Posted by edward 11 hours ago
Uh oh.
Regarding PHP, a small wiki or cms was always a starter project back in the day. For sure it’s a good way to wrap your head around a language and project
PHP can hosted in so many places for so cheap. It still has a place, like everything
Wikipedia became popular despite its programming. Anyone who has ever tried to edit a Wiki page knows its editor is absolute garbage, for example. Want to create your own basic DIY wiki in 2026? Just set up a GitHub Pages which auto-accepts pull requests, you'll be up and running in less than 30 minutes.
Besides, nobody is forcing to to use the current programming paradigms. A classic LAMP stack will still work.
2) You still have LAMP, even if the A is now often Nginx and the M Postgres. That stack is at least as easy as back in the day (signed someone who in my teens loved PHP so much that I made CLI utilities and IRC bots with it, auch). But that's besides the point, because several programming languages and web frameworks now come with their own built-in web-server for development, so you don't even need a stack to get started! This part is easier today.
It’s not like choice is not there.
The proposition of starting something like Wikipedia today is unpaid laborers working on a training set for AI for the sole purpose of enriching tech CEOs, a gaggle of freaks who likely don't consider you as part of the same species as them nevermind as someone deserving of rights or accolades for your efforts.
One is volunteering, the other is being taken advantage of.
AI makes possible a replacement that might be more deeply founded in scientific philosophy, and more strictly curated. Things that humans have proven are very difficult.
Hi, I am having trouble understanding this. Do you have any additional context or articles describing this take?
Kind regards and thank you for your time.
This violates the principles of empiricism. If I state as a matter of empirical fact that you've asked a question and I refer someone else to your question for viewing as evidence that you did in fact do so, that's what we call a primary source. This is logically the best evidence of a fact, still according to the most modern principles of scientific philosophy. (See Locke, Hume, etc. Or search "scientific empiricism" and follow philosophers into modern time to see that this principle is widely agreed upon in the forum.)
Conversely Wikipedia establishes that it's better for me to instead cite the BBC or other news outlet (secondary source) for their opinion about your question, rather than use a primary source.
Implicitly, contribution is confined to a strict subset of sources, especially those controlled by a small group of corporations and colored by interpretation rather than those exhibiting empirical fact.
More importantly, this is logically unscientific.
Yes there are ads, yes there's slop, and yes it still remains a trove of practical human knowledge which would astound a 1926 American far more than Wikipedia ever did.
Compare the Wiki article with step by step PNGs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Windsor_knot
To the thousands of examples one can find on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tying+a+half+wi...
I love to read and have spent more of my life reading than probably anything else. It's my favorite way to learn. Most people do not love to read and would rather learn from another person.
I think humans will never create another Wikipedia because we're already creating something better. YouTube is just the lucky torchbearer, I think. Now that people know they can film themselves teaching or doing something they're good at, and other people will positively engage and maybe even pay them real money, there's no stopping the firehose.
In 10,000 years I imagine the 2020s will be seen less like the end and more like the beginning of human knowledge sharing.
1. Wikipedia is not wikihow. It is not an aim of wikipedia to teach you how to tie a knot.
2. Youtube does not reward or otherwise provide provenance and incremental improvement.
Look at the revision page for the windsor knot: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Half-Windsor_knot...
There is no mechanism whatsoever on youtube to incrementally improve a video or understanding of a topic.
Yes there is? You've been able to trim and append end screens for years. Usually when understanding on a topic changes people upload newer videos.
Do you expect the books on your shelf to update every year? What a baffling relationship with media you must have.
> Youtube does not reward or otherwise provide provenance and incremental improvement.
I don't think that Wikipedia rewards provenance either? The "reward" seems to be seeing your own beliefs put to text. I suppose that's what you're getting at?
Even if you are the type of learner who requires a video to learn, online video platforms, like youtube and tiktok, with ads & overlays when you pause them (and it might be hard to pause while your hands are full of silk...), with no out of the box way to download the videos, autoplay to who knows what next video, etc., are terrible vehicles for that. You can't search or annotate them. The quality varies as you stream it.
Youtube and tiktok will not be better than wikipedia because the primary goal, the raison d'etre, of these products is to make money, track your behavior, sell your data to the highest bidder and show you ads based on it. I'm not naive to the fact that Wikipedia does this, but it's obvious that wikipedia is primarily a collective effort and not a corporate product, and I have more faith in a collective group of people than a tech CEO.
Lastly, a video is a video. It is not another person. A person you can ask questions to, they can offer real time advice. Teaching someone how to tie a tie, your child, grandchild, nephew, etc., learning how to be an adult from a role model, is famously a rite of passage. If you think a video from a company trying to sell you clothes, hosted on Alphabet's servers, is a substitute for another person, especially in this age of AI generated content, I suggest you take a step back and reflect on what human connection really means.
Not everything (I'd wager most things) requires a human to ask questions to. It's just a process. I learned programming from videos and static documentation a decade before I had a school class with a teacher. The "human connection" didn't make me a better programmer.
Was this earnestly your takeaway? I'm not sure you'll find anyone interested in arguing that a video is equivalent to a person.
When I fix snowmobile engines I'd obviously prefer the company of a free and patient instructor showing me on his own machine right in front of me. This is not something that is available, so I settle for videos.
> If you think a video from a company trying to sell you clothes, hosted on Alphabet's servers, is a substitute for another person, especially in this age of AI generated content, I suggest you take a step back and reflect on what human connection really means
Yeah, nobody believes that. A human is a human and a video is a video.
This was a really bizarre strawman, dude, you didn't need to write so much about a position nobody's remotely trying to argue. I would suggest you "take a step back" and reflect on whether you're trying to engage with what was written, or just trying to insert your derision towards a guy who doesn't exist.
The amount of open source software - and yes, throwaway projects too - being just .. brought into and handed off to the world .. is beyond staggering. It's already given rise to megaprojects rising at the top of the pile - crazy stuff like Photocraft, which has seen multiple releases a week for months. And we are just getting started.
I find the author's lack of faith disturbing.
What a BS sentiment but I guess if money is the only goal in life, then what doesn't make a direct profit isn't worth doing. So yes, if money is the only measure of whether something is worth doing or not, then Wikipedia won't be recreated since the volunteers contributing are not doing it for the money.