All around the world, thousands of users are accessing and editing the new online encyclopedia for the 21st Century, Infogalactic, which styles itself the Planetary Knowledge Core™. Conceived as a next-generation replacement for Wikipedia, the troubled online encyclopedia, Infogalactic is a dynamic fork of Wikipedia that is designed to supplant its predecessor by addressing the problems of bias, vandalism, harassment, abuse, and inaccuracy that have plagued the Wikimedia Foundation’s flagship project for years.
“Every notable public figure who has a page devoted to them knows very well what an inaccurate nightmare Wikipedia is,” said
Vox Day, Lead Designer of Infogalactic, a computer game designer and bestselling philosopher. “The page about me there has had everything from my place of birth to the number of times I’ve been married wrong. And that’s not even counting the outright abuse, such as when Wikipedians replaced the entire page with a definition of a sexually-transmitted disease or with a string of obscenities.”
Infogalactic plans to solve the structural problems of a community-edited online encyclopedia through objectivity, proven game design principles, and a sophisticated series of algorithms. Currently in an operational Phase One, the Planetary Knowledge Core has a five-phase
Roadmap that its founders claim will eliminate edit warring, significantly improve accuracy, neutralize vandalism and other forms of griefing, and render all forms of political bias on the part of administrators and editors irrelevant.
“The primary challenge facing any online wiki is the individual editor’s incentive to impose his perspective on everyone else,” said Renegade, the Operations Director of Infogalactic, who, as per the organization’s pro-anonymity policy is known only by his handle. “Most people who contribute to an online knowledge base do so because they want to have their say, but in the end there can be only one perspective that is enforced by the site’s administrators. Infogalactic has solved that problem by embracing true objectivity and eliminating the enforcement incentive by moving from a centralized, vertically-stacked orientation to a decentralized, horizontally-distributed model.”
Infogalactic’s anti-bias architecture will permit users to select their preferred perspective and automatically see the version of the subject page that is closest to it based on a series of algorithms utilizing three variables, Relativity, Reliability, and Notability. This means a supporter of Hillary Clinton will see a different version of the current Donald Trump page than a Donald Trump supporter will, as both users will see the version of the page that was most recently edited by editors with perspective ratings similar to his own.
“The single biggest problem with Wikipedia isn’t Jimmy Wales or its outmoded 1995 technology, but the fact that it is patrolled by 532 left-wing thought police who aggressively force their biased perspective on the rest of the world,” Vox Day, aka “Fenris” on Infogalactic, added. “This isn’t Conservapedia 2.0 and we aren’t replacing Wikipedia’s admins with their conservative equivalent, we are making the function of thought police irrelevant through technology. Our design philosophy is based on the idea that only the user has the right to define what his reality is.”
The Planetary Knowledge Core is also distinguishing itself from its predecessors by its corporate-friendly policies. Corporations, large and small, are welcome to participate on the site, advertising by page and by category is permitted, and a number of strategic partners have been established, including
Gab, the popular new Twitter alternative that already has over one hundred thousand active users.
Andrew Torba, the CEO and co-founder of Gab, said: “At Gab our mission is to put people first and promote free speech for all. Part of this mission includes working with others who share our core values, specifically around promoting and protecting free speech online. This is why we are incredibly excited to work with Infogalactic. We look forward to building a strong partnership that puts people first and promotes free expression for all.”
Even prior to its public announcement, tens of thousands of people have made the switch to Infogalactic. “The support from the community has been tremendous,” said Rifleman, the Technical Director of Infogalactic. “We haven’t even launched and we’ve already signed up subscriptions to cover more than one-third of our current server-and-storage burn rate. It’s clear there is a tremendous appetite for an alternative to Wikipedia’s institutional left-wing bias.”
Infogalactic has replaced the well-known Five Pillars of Wikipedia with its own Seven Canons™, which refer to the fundamental philosophy by which the Planetary Knowledge Core intends to operate. They are explained in detail on the
Seven Canons page:
1. Infogalactic does not define reality.
2. Infogalactic is written from an objective point of view.
3. Infogalactic is free content.
4. No griefing.
5. Play nice and play fair.
6. Rules are guidelines for users, not chew toys for lawyers.
7. Facts are facts.
While the 5-million-page Phase One Infogalactic is virtually identical to the English-language Wikipedia, in the Planetary Knowledge Core’s next phase, Infogalactic developers will introduce a number of new features to distinguish it from other online encyclopedias. These innovative features include Context and Opinion sub-pages, dynamic page updates, Autobio sub-pages for Verified editors, and an alpha version of perspective filtering.
