FedWiki

Federated Wiki (FedWiki) is a decentralized, open-source collaborative knowledge tool created by Ward Cunningham in 2011 that lets individual users host their own separate sites and “fork” pages from one another.

about

  • How it works
    • Individual Ownership: Instead of editing a single central database, every user owns and controls their own wiki site.
    • Page Forking: You can copy any page from another user’s site onto your own personal site and edit your local copy while keeping automatic attribution back to the original source.
    • Neighborhoods: As you browse, nearby sites form a dynamic “neighborhood” that lets you search and link across different individual servers easily.
  • Core Philosophy
    • A Chorus of Voices: FedWiki rejects the single-consensus model of traditional encyclopedias like Wikipedia. It allows different people to share the same information while maintaining their own distinct points of view.
    • Decentralized Sharing: As discussed by some users on Reddit, this design distributes hosting costs and shifts accountability, though opinions vary on whether it solves traditional agreement challenges or simply decentralizes individual biases.
  • Technology
    • Node.js: The core platform runs as a Node.js package available via GitHub and npm.
    • Plugins: Pages use paragraph-sized items and support rich content or experimental web plugins.