The Federated Wiki: Ward Cunningham at TEDxPortland 2012

TEDx Talks
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2012–2015
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Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki, gives a TEDxPortland talk in 2012 about the Federated Wiki, his follow-up idea in which many people can fork and share pages across independent sites. He describes how it extends open editing.

HN people tell critics of his wiki rewrite to watch the talk first and understand what he is trying to do.

“Why not look into what he's trying to do?”
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#wardcunningham#federatedwiki#wiki#tedx#collaborativeediting

3 comments from Hacker News

m
@mbrock2015 · in “A complete rewrite of wiki as a single page application”
The original wiki was a wonderful community, alive in that ineffable way that very few online communities are, totally free and public. I wrote a blog post [0] about how strongly it influenced me as a person and the gratitude I feel for it. Ward Cunningham is a respected and intelligent software designer who works on open projects for the public good. The immediate cynicism and dismissal I've seen of his new project so far makes me sad. Why not look into what he's trying to do? [1] Why not try to learn something about how it works, rather than look at it for twenty seconds and then complain? [0]: link [1]: ▶ this video
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v
@vamsee2012 · in “Ward Cunningham - The Federated Wiki”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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t
@teawithcarl2014 · in “Pending Comments”
For a different perspective on "single truths" - please read Ward Cunningham's research on Federated Wiki's. Ward invented the wiki itself, and years later invented the Federated Wiki to allow unlimited truth forks, so that Wikipedia would not require expunging any viewpoint. In other words, all "truth tree" branches remain valid. Branchs may be sorted by up/down voting, but they may not be struck by editors. To me a better HN would allow a multitude of HN's (think colors) ... where anyone applying time/effort could edit an HN truth fork. Thereby, people might say, which color of HN do you read? "My favorite is green", might be a typical reply. My sense is that PG thinks of HN as top down authority driven, and therefore refuses to open HN to public editorship, even though there's a way to do it and truly improve comment quality, rather than just adding this new layer of winner take all. More deeply, I believe PG has tired of building HN, and is looking for an honest way out. To me, that means abandoning the 4th-5th most important startup in YC history (up there with Airbnb in importance), and the all too familiar slow degradation of startup quality as they get bigger. I have always felt that YC is a dictatorship, and that "peak HN" and "peak YC" have already occurred. Accordingly, an open approach to HN, where public editors might flourish was never likely. Two links on Ward Cunningham's ideas - TED Talk: ▶ this video Wired article: link
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