies getting sent to third parties - | e.g. Stack Overflow has separate second-level domains | (stackoverflow.email/stackoverflow.blog) for their 3rd- | party-hosted email service and blog for exactly this | reason (cf. https://nickcraver.com/blog/2017/05/22/https- | on-stack-overfl...) | soneil wrote: | I think it'd be great if there was a way to push the identity | through a different domain. @foundation@mediawiki.org or | such. Needing subdomains is so clunky - imagine if you were | example@mail.gmail.com, yuck. | | We can get half way there with /.well-known/webfinger - but | the alias that provides doesn't show up in the feed, so | that's not the username I find from links like OP's. | goodpoint wrote: | > This is how the Web is supposed to work. | | More like: this in how the Internet is supposed to work. | ActivityPub is hardly "web" because it's not trying to attract | traffic on a specific website. | riffic wrote: | ActivityPub is inherently _web_ because it 's a | recommendation by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium): | | https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ | proactivesvcs wrote: | They don't really control this server - they're using | masto.host to host their instance. | CobrastanJorji wrote: | Yes, but they COULD. If for some reason they decide that | something's wrong with their host, they could just go | offline, export the data onto a new host somewhere, move some | DNS targets and set up some redirects, and bam, new server. | The point is that some one social media company doesn't have | a lock on the site. | lolinder wrote: | They control it a whole lot more than they do Twitter, | Facebook, or any other central platform. | | Control is a sliding scale. They could run it on a physical | box in Wikimedia headquarters and you could still argue they | don't fully control the server because their ISP could always | cut them off. | | You have to make reasonable decisions based on your threat | model and how easy it would be to move up the level-of- | control ladder if needed. Getting on Mastodon at all | represents a huge leap forward, and frees them up to migrate | to a higher level of autonomy later. | gochi wrote: | Nobody would argue that because if they did control the | servers an ISP change would be effortless. | | Which is the point, the move to a higher level of autonomy | is not going to happen later. It's far too much effort once | they've already settled in. | | We should praise organizations that actually seek to | normalize control over servers, not praise relying on yet | another "fully managed" service. We can do that while also | recognizing that them being on fediverse is nice in | general. All of these are possible without stating | falsehoods like "They control the servers". | lolinder wrote: | > if they did control the servers an ISP change would be | effortless. | | I don't know where in the world you are, but I want to | live there. Changing my ISP is far more intimidating to | me than migrating a database and a few DNS records. | | > We should praise organizations that actually seek to | normalize control over servers, not praise relying on yet | another "fully managed" service. | | What would be enough to satisfy you? A VPS on AWS? A VPS | on a smaller provider? A dedicated box at Hetzner? Or | would it have to be a machine that they built from | scratch and can physically access? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-17 23:00 UTC)