The Massive Wiki project
The Massive Wiki project originated with Peter Kaminski in 2019(? earlier ?). The primary aims of this project are described in The Massive Wiki Manifesto written around the same time:
The Massive Wiki Manifesto
Massive Wiki is a movement to create a wiki ecosystem (rather than just an engine) that provides classic wiki utility, with a plurality of tools and processes that enable decentralization and federation of the pages.
Wikis are made of pages. Free the pages to go where they need to go!
It is not just a wiki - it is a Massive Wiki.
The name, "Massive Wiki", is inspired by Ma rkdown, S hared, V ersioned, F iles (MASVF and pronounced “massive”).
Markdown
We use Markdown because it is a lingua franca.
Shared
Wiki is best when it is shared with others. Sharing files lets them move around, from centralized servers to decentralized servers, and from peer to peer.
Versioned
When page changes overwrite one another (“collide”), version history is important and useful to enable whatever manual merge is necessary.
Version history is also just really useful.
Files
Each page is one file.
Standard files are an easy and reasonably precise unit of data interchange between different systems.
The plural "files" is important -- a wiki needs more than one page.
Massive Wiki Affordances
A Massive Wiki is a good home for individual contributors and for a community of participants. A Massive Wiki has the following properties.
- Accessible to many authors. Massive Wiki can be set up as a folder of text files on an authors' computer that are as easy to edit or rearrange as any other text files on their computer. You can add authors by just asking them to use text files on their computer.
- Simple syntax: Markdown is easy to learn, and is a low barrier for participation.
- Decentralized: Massive Wiki is built to diffuse information across space and time, unlike a centralized server-based wiki or website. Each author has a copy of the whole wiki, in text format. For public wikis, there is also a copy on GitHub, or another public Git forge. Anyone can archive it, share it, duplicate, and change it, without any infrastructure besides their computer (or even another simpler computing device, like a tablet or a USB thumb hard drive). You can zip up (compress) the whole thing easily, and email the zipped-up thing to a million friends for safekeeping or further distribution. And any recipient who can receive email and unzip a file will have the whole wiki. It is much more likely to survive for decades or centuries, even if centralized networking and computing infrastructure collapses. (Maybe this is of value to you, maybe it is not. :-) )
- Inexpensive: No monthly (centralized) server cost.
Massive Wiki Publication
The Massive Wiki project also provides an open-source Python package, Markpub, that renders any collection of Markdown files, such as a Massive Wiki, as a static website. The website can be hosted by Netfilfy or as a GitHub Pages website.
Massive Wiki and the decentralized web
The Massive Wiki project is exploring ways to interact with and participate in the decentralized web and the Fediverse. One view of the decentralized web is as a set of separate information collections and hubs connected in standardized and idiosyncratic ways. The Massive Wiki project aims to enable, support, and nourish such networks.
One current project in development is to support posting Markpub website links on Bluesky and Mastodon instances, and have replies and reactions to such posts displayed as comments to the posted webpage.