Infogalactic, the major fork of Wikipedia which, unlike its predecessor, is dedicated to cultivating objective fact instead of suppressing it, had my support from day one. Writing professional grade SFF takes more and broader research than you might expect, and it’s become readily apparent to anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty that Wikipedia is sorely lacking in that regard.
Just randomly browse some of their articles on politics, celebrities, any pre-20th century historical event, religion, or pretty much any humanities subject. We’ve reached the point where Wikipedia is effectively useless for anything other than superficial hard science research.
The creators of Infogalactic envision an alternative knowledge base that doesn’t just compete with Wikipedia but renders it obsolete.
From Infogalactic’s press release:
INFOGALACTIC: an online encyclopedia without bias or thought police
Zürich, Switzerland. All around the world, thousands of users are accessing and editing the new online encyclopedia for the 21st Century, Infogalactic, which styles itself the Planetary Knowledge Core™. Conceived as a next-generation replacement for Wikipedia, the troubled online encyclopedia, Infogalactic is a dynamic fork of Wikipedia that is designed to supplant its predecessor by addressing the problems of bias, vandalism, harassment, abuse, and inaccuracy that have plagued the Wikimedia Foundation’s flagship project for years.
“Every notable public figure who has a page devoted to them knows very well what an inaccurate nightmare Wikipedia is,” said Vox Day, Lead Designer of Infogalactic, a computer game designer and bestselling philosopher. “The page about me there has had everything from my place of birth to the number of times I’ve been married wrong. And that’s not even counting the outright abuse, such as when Wikipedians replaced the entire page with a definition of a sexually-transmitted disease or with a string of obscenities.”
Infogalactic plans to solve the structural problems of a community-edited online encyclopedia through objectivity, proven game design principles, and a sophisticated series of algorithms. Currently in an operational Phase One, the Planetary Knowledge Core has a five-phase Roadmap that its founders claim will eliminate edit warring, significantly improve accuracy, neutralize vandalism and other forms of griefing, and render all forms of political bias on the part of administrators and editors irrelevant.
The elimination of thought-policing is a cause in which I have a particular interest, as anyone who’s familiar with my ongoing Twitter troubles can attest.
Lo and behold, what hath Infogalactic wrought?
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| Quite a colorful bunch of characters |
The article is linked from IG’s blog, which, like this one, recently tackled Twitter censorship.
They were even gracious enough to give me my own page.
But how does Infogalactic plan to solve the bias problem that no one else has been able to crack? Read on.
“The primary challenge facing any online wiki is the individual editor’s incentive to impose his perspective on everyone else,” said Renegade, the Operations Director of Infogalactic, who, as per the organization’s pro-anonymity policy is known only by his handle. “Most people who contribute to an online knowledge base do so because they want to have their say, but in the end there can be only one perspective that is enforced by the site’s administrators. Infogalactic has solved that problem by embracing true objectivity and eliminating the enforcement incentive by moving from a centralized, vertically-stacked orientation to a decentralized, horizontally-distributed model.”
Infogalactic’s anti-bias architecture will permit users to select their preferred perspective and automatically see the version of the subject page that is closest to it based on a series of algorithms utilizing three variables, Relativity, Reliability, and Notability. This means a supporter of Hillary Clinton will see a different version of the current Donald Trump page than a Donald Trump supporter will, as both users will see the version of the page that was most recently edited by editors with perspective ratings similar to his own.
“The single biggest problem with Wikipedia isn’t Jimmy Wales or its outmoded 1995 technology, but the fact that it is patrolled by 532 left-wing thought police who aggressively force their biased perspective on the rest of the world,” Vox Day, aka “Fenris” on Infogalactic, added. “This isn’t Conservapedia 2.0 and we aren’t replacing Wikipedia’s admins with their conservative equivalent, we are making the function of thought police irrelevant through technology. Our design philosophy is based on the idea that only the user has the right to define what his reality is.”
How are they doing so far? According to its lead designer, Infogalactic already has a comparable number of active admins and more than twice as many English language pages as Wikipedia. And that was last week.
Putting on my independent publisher hat, what I think will put Infogalactic over the top is its business-friendliness.
The Planetary Knowledge Core is also distinguishing itself from its predecessors by its corporate-friendly policies. Corporations, large and small, are welcome to participate on the site, advertising by page and by category is permitted, and a number of strategic partners have been established, including Gab, the popular new Twitter alternative that already has over one hundred thousand active users.
Not only is there a strong demand for global access to objective information, there’s a critical need for it. If you build it, they will come. Infogalactic has already plowed under Wikipedia’s cornfield and is hard at work pursuing its vision of information free from the interference of the thought police. You can help usher in a bright future of objective worldwide knowledge access by donating to Infogalactic or picking up some of their handsome swag.
If you’re inclined to supporting independent creators opposed to censorship, you can also throw a little support my way via my critically and commercially successful books.
Planetary, Infoglactic?
I finally broke down and watched the music video of the original, as opposed to the Weird Al polka compilation that it was in. Amusing.
Good man.
Just checker Twitter – You show up nowhere in the list of people I'm following; the little search box says I'm following you when I punch in your name; when I go to your Twitter page – it says I'm not following you. So I just re-followed you.
The Alinsky-style deceit, making it so one needs to search around and ignore what the system tells you to discover what's going on, should be an amazing thing to see a publicly-traded commercial enterprise do. But somehow it isn't.
Let's see if it even works.
I checked. We are now following each other again. Thank you.