FedWiki is the next wiki-generation. It is a software that allows everybody to create individual wiki pages while circulating its content in a global - federated - environment. It opens multiple paths for individual knowledge organization while demanding equal responsibility in creating a knowledge commons . This knowledge commons emerges out of thousands of wiki sites people freely contribute to.
In short: FedWiki provides an discrimination-free infrastructure that allows for co-creation in diversity.
"The philosophy that drives me forward is this notion, that we can all be unique but we can still make wise choices together." (Ward Cunningham)
YOUTUBE 3nB8ml6UowE
Keynote by Ward Cunningham, May 19th2015. html 
"Just as the wiki changed how people write, FedWiki will change how people work." (Ward Cunningham)
- support communities in a digital environment - get people & knowledge together in a common space while conserving their individual space - share data among people with different points of view recognizing that there is no such thing as a neutrality in data
Here I am actually participating as an equal. Let's say equal in responsibility, may be not equal in reputation, but equal in responsibility that I can earn my reputation not by starting from scratch but by building on what is already out there given freely in this case by equotrust to create an umbrella under which I might offer my contribution.
# Legal Status and Location? legal status? USA, transnational
# When did they start?
Fed wiki's first commit was on June 25, 2011. Github
Ward Cunningham Wiki started Fed Wiki with a workshop project at Indi Web Camp (wiki ) called Smallest Federated Wiki.
# How do they work?
Ward Cunningham, the "father" of the fed/wiki describes:
Federated Wiki sites share pages circulating within a creative commons.
via Gov Labs source
A single-page browser application reads from many sites at once and saves changes in that browser (see foto). Users can host their own sites, where they edit and organize their knowledge. At the same time they can share back to the federation.
The tools for refactoring and sharing are "hard to learn but easy to use. "Drags 'n drops" and "forks" are omnipresent. The software, published as a Node.js package, runs on a variety of platforms. It can be used on a personal laptop or an industrial server.
FedWiki invites everybody - called "visitors" in FedWiki language - to go around the wiki-pluriverse and take any point of view, without having to conform with the version presented through - say - a Wikipedia page.
# Which Core Dimensions of Commoning are fostered? - Cultivate Shared Purpose & Values - Strengthen the Nested-I - Decouple Giving & Taking. Every person can create his/her own fed wiki without giving something back to the community. - Practice Gentle Reciprocity - Deepen Communion with Nature - Trust Situated Knowing - Honor Care - Preserve Relationships in Conflicts - Reflect on Your Peer-Governance
"We work in the present using only a few of the best technologies likely to last a decade. Our most valued resource, the basis of replication, is kept simple as it must outlive the computers and networks we use to create and transport it." (Ward Cunningham)
# Peer-Governance in the Commons
- Separate Commons & Commerce - Develop Shared Purpose & Values: Fed Wiki is meant to "show of authoring". According to the main developers:
"Wiki is a medium for making and sharing." (See also Pool & Share). "We add flexibility with plugin modules and longevity with peer to peer hosting. We design for creative dissent where revision of the work of others is the norm and a sign of both respect and progress. We intend this to be a place where our culture solves its most pressing problems."
"We embrace proliferation (cf abundance) and focus on mechanisms to make this seem natural. In this way we depart from computing tradition." See Biological Inspiration and Stigmergy
- Assure Commoners Consent in Decisionmaking - Set Semi-Permeable Boundaries. Fed Wiki allows each individual user to "open the boundary" and consciously integrate other people's contributions to ones own content. This integration only works one way. So, one can add other people's contribution to the own fed wiki. But - unlike in a wiki - other people cannot add their contributions to your fed wiki. - Relationalize Property. Users of fedwiki can claim individual ownership of the published wiki-version if they wish to do so. On these sites they are the only ones allowed to make changes and edit. While they can easily draw and integrate text and elements from others. Ward Cunningham talks about "joint property".
- Honor Transparency in a Sphere of Trust.Trustbuilding as we experienced it through online documentation on git-hub, personal communication on riot/ matrix and via e-mail - Self-Monitor, Mediate & Sanction - unclear
# How does Provisioning through commons occur?
Fed Wiki FedWiki is designed for a smart combination of individual and collaborative knowledge creation. It eases sharing (cf. Share Knowledge Often & Widely) and leverages the coproduction of knowledge (cf. Make & Use Together) through a generative process (cf generatedness).
Fed Wiki innovates: (1) through federation versus "what some people would call plagiarism", (2) trough composition by refactoring instead of editing (and therefore undoing previous works) to ease improvement and (3) through wrapping data with visualization. (html )
The Open Development of FedWiki can be followed on GitHub html .
- Share the Risks of Provisioning.? - Produce Cosmo-Locally: in terms of knowledge production, it fosters independent local production of knowledge connected to a global environment for sharing; energywise/material resources wise however there is not necessarily an incentive for relocalization. - Rely on Distributed Structures - perfectly matched - Protext & Extend Value Sovereignity. A Creative Commons Licence protects FedWiki as a commons. The more people use FedWiki the more valuable becomes for everybodies needs. - Direct Capital to Commons Provisioning - matched
We ask, through what thought processes have we guided federated wiki's mechanisms and has that guidance proven sound?
ontological ground & political culture
# Inner Kernel - Relational categories: "readers turned into authors", "joint property", "equotrust", "evolutionary process", sharing, "our sharing model is inspired by autopoeisis", Ward C. on Riot, June 9 2017 - Metaphors: "umbrella", "a chorus of voices that feels like a wiki not necessarily unison but in harmony", what emerges in the territory of the fedwiki pluriverse is going to be "the lighthouse that guides us going forward" (W.C.) - Epistemology: emergence - Rationality: tba
# External Politics & Culture
- Beat the Bounds. Strict Copyright Law is "enclosed" by a Creative Commons Licence that protects FedWiki as a commons - Establish Discrimination Free Infrastructures - Finance Commons-Public-Circuits - Accept State Mediation & Support if Needed - Emulate & Then Federate
tag
# Realms of Commoning Art&Culture, Communication, Democratic Innovation, Knowledge, Learning, Spaces for Commoning
# Sources
Smallest Federated Wiki wiki and video
Ward Cunningham at TEDXPortland 2012
Ted Talk 8'56 youtube ;Keynote by Ward Cunningham: The Federated Wiki, May 19th2015. html
Wiki Inventor sticks a Fork in his Baby by Klint Finley, on WIRED, April 7th 2012 html
about Federated Wiki on fedwiki
# Additional Notes
- unclear relationship between a potential wide-spread use of Federated Wiki & patterns of energy consumption
- how is Fed Wiki's legal status?
- The data visualization and sharing mechanisms were supported by Nike's Sustainable Business and Innovation group.
Others:
- multi-tenant "farm" option npm
- many commoning and self-governance dimensions are met, especially excellent "provision for the commons", but unclear boundaries (open to virtually everything?): and unclear impact on natural resources
- It's amazing how individual control & ownership go hand in hand with sharing & collaboration.
- Ward is writing an ownership article, we should have a look at