Tag: Infogalactic

File 770ers respond to the announcement of Infogalactic:

Errrr, just how is Wikipedia troubled? is he conflating Wikipedia with Wikileaks which is a separate undertaking? And is he really stupid enough to think he can create an alternative to somethings that has over five million pages just in the English version?

MemoryAlpha has *just* forty thousand and its been around for over a decade.

The old Green Man Review which I run had roughly twenty thousand pages before we moved to WordPress and that took twenty years.

Fuck, this man is simply insane.

I love this stuff. In answer to her questions:

1. Wikipedia is corrupt, incredibly outdated technologically, has betrayed its vision, is losing editors and admins at a rapid rate, and instantly reverts nearly one-third of its additions. Wikipedia’s active admins have been literally decimated from the time we started working on Infogalactic; I now have more VFM than Wikipedia has active admins. Infogalactic is not an alternative to Wikipedia, Infogalactic will replace Wikipedia in the same way Facebook replaced MySpace.
2. No.
3. We already have 11 million pages. Infogalactic will dwarf the English Wikipedia within 18 months of Phase Three going live.
4. Vox’s First Law: any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.

Canons 1 and 7 absolutely contradict each other, which is probably why they appear at either end of the spectrum. In a way, the canons encompass the “reality” of the entire endeavor.

There is no contradiction at all. Facts are facts. But what particular facts one editor chooses to emphasize, or deemphasize, in an article permits the presentation of entirely different perspectives on the same objective reality. For example, the LA Times poll today reports that Donald Trump is winning the election. The NBC News poll today reports that Hillary Clinton is winning the election. Both reports are indubitably facts. Which fact you choose to cite depends upon your perspective and paints a very different picture.

A subjective opinion is not the same as an objective fact.

Now matter how much I try and wrap my mind around what those words mean, the result is also ways the same:

ARISTOTLE! RHETORIC!

And that is precisely why we will have Context and Opinion sub-pages in Phase Two. This negative reaction on the part of the SF-SJWs is exactly what I’d hoped to see, because it tends to confirm that we are on the right track in taking back the cultural high ground. As for those claiming we “lifted” any content, I would merely observe that we have literally the exact same right to the content that Wikipedia does. The difference is that Wikipedia’s thought police are desperate to control that content and fit it to their narrative. We’re not, which is why we will inevitably win.

Wikipedia has lost the Mandate of Heaven. As a result, Infogalactic is going to become a top 100 Internet site en route to becoming The Planetary Knowledge Core. And it is going to do so faster than anyone likely believes possible. And no, I’m not bored with Castalia House at all. Quite to the contrary, Infogalactic is going to help Castalia House become the #1 publisher in science fiction and fantasy.

The five-phase Roadmap is only the beginning. That is far from the entirety of our vision, that’s all we’re willing to discuss publicly for now. Believe me, if you think what we’ve said so far is outlandish, you haven’t seen anything yet.

UPDATE: Breitbart readers are rather more enthusiastic:

Infogalactic, an online encyclopedia branding itself as a censorship free alternative to Wikipedia without “bias or thought police,” has launched.

The online encyclopedia that refers to itself as a “Planetary Knowledge Core™”  was conceived as a replacement for Wikipedia that promises to be free of the problems that have plagued Wikipedia such as the bureaucracy amongst editors, censorship of content, harassment, and vandalism of public figures’ pages.

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 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.

Read the rest of the press release at Infogalactic.

• Seven Canons
• Development Roadmap
• Support Infogalactic

Thanks to the 172 Original Galaxians who made this possible. Special thanks to Rifleman and Renegade, who have both put in an incredible amount of time and effort. Thanks to Crew and Veritas, who did not hesitate to throw down and take responsibility for two vital areas moving forward. Thanks to Robert, the first Techstar, who provided invaluable advice. Thanks to the scores of early supporters, who have demonstrated that this is going to be a viable community effort.



And as for everyone else, now you know. Get on board, spread the word, and take back the cultural high ground of social media!