> there is vastly more (and ever exploding) knowledge than what the current wikipedia model can integrate (talking always about public knowledge).
Sure, but there is two vastly different "distributed" architecture at stake here:
- the social one, as in everyone can contribute easily in positive constructive manner, with optimized user path for each user level and interest, and no worry to have about any form of online harassment/bullying or outdoor threats like the-angry-party-staring-at you that might make you vanish for contributing the-wrong-thing-under-the-bad-perspective
- the technical one, which is mainly about "no single point of failure"
Sure there are things that largely overlap, but still two vastly independent set.
> Sure there are things that largely overlap, but still two vastly independent set.
Yes they are by no means the same aspect but the technical (the design part) and "social" domain (how human actors interact using the technology, what incentives they have to contribute, how easy it is to contribute, how to form consensus etc) are never very far apart.
My argument is a general one. If, say, ten years from now wikipedia is to have the same quantum leap impact and positive role it had twenty years ago (when it first got going) it will have to be much more ambitious. But that ambition is unlikely to be served well by a forever centralized service because most knowledge is produced, stored and consumed in distributed ways.
Just for conreteness, think of all those other sources of public knowledge: from openstreetmap, to research paper archives, musea collections and many other public institutions of all kinds (laws and regulations, public statistics etc). Right now everything must come to a centralized store but the size of wikipedia is already flattening [0] and a lot of that data never gets referenced or is a very cumbersome manual job.
In any case, as per link in my other comment some federation is part of the plan (wikibases) and there is the broader "linked data" movement. Its just that at some point those ideas have to get real legs and start walking :-).
Sure, but there is two vastly different "distributed" architecture at stake here:
- the social one, as in everyone can contribute easily in positive constructive manner, with optimized user path for each user level and interest, and no worry to have about any form of online harassment/bullying or outdoor threats like the-angry-party-staring-at you that might make you vanish for contributing the-wrong-thing-under-the-bad-perspective
- the technical one, which is mainly about "no single point of failure"
Sure there are things that largely overlap, but still two vastly independent set.