The idea of using the Steemit blockchain for building an encyclopedic (Wikipedia-like) site has been evoked for a couple of years now (in fact at least since the very launching of the Steemit blockchain – cf., for instance, the following @pharesim’s comment on this post: https://steemit.com/technology/@jzeal/could-we-use-the-steemit-model-to-improve-wikipedia.
Now that at least one fully dedicated cryptocurrency (Lunyr - LUN) is promoting itself as being the ideal backbone for such a distributed Wikipedia equivalent , I felt the time has come for us, the 300,000+ active Steemians, to “scale the debate” (share thoughts and proposals at a wider level about this project).
In this first article, let’s get into the main reasons I discern as underlaying the process of building what I suggest to name our “SteemCyclopedia”.
- Enhancing the encyclopedias diversity on the Internet
I’m not sure it’s the case of the majority of Steemians, but I’ve experienced not to be alone in viewing Wikipedia as being one of today’s “Politically correct” electronic key pillars. The field evidence overwhelms us: ask any secundary or college student to investigate a particular topic; if you’re lucky enough and that student (for not being too mentally anaesthetized) includes in her or his search more than only one documental reference, the probability a Wikipedia page will appear among those sources flirts with 95%; and if she or he behaves like the majority of electronically formated human beings, looking for a sole spring of data and analysis, would you imagine which website they’ll copy their info from? Yep, you bet it!
That’s one of the reasons why, as a teacher, I explicitely forbid my students to use information met through a Wikipedia page, and I expect them to gather data coming from at least 3 different origins (better if minimum one of them is printed material, without any online version, and if a part of those documents is written in another idiom than the student’s mother tongue). Otherwise, I know I’d harvest, in a 25 students group, a ridiculously narrow and shallow interpretations diversity.
Here’s the first fundamental worth I envision our Steemit encyclopedia will bring: showing that it’s practically possible to create a new and different community-driven and enriched encyclopedia on the Internet, therefore breaking Wikipedia’s quasi- monopoly.
- Bringing liberty and diversity inside our encyclopedia contents too
Another point in favor of firmly advocating a Steemit encyclopedia is the current censorship grade within the Wikipedia ecosystem. Quoting WikiSpooks article on censorship: “Wikipedia is actively censored, and users are blocked not only for reasons of spam and vandalism. Their carefully formulated policies, especially those on "reliability" and "notability" are tools to extend Operation Mockingbird's control of corporate media to give de facto control of what appears on Wikipedia”. (cf. https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Wikipedia/Censorship)
The Pierre Jovanovich ongoing case
A case that confirms such a radical statement, may raise a forest of red flags, and turn into a symbol of Wikipedia’s oligarchic mechanisms, is the deletion of Pierre Jovanovic entry. Pierre Jovanovic, a prominent French ensayist and publically applaused critical analyst of the whole bank and fiat currencies system, has written best-sellers like Blythe Masters (recycled as CEO of a blockchain startup company, Blythe Masters is that former JP Morgan & Co top executive who (re)invented the "credit default swap", main trigger for the 2008 financial collapse) or Adolf Hitler. Retaliating by printing money (how Hitler took the political power thanks to the bankers, who have continuously produced counterfeit currency, cf. http://www.jovanovic.com/ah.htm). In 2015 he also published a remarked study about John Law, the Scotish economist and Finance Minister under the French Regent, Philippe d’Orléans (1715 – 1723), and how that historical understudied figure literally invented the banknotes and the quantitative easings… in 1716, by converting the citizens gold and silver coins to a “practical” paper money. P. Jovanovic ban from Wikipedia is so drastic that through John Law’s Wikipedia page it’s imposible to find any bibliographical reference linking to that monographic essay (cf. https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Law_de_Lauriston).
The suppression of his Wikipedia article took place on August 24th, 2014, on the basis of as decision adopted by… 3 Wikipedia contributors – cf. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion:Pierre_Jovanovic/Suppression (French written discussion).
- Potentializing the previously developed Steemit Community
It’s probable we’ll hear comments disqualifying Steemit as a suitable platform to display an online encyclopedia, because it wasn’t “natively meant” to fill this purpose, contrarily to Lunyr, or even Everipedia. We can defend the exact opposite view: what may happen with Steemit adopting an encyclopedic process is to dynamize a “real community”, sharing almost 2 years of building its own identity, its working modalities, its passions, and its conflicts, to dynamize towards a new challenge this “République des Lettres”, which is already dealing on a daily basis with creation and writing/recording processes.
Besides, such a challenge very likely would raise the global quality requirements amongst Steemit contributors, for us to be publically seen as producing a trustworthy scientific job. No doubt it’ll draw more attention and praise to the SteemSTEM subcommunity project – many existing publications of which can legitimately been considered as encyclopedic entries.
- Leading Steemit blockchain technology potentials to new highs
Another key advantage our network already handles to launch this SteemCyclopedia Project is… STEEM itself! While Lunyr, with its LUN currency, and Everipedia, with its new version IQ (now turned cryptocurrency), still have to prove themselves on a large scale, while we, the Steemians, are the living “proof of community” that our tokens are widely accepted, on a double level:
* in our own ecosystem (by users, on Exchanges and by investors), i.e. STEEM and SBD are used as suitable retributive currencies for intelectual and creative contributions;
* soon in society as a whole, through projects like @paywithsteem, or @jerrybanfield’s P2P Steem/USD Gateway (https://steemit.com/budget/@jerrybanfield/hiring-1-developer-to-build-a-p2p-steem-usd-gateway).
I’d dare to say: in this field we’re already some steps ahead of any other existing process and community.
What we need now is sharing ideas and suggestions around the “how” side of things. I hope you’ll be indulgent with me in case any developers team would already have advanced in this perspective, without me being aware of their efforts.
Nice to Steem you, and Let’s build together!
Ijatz (Central American Ecological Social Network - http://www.lahojita.org)
thanks for sharing
It would be likely that I'll support the idea that Steem is suited for such purposes. But it is also true that the way it is used currently does not suit this application. Additionally there is some danger using the same currency and reward system in different areas, as the user base, it's activity and the potential rewards are rather different. One way of using Steem in different cases without loosing it's benefit and take advantage of it's established community could be done by introducing a concept similar to colored coins in the bitcoin world.
Great, @a-dalora, nice to Steem you and thanks for having dedicated energy and time to share such a balanced opinion! I'm gonna look for information on those colored coins (I suppose they're different from the gold and diamond hard forks :-)).
Ah, would you know of any dev likely interested in working on this proposal? I wanted to share this article on the @utopian-io website, but a mod answered me they have no space to display ideas about not yet coded projects in search for developers (I'd think they should open such a section, hehe).
And I'll definitely read various of your articles (this one promises to be quite stimulating: https://steemit.com/steem/@a-dalora/steem-s-negative-impact-on-social-behaviour), it seems we're walking the same "trails that lead to nowhere", like M. Heidegger said ;-).
Oh my, I got dizzy. Lol. But maybe just make a Steemit wiki like they do other stuff?
There's this author or journalist who posts his articles here in Steemit because he was never able to publish it outside so I guess we can find legit sources on here too.
Have a look at this : https://lunyr.com/
Hello @crypto4iso, nice to Steem you! :-) Thanks for having cast a glance at this proposal! Yes, my article was partially motivated by projects like Lunyr, cause I feel in some cases it's equally (or more) worthy to make use of an already existing currency (the SBD) than creating one for a specific purpose (the LUN).
Especially when the acceptance of SBD is widespread, attached to a growing social network, and based on a natively scaled blockchain (the Steemit one). Lunyr relies on Ethereum, of wich, if I'm not wrong, the blockchain still processes around 15 transactions per second only, and is already overcrowded.
Btw, I'm gonna follow your publications :-)
Hi :)
Nice! Thank you for inviting me to read your post. Very interesting!
Cryptoexplode
Thanks to you! What's you opinion about using our already existing currencies (STEEM and SBD) as encyclopedic tokens, instead of creating a new currency (like Lunyr)?
I think it's a good idea! STEEM / SBD to the moon!
Out of curiosity, if we would have SteemCyclopedia, would it be about Steem or Steem-blockchain based? It would be interesting to see how this would be done with the "best" knowledge left visible while retaining the possibility for users to edit the data.
Basically voting for the article content visibility would be one thing, but giving the opportunity to edit articles and create own versions could at worst flood the article with different versions.
Hello @apsu, nice afternoon! As usual, your observations are accurate and deliver real food for thoughts :-)
Till now I've imagined the SteemCyclopedia to be based on both STEEM/SBD and the Steemit blockchain, but in the case of the latter, it probably would entail a couple changes, in particular the 7 days modification limit to the articles content (like it was kindly suggested by the Witness @evildido).
Steemit is actually a website using Steem blockchain, but then again.. would the articles be edited only by the creator? Would every topic have only one creator, for example if I wrote an article on "Bitcoin", could only I edit the article on Bitcoin? :)
Would there be multiple articles on a single topic, like 25 versions of article on "Bitcoin"?
These are questions needing to be solved
I agree, it has to be solved! Ideally, any Steemian (I'd say any Steemian with a minimum reputation of 40) must be authorized to include her or his changes to the SteemCyclopedia articles.
An aspect I'd propose to stress in our encyclopedia would be the genealogical one: any existing theory, historical narrative, mathematical formula, etc. comes as the result of a pregnancy process that's always a conflictive one (like it's usually said for history: "the victorious only write history"), well I'd suggest we display or closely link any current knowledge (surviving hypothesis) with all its previous and/or rival hypothesis, often burried in nowadays college lectures.
Regarding the technical aspect, have you seen this coming change in Steemit blockchain, apparently similar to sharding?: "AppBase is the first step in creating a multi-chain FABRIC. AppBase enables many components of the Steem blockchain to become modular by creating additional non-consensus blockchains as dedicated plugins".
It seems to open exciting perspectives :-)
@originalworks
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My kudos goes to @resteemy for his kindness in bringing to the awareness of Steemians some hidden content and stories.. I envy u for your good works sire
Nice work steem so beautiful
thank
Thanks a lot shearing votes👏👏
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Yo lo veo bastante factible. Este año salen las Smart Media Tokens (SMTs), en la blockchain STEEM que van a permitir hacer crowdfunding y manejar recompensas a nivel del proyecto. Por ejemplo, para este caso, se podría, en primer lugar preparar presentaciones para pedir fondos y hacer una ICO (que viene a ser algo como un crowdfunding) y también se puede usar el mismo modelo de recompensa de contenido por votos que se ve en steemit, pero con otro "Token". El STEEM recaudado y los tokens generados al recibir los fondos se repartirían automáticamente de acuerdo a la configuración de la SMT. Aquí hay más información https://steemit.com/steemit/@dragosroua/how-to-deploy-your-own-smart-media-token-on-the-steem-blockchain-the-smt-white-paper-series-ep-one
Con el crowdfunding de una SMT se podría financiar el desarrollo de la steemcyclopedia y a la vez los tokens se pueden usar para manejar las recompensas dentro de ésta.
Un problema es que la red steem está diseñada para contenido viral y para recompensar a quienes tengan mayor capital, independientemente del valor que aportan o quitan a los demás. Por lo tanto este sistema de enciclopedia podría no ser compatible ya que en este se busca crear contenido que tenga valor a largo plazo. Una manera de manejarlo podría ser que haya una élite que inicialmente tenga una gran porción de los tokens y que vote las contribuciones (algo como funciona utopian, que hay una cuenta que concentra un montón de dinero y que hay una élite de curadores que deciden a quien se le recompensa).
Por otro lado, eso de los tokens no es tan bonito como parece ya que si se construye algo que no es valorado por los demás a largo plazo, el valor de estos va a decaer. Tales tokens han de tener algún valor de cambio que motive su uso. Cómo se monetizaría la enciclopedia?
Por otro lado, sería más sencillo si se toma el modelo de utopian y las recompensas se dan en STEEM.
El punto más importante de todo esto sería tener una inversión inicial lo suficientemente grande para recompensar a quienes contribuyan al proyecto.
En resumen, creo que utopian ofrece un modelo bastante sencillo que se puede copiar para esto y el mayor reto está en conseguir inversionistas que permitan construir un proyecto que recompense a los contribuyentes. El código de utopian es libre por lo que se puede crear esta aplicación a partir de eso.
Creo que es cuestión de tiempo para que alguien invierta en algo como esto y lo desarrolle.