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| Dear Encyclosphere Community, We hope this newsletter finds you in good health and high spirits this fall. We’ve made excellent progress on bringing freedom to the world of encyclopedias. Here’s a comprehensive update on our activities over the past three months. Top news The Encyclosphere comes to WordPress blogs: Do you run WordPress? We are thrilled to announce the launch of the EncycloShare WordPress plugin, available for download on the WordPress Plugin Directory here! This is the first time in history that we can write an encyclopedia article on our humble blog, push a button, and submit it to a genuinely decentralized network for search, reading, and storage forever. Because the software uses state-of-the-art identity tech—letting you own your own identity right on your blog—you can prove that your encyclopedia (ZWI) files were (automatically) digitally signed by you. This is an important step to making the Encyclosphere a totally distributed network, connecting even the tiniest personal encyclopedias (see below). We want to thank our part-time staffer Ms. Shelly Warren for her hard work developing this. A 20-year veteran developer, she provides private data management portals. Please get in touch if you install EncycloShare. We still need to give you passwords at this point. Doubling our aggregators, developing new aggregator software: Two newer developers have installed and managed our third and fourth aggregators. There are now four different independent developers managing four encyclopedia aggregators. One is based on EncycloEngine and the other is based on the newly released (and still under active development) ZWINode. We are still stress-testing the aggregators, but if you would like the URLs to try them out, please send us a note ([email protected]). If you too want to install an aggregator (for any purpose, to serve your colleagues or community, or just experimentally), join our Mattermost and let us know! EncycloReader enhancements: One of our flagship encyclopedia aggregators, EncycloReader.org, has added dictionary search (just highlight or doubleclick any word). Also, it now monitors the encyclopedias that it aggregates. If an encyclopedia website is down, EncycloReader will switch to locally stored articles from ZWI files collected by the encyclosphere. We’ve also added a “Tip of the Day” feature and bookmarking capabilities. For a detailed list of changes, visit the change log and the comprehensive Help page. AI-powered responses: In a series of testing and coding by two of us, we have recently demonstrated how various LLM technologies (ChatGPT and open source LLMs alike) can provide accurate responses by quoting from encyclopedia articles. We are currently exploring the potential of creating an AI-powered “majordomo” for information routing and search capabilities within the Encyclosphere. This AI system would aim to enhance knowledge accessibility while upholding KSF’s values of free speech and respect for privacy. If you want to work on this project, we invite you to join us on Mattermost. Members of Mattermost are notified of details how to join our weekly live virtual meetings Fridays at 2pm U.S. Eastern time. Digital signatures are now consistent and used across the network; ZWI standard officially updated: We’ve made major changes in ZWI version 1.4. In the process of doing this, five separate ZWI file developers, managing four different scripts, worked together to settle upon some very technical standards particularly for digital signatures. More project development news, and calls for participation Encyclopedias crawled: We’re expanding our encyclopedia crawls to include as many MediaWiki-based sources as we can find, with consideration of the various content licenses ascribed to each source. We are up to 35 encyclopedias, but as we incorporate a series of U.S. geographical encyclopedias, you should see this number go up soon. We could use experienced developer help (CSS skills needed) to use EncycloCrawler to get a whole bunch more content. This can be tricky/fiddly work, but essential to our mission. Again, please get in touch. Your testing help requested: We’ve taken on an absolutely enormous task, and we need your help to iron out rough spots. We would love detailed testing/feedback on EncycloReader, EncycloSearch, and even Encyclosphere.org (the organizational site). You wouldn’t have to have special training in software testing or design (although that would be great). PDF grading and encyclopedia database improvement: We made significant progress grading PDFs of open content and copyright-free encyclopedias (A is excellent scan quality, B is above average, C is a passing grade, D is below average), as well as editing database content (extracted from multiple sources, so in rough shape), ensuring accurate and up-to-date information from a wide range of the world’s best sources of knowledge can be incorporated into the Encyclosphere very soon. You can help here: see below. EncycloEngine: Our EncycloEngine developer refactored his code, with particular attention to dependencies utilizing npm and bundling assets (a task that required intricate planning). He is now gearing up to rewrite the platform from scratch, moving from Java to JS/SvelteKit. This attention to detail is an indicator, if you needed one, that we are in this for the long haul. Outreach Interview with Russell Brand: Larry was recently interviewed by Russell Brand on his podcast, and they talked quite a bit about the Encyclosphere. The bottom line: Wikipedia is dominant in large part because of how huge it is. We the people *could* write a zillion high-quality articles on the long tail of topics. The Encyclosphere gives us a way to join forces without losing editorial control of our own content. So…get to work! Check it out on YouTube, Rumble, or X. Glenn Greenwald too: Larry also talked with Glenn Greenwald about WordPress and the Encyclosphere’s potential. Sangerpedia inaugural article: In order to test and show off the new EncycloShare plugin, Larry wrote the inaugural Sangerpedia article (about a local park—because, why not?). Special news A Bias-free Wikipedia alternative?: Betty Wills, an early and enthusiastic KSF volunteer, recently made a public launch of Justapedia. This (entirely independent) venture forks the English Wikipedia, inviting participants to edit Wikipedia articles in order to remove their bias (a topic on which Larry has written three much-circulated blog posts: [1] [2] [3]). We’re working with Justapedia so their articles can soon be added to the Encyclosphere. We wish Betty and the Justapedia team all the best. Have a look at their work, and contribute, if you are concerned about Wikipedia’s failure to live up to its original neutrality policy. Looking Ahead Now that we are in the final quarter of 2023, we’re proud of all we accomplished last quarter. Your continued support and contributions are invaluable to our shared mission to advance knowledge standards that will help the encyclosphere realize its full potential. Thank you for being an integral part of the Knowledge Standards Foundation. Let’s continue this journey together!We would like to remind you of some topics that we mentioned in our last email: Buy Encyclosphere merchandise! If you want to show your support for the cause (and the KSF does get a cut of the proceeds), please pick up an Encyclosphere mug, t-shirt, hoodie, or cap at our online store. Help develop Encyclone.org, a Yacy-powered encyclopedia search engine. If you are a developer and are interested, please respond to this email. Extensive free database of encyclopedias:librarian and database help requested. The KSF has compiled a database of encyclopedias (743 entries so far). We need your help adding entries and improving the web app front-end so that we can release it to the public. The main purpose of the database is to accelerate populating the Encyclosphere. We are using the database to give our developers ideas for what to add to Encyclone, EncyloReader.org, and EncycloSearch.org. Furthermore, the Old Encyclopedia Digitization Project (OEDP) digitizes public domain paper encyclopedias so that they, too, can be added to Encyclone (via Oldpedia.org) and, from there, into the Encyclosphere. We know there are thousands of encyclopedias digitized to one degree or another in the archive.org and Google Books collections. Please respond to this email if you’re interested in helping with the database. OEDP volunteers are still needed! Please respond to this email if you’re interested.Finally, please check out our active projects page for opportunities to volunteer (including development!), then join us on Mattermost! And we want to acknowledge and thank all of you who are also grassroots financial supporters. We are humbled and grateful for your one-time and monthly contributions! If you’ve been thinking about making a donation, now is a good time to do so! Support the KSF.That’s all for this edition of the Encyclosphere Newsletter. We appreciate your active participation and contributions that make the encyclosphere thrive. We meet every Friday at 2pm U.S. Eastern time: encyclosphere.org/meet. We hope you’ll join us! Warm regards, Encyclosphere Team P.S. Stay tuned for more exciting updates and announcements in the coming months! |
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