Did you see the online speculation about Elon Musk and Wikipedia?
Evidently Elon made reference to it while tagging that account. This led to speculation that Musk is looking to buy Wikipedia.
Here is what Musk referred to:
We naturally get the reply from Wikipedia.
For the sake of this article, Wikipedia's bias (or non-bias) is not relevant. Instead, what we want to focus upon is the changing dynamics of data storage due to technology.
Hive Can Make Wikipedia Worthless
Hive is a decentralized text database. This means that possibilities previously not imagined are on the table. It is something that could be a major threat to an organization such as Wikipedia.
The genius of Hive is that block producers are incentivized to provide the infrastructure to the ecosystem. With Wikipedia, the onus is upon them to provide all the hardware required to house the database. Of course, this means they are responsible for the cost.
With Hive, we have a system in place whereby anyone can post data to the blockchain. Also, as we mentioned in the past, unlike Bitcoin, this is more than just distributed ledger technology. We are dealing with a database of text.
This means that someone could actually take Wikipedia, remove the images, and post it to Hive. Certainly it might take a while and would expand the size of the database yet it is possible. In fact, since Wikipedia is out there, someone could do this anonymously by opening up an account and having enough resource credits to keep transacting..
We also can see the longer path whereby a group of people could literally createfrom scratch the "new Wikipedia" on Hive. This is the value of a permissionless text blockchain.
Imagine if Musk bought Wikipedia only to find out that 6 months or a year later someone recreated it in a decentralized manner.
Here we see the epitome of the difference between centralization and decentralization.
Hive Makes Information Free
There is a saying that "information yearns to be free". When it is, it spreads like wildfire.
We see a lot of business models that include the paying for information. This makes sense since that is the traditional way of monetizing. Whether it is through a subscription like a newspaper or advertising like the broadcast news, someone was always footing the bill.
Through the creation of blockchain, and Hive in particular, we see how other options open. With the use of tokenization, incentivization is placed where it can garner the necessary resources. This can be for infrastructure, individual activity, or any other services required.
To me, this really espouses the basis of Web 3.0.
Hive as a decentralized database is still an unappreciated feature. This is a step forward to make information free. We know there are thousands posting content on Hive each day. This is available for anyone to consume. From this perspective, we are seeing a massive step forward.
Also, unlike Twitter and Facebook, we are not the product. Hive operates in a transparent fashion where nobody owns the data. Anything posted on Twitter is resident on its servers. With Hive, whatever front end is used, the data ends up on the blockchain.
As we can see with Wikipedia, this disrupts their entire business model. Something that was somewhat viable in the Web 2.0 era is suddenly obsolete.
Another factor to consider is that, whether left leading or not, Wikipedia is a valuable resource for many things. There is a lot of information available, much of it without any political bias. If they cannot afford operations, it would be a setback to lose so much information. Here is where their business model fails.
With Hive, the blockchain is pumping out rewards every 3 seconds. Each new block pays the validator, compensating them for their costs. This makes the data storage mechanism available to anyone who has enough Hive Power to engage with the blockchain.
This is a solution that cryptocurrency brings to the table. We hear a lot about finance but few discuss the shift in the basic architecture of the Internet.
Data storage is undergoing a change. What happens when we have another decentralized node system build on top of Hive? Then we have another set of node operators incentivized to provide the infrastructure. In turn, that means the potential of even more data storage.
Rinse and repeat.
This is the threat that Hive possesses to anything that is housing data. Due to a change in the business model, we can see how these companies are at a disadvantage. It is a situation that will be exposed as more sidechains are tied to Hive.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and rehive.
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Frankly, I also think that Wikipedia and Hive are swimmers in different lanes, because, whereas in Wikipedia, sources are required when something is checked and if they are not shared they are cited, and blogs written on Hive are more personalized. It's a bit more open to plagiarism and if there is too much copy-and-paste information, it will be plagiarism.
Hive is more enjoyable as a place for free and more creative writers and posters, at least for now, in my opinion. But if the moderation mechanisms develop more and the direct transfer of information can be achieved through the articles on Hive, without linking or copy-pasting from outside, which will take a long time, then it is possible that it will turn into a completely different platform.
For this to happen, there need to be as many people writing about science and technology as those writing about travel.
As an example, it would be great to be able to share the scientific university research here.
How to convert Hive blockchain into a keyword index of relevant posts and let users edit each other’s posts without the need for a centralized curator, I think this is the unsolved challenge. Hive wiki frontends need to detect and index the new definitions, apply patches from other users and have some kind of moderation feature which prevents a single vandalist from changing all pages blank.
Who says it all have to be in one account? If it is an open database, anyone can post to it. It doesnt have to be under on heading.
Front ends could choose the data they pull and exhibit.
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Hive has this capability. It's called multi-signature. This solves the problem of centralized control and the problem of a vandalist destroying the work of others, as you described it. Work is currently being done to make multisig accounts easier to coordinate (among the people holding a pair of relevant private keys).
Multi-signature is still quite centralized solution if the curation account is managed by a small number of accounts and if all parties quit, the wiki will die. I don’t understand how you would give every infrequent editor access to that account and by doing that somehow prevent vandalism. The change history is also less useful if all editors use the same account.
I was thinking about posting patches as replies to the post or to another patch reply and having a parser read and apply those patches (and preferably cache for future request) to the first revision. The open questions are the patch format, how to tag the first revision as a wiki page, how to pick the current page revision and what kind of UI would make the revision tree readable for less technical users.
Yes, the number of people involved with a multisig account is usually relatively small to make it easy to manage and I suppose there is the risk that everyone could abandon ship at some point without leaving any replacements in charge. About the change history, that should be traceable by the public keys of the signers, I think.
The public keys of the signers are known and should be traceable but what if multiple accounts use the same key for example if the editor’s account is managed by a vault which manages many accounts and all accounts have their authorizations set to the vault account’s name.
Yeah, I guess that's the limit of traceability using the public key. :)
Is HIVE content indexed by search engines? I haven’t see results coming up at all.
Let’s say we can copy and paste from Wikipedia to HIVE, which account is going to do that? How does the entire HIVE community “edit” the post done by the original account?
Teh search engines do index hive content. It doesnt rank well because of the fact there is duplication since every post shows up on multiple front ends so the SE think it is copies.
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I joined hive due to the monetizing aspect of it. As a Ghanaian, the first thing that comes into my head when I hear blockchain is financial freedom. But I found more upon sticking around. I know more about cryptocurrency and blockchain due to my presence hear and I have enjoyed a quality library by following credited sources on the blockchain. Hive is the only true free speech Society.
Hive is one of the greatest teaching aids about cryptocurrency and blockchain. Simply by engaging one is immersing him or herself in it.
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Someone tried making a blockchain equivalent of Wikipedia years ago. It didnt catch on. Its too robust of a system that requires thousands of editors willing to donate time. You would need the whole of Hive community focusing on it and it would be a mess.
And its work, its not just blogging.
Wikipedia does an extremely good job, I see no reason why anyone would want to compete with them.
Wikipedia is free and openly available.
You could also never have an unbiased coverage of facts and events. In that way it would be completely same to current wikipedia.
I wonder if Hive can be used simply as a backup of Wikipedia. Any edit there gets mirrored on Hive. If anything ever happens to Wikipedia, all the knowledge can continue to live on the blockchain.
That is a whole other deal, id say it probably could. You would still need a way to filter it all and update as all entries on Wikipedia are subject to change.
And what happens if they cannot support their costs? When it is centralized, someone is having to fork over the server costs. Who is paying that? If they fail to be able to maintain it, what do they do? Most likely sell.
What does the new owner do? Will that be free?
We know in Web 2.0 there is nothing ultimately free.
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Theyve had successful donation campaigns so far. Until they fail to cover costs its pointless to assume they cant. Considering wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world and a significant cultural phenomenon id say likelihood of that happening is close to 0.
Wikipedia will shut down only when people decide there is no more need for wikipedia and that there are more efficient ways of spreading public knowledge.
Sure there is. For the reader Wikipedia is completely free.
'MSM' is a handy scapegoat for the 'right' (neither is a single thing). Rupert Murdoch controls a lot of the world's media and he has happily supported right wing causes. Mind you, he doesn't like supporting losers and switched to pushing for a Labour government in the UK for a while before reverting to the Conservatives. A lot of the other press in the UK is right wing, including the biggest selling papers. Some can be a bit fickle when they feel the public mood is changing.
Musk likes to stir up trouble.
Actually with projects such as Wikipedia and also things like open source the idea is to give a collective good without necessarily getting individual profit. That would be more of a left wing ideal and so will attract people who prefer that. Hive may be considered more right wing as it is about profit, but then it has some appealing features for those who want to break away from corporate control.
I do think there is potential for decentralising things like Wikipedia. It could be useful for something like Github too so no one company controls access. There are bound to be challenges in scaling up a blockchain solution to such large amounts of data, but that is technical rather than political.
Why do you think everpedia didn't work out?
Well or the 10000000000 other clones
Did look into but if I had to guess, they were doing it on Ethereum I believe.
How much can you post before you go broke?
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Actually Wikipedia believes the same. How would Hive make Wikipedia worthless? Wikipedia is not a competitor to Hive, nor Hive to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has costs associated with it and the data has value. The info is on their servers, that means someone controls it. If they were losing money and decided to sell, then the data is in the hands of the new owner.
It is still a centralized database, same as Twitter and Facebook.
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This is true for the Hive blockchain too. The witnesses are often running their nodes at a financial loss.
The founder of the Wikipedia is Jimmy Wales, and he told Elon Musk that the Wikipedia is not for sale. Wikipedia is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization.
This is not the same as Twitter, nor as Facebook. Those are owned by profit oriented companies.
I think it needs more filtration for search optimization in Hive. If you want to search specific data whether it exists or not or how much relevance is very crucial here as everyone is free to write what he wants and there is no monitoring strategy except some voluntarily keeping the hive safe from plagiarism or some spamming issues. I think there needs some more organized force with the irrelevant use of tags that can be solid use cases in search optimization to find some accurate data from old but unpopular posts as the vote value matters which is one-directional that can be diversified by implementing different filtration or applying some data management technology, though I am not a technical person these are my concerns.
After all, that would be awesome for Hive!
There is no doubt that content discovery on Hive is awful. That does need a lot of work. #Veews is really the first that helps us find different data but it is still just a first attempt.
We need a lot more, I agree.
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The decentralized nature of Hive makes it capable of housing most applications anyone can think of and with regard to text data a Hive Wikipedia is just another possibility.
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On top of that add that there are no fact-checkers messing around on Hive. Many are undervaluing the content that's being put out on Hive. I personally see my blog as a digital journal. I know, that's not Wikipedia, but there are individuals who are doing a terrific job at "wikipediaing Hive". I used to once put out stuff like that too, but I'm now more into ramblings and shit like that.
This points out that Hive is way ahead in this game. Leo glossary is one if those inputs that can make anything possible with text.
About the only good thing I can think of Elon buying Wikipedia is then they could remove that banner that comes across the top of the screen every so often asking you to support them :) Kidding of course, this was a really great post. It definitely sheds some light on even more of the possibilities Hive offers.
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That is true. But then, once again, Elon is a benevolent dictator.
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Good point!
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This hits right on the head. It has been a failed project for years by now.
I dont think Hive can become a wiki because its very hard to start a Hive account. It took me a month.
Hive can do huge changes to the current system through many ways due to the presence of RCs. Slowly and steadily, if there is a need for a system like HIVE to the world, we will grow.
Excellent points BTW. Elon Musk right now is just a meme for buying something...
As of now I would like to see a Tweet Embed update for Leofinance, would make UI even better.
Not sure what you are referring to. Leofinance posts can be sent to Twitter simply by hitting the button at the bottom of each post.
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No like Embedding a tweet to Leofinance post, similar to peakd.
At this point, I just think Wiki is kind of worthless because it's controlled to an extent by a few people. I think Hive can work out but I don't really know what will happen because people can edit whatever they want (and if they can do so in Hive). It just seems a bit weird and it's hard to definite the people in charge.
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I love this! And a W3ikipedia can be the next frontier of enciclopedia.
If you need support for contents or whatever, I am up for it!
I have thought about a Decentralized #Wiki on #Hive (formerly Steem) since 2019 / 2020, but I'm more of a people person, than information person.
But I'd love to see another Hive user, who currently has no other projects, launch a #HiveWiki equivalent.
Dude, it's been what 5 or 6 years? Since Hive's (Steemit's) inception I have been shouting that THE SEARCH FUNCTION DOES NOT WORK!!! Which it does in Wiki and in fact every other site I visit on the internet.
So, no.
Cryptogee
So build one.
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I'm not a programmer, I'm a user.
Cg
I'm not a programmer, I'm a user.
Cg
Sr. Hive can also make traditional social media platforms worthless as compared to hive
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HiveWiki
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Yes, how is it bro?
Wikipedia is, IMHO, extremely valuable source of information, albeit its quality in certain areas (namely the coverage of recent events) have decreased in past few years due to ideological biases and bloated bureaucracy. But it is still very decentralised project, with decentralisation sometimes even harming the project (like the years-long saga about Croatian edition of Wikipedia being taken over by cabal of far right nationalist fanatics and Wikimedia Foundation being at odds how to get rid of them).
I don't think Elon should buy and trying to take over Wikipedia. Resistance he encountered when taking over Twitter is nothing compared to resistance and sabotage he would get if he tries to take over website which is, for better or worse, considered best thing to objective source of truth about our world.
He might, of course, try to create alternative Wiki-like website and even toy with it being based on blockchain. I think it could be done, but it would require a lot of work, creativity, luck and ability to learn on the mistakes of those who had tried the same idea in the past, like Everipedia.
Same, of course, goes for HIVE-based Wiki if anyone is willing to start such endeavour.
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Instead of making an exact copy of wikipedia, a more internal one could be made as a Hive encyclopedia where all the tutorials of this ecosystem are collected for someone who is just starting.
I also think that the search engine could be improved a bit, so that it finds posts where the word you are looking for is mentioned.
It was already started:
Hive Glossary
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