Improving MediaWiki, DAO’s, and Enabling Distributed Wikis
Wikis can effectively function as a sort of social network. Here is an idea for improving MediaWiki and more. MediaWiki is the software that runs Wikipedia. Functionality of different social media sites and apps has seemed to mostly converge over time.
I hope that open source developers decide to create a MediaWiki release that is secure and up to date, but it is as easy to install, manage, and upgrade as WordPress is. Miraheze could be a hosting service, and also the organization to finally make installing MediaWiki on shared hosting and servers as easy as WordPress (upgrading, restoring, and backing up, and security too).
Please help to make MediaWiki as easy as WordPress with respect to installing, restoring, backing up, and upgrading. MediaWiki could have a plugin and theme installer like WordPress too. Funding to develop MediaWiki could be crowdfunded on Gitcoin. MediaWiki could be forked if necessary, and future open source MediaWiki upgrades integrated into the forked MediaWiki software (that could be as easy and simple to maintain as WordPress). Distributed wikis and cryptocurrencies could enable some extremely interesting ideas, like Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO’s). A DAO is a relatively new type of organizational structure that is enabled by blockchain and Internet.
Various cryptoeconomic mechanisms could be utilized to fund these technologies DAO’s. Gitcoin could be utilized. Self serve advertising and paid memberships (cryptocurrency payments to not see ads) could be utilized to fund and maintain distributed social media alternatives, distributed wikis, and various DAO’s.
Eventually, cryptocurrencies could be integrated somehow into distributed wikis. Perhaps such a wiki could be distributed and enable DAO members/participants to collaborate. An open source wiki for idea collaboration could be quite useful.
Wikis could be utilized to collaborate on open source DAO business plans. Ideas related DAO governance could be collaboratively developed on wiki software. For every existing business model, the question can be asked, how can this be transformed into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization? Some business models and sectors may more readily be transitioned into DAO’s than other business models and sectors. Open source DAO related research papers could be collaboratively written on wikis too.
Collaboration could take place on distributed wikis. MediaWiki or wiki software in general could integrate Web3 (smart contracts), Interplanetary File System (IPFS) to create distributed wikis. There are various blockchain and cryptocurrency projects that could enable this technology, like Filecoin, Ethereum, SmartBCH, the aforementioned IPFS, and more.
Of course, MediaWiki or a distributed wiki could utilize a Creative Commons licenses, like Wikipedia (probably CC-By-SA, although there are various options). Hopefully MediaWiki will eventually be as easy as WordPress to upgrade, install, backup and restore, maintain, install themes and plugins, and so forth. Hopefully many DAO’s will be successful and benefit many many stakeholders in the future.