Ibis is an open-source [7], federated wiki [1][1.1][1.2][2][3][4.1]. The development of the project is located at: github.com/Nutomic/ibis.
The backend of Ibis is written in Rust [1.3] and built on PostgreSQL [1.3]. The frontend of Ibis is written in Rust with WebAssembly [1.3]. Ibis is federated using the ActivityPub protocol [1.5][1.6][4.2].
The first prototype of Ibis [1.4] was publicly announced on 2024-03-13 by Felix Ableitner (“nutomic”) [1][5][6].
I realized that the same technology easily be used to create a federated encyclopedia. As no one else took up such a project, I finally decided to do it on my own and create Ibis.
Ibis is still in a very early stage, but it has the potential to completely change the way online encyclopedias work. Instead of individual, centralized websites there will be an interconnected network of encyclopedias.
Just like Lemmy, Ibis is built on a stack of PostgreSQL and Rust, in this case with a frontend written in Rust Webassembly.
The proof of concept includes all the necessary core features.
Thanks to my previous experience with the tech stack and the ActivityPub library I created, I was able to complete a proof of concept in a relatively short time of four months.
There have also been numerous attempts to create new, centralized Wikipedia alternatives but all of them failed to gain critical mass. The fact is that we can’t rely on any single website to hold the whole world’s knowledge, because it can be corrupted sooner or later. The only solution is a distributed architecture, with many smaller websites connecting with each other and sharing information. This is where ActivityPub comes in, the protocol used by Mastodon, Lemmy, Peertube and many other federated social media projects.
Welcome to the flagship instance of Ibis, the federated Wikipedia alternative!
Welcome to Ibis, the federated Wikipedia alternative!
Ibis is a federated online encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia.
It uses the Activitypub protocol to connect users across different websites