Wikipedia suffers from SJW convergence and the tragedy of the commons. What then is the replacement?
Propertarianism can fix it, and at a tidy profit. Here’s the proposal.
If no one else gets to it first, I plan to do this. But I’m not so hard up for ideas that I need to keep this one to myself. Deus vincit.
** BACKGROUND – MOLDBUG
Moldbug has proposed the Wikipedia replacement Revipedia, which features formalized factions and comparable propositions. His solution is close but no cigar. It is too complicated for both the user and the coder. Managing each proposition of every argument is harder than just managing articles, and formalizing factions is a sticky mess.
https://unqualifiedreservations.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/how-to-defeat-the-us-government-summary/
https://unqualifiedreservations.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/revipedia-how-to-defeat-the-us-government-reprise/
Nevertheless, the second link has some valuable thoughts on creating a Wikipedia replacement, starting around here:
“So, to a reactionary, Wikipedia is a dangerous ally indeed. However, given the 98% of it that is true, and the vast quantity of human labor that went into constructing that 98%, Revipedia needs to bootstrap as a Wikipedia mirror. When you use Revipedia, every page that has no Revipedia revision just redirects to La Wik. Of course it appears marked as such, to indicate its generally low trust level.”
Morever, the uberfact factionalization concept can be added later, as a social networking feature to increase the value of Properpedia. It is however unnecessary to the core wiki function.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfact-ultimate-social-verifier.html
** PROPERPEDIA
Key features:
1. One owner, dictator and king.
2. Trustworthy managers on commission are appointed to oversee subject domains.
3. Auctions of page editorships.
4. Multiple versions of pages, arranged by high bid.
5. Managers have veto over bidding results to combat dishonesty.
Here is the expanded version:
Vox retains 51% of corporate voting shares for life, or until transferred to another 51% heir. Vox appoints managers to various subject domains. Bob is the “Evolution” manager.
Bob gets a portion of the profits from “Evolution” page auctions. He is thus incentivized. However, Vox picked Bob for his character as well as domain knowledge. So when Richard Dawkins wins the bid for the #1 version of the “Evolution” page, Bob doesn’t allow it. He refunds part of the money and bumps Dawkins back to #2. The next high bidder, Eugene McCarthy, takes the #1 spot. McCarthy gains editor rights for the #1 version of the page. All edits to the #1 version must be approved by McCarthy or his appointed mods. He similarly controls the “Talk” page for his version.
At the top of the “Evolution” page are links to the #2, #3, (more) versions. A “Bidwar Summary” page gives info on winning bids, editors, and a self-description of each version. Anyone who wishes can read Dawkin’s version, or Michael Behe’s version, etc.
*** Bid mechanics
Bidding works as follows:
Bids are for 10 year time periods. Turning over truth twice a generation should be sufficient. Bids are for multiple rank positions. Bidding is continuous, and results are updated periodically – perhaps managers should determine the profit-maximizing update interval. There are no refunds unless the bidder loses the spot due to being outbid or vetoed. If he loses the spot, he is refunded on a pro rata basis. See below for an example.
Dawkins bids as follows:
#1 $1000
#2 $500
#3 $250
#4 $0
Dawkins is the only bidder, so he wins #1. Bob boots him down to #2 and refunds $500. The #1 version continues to simply mirror Wikipidia.
A day later, McCarthy bids as follows:
#1 $2000
#2 $1000
#3 $500
#4 $0
McCarthy takes the #1 spot. No contest.
Five years later, Michael Behe bids as follows:
#1 $4000
#2 $2000
#3 $1000
#4 $0
Behe wins #1. McCarthy is bumped from #1. McCarthy’s remaining balance is $2000/(10/5) = $1000. This covers his #2 bid, which is the winning bid for that slot. His balance is applied to that slot, and he receives no refund.
Dawkins is bumped from #2. His remaining balance is $500/(10/5) = $250. This covers his #3 bid. His balance is applied to that spot, and he receives no refund.
ABUSE
Abuse is possible. For example, John Scalzi might use an alias to bid high for #1 slot and bid $0 for every other slot. He could pretend to be ideologically acceptable, then once he had editorial control, swap the page to something radically different. Then he’d get banned and refunded, reducing the site’s credibility at little cost. The solution is to impose some cost for this behavior, perhaps by partially or fully withholding refunds in case of abuse, as adjudicated by the manager. The manager would be disincentivized to wield this power unfairly, since doing so would reduce buyer trust and thus hurt his future sales.
The above is imperfect; it’s merely intended as a brief explanation and proof of concept.
*** Incentive Alignment
Managers want to increase the value of the site, and their subject domain in particular. As the site becomes more popular and authoritative, their property becomes more valuable, and their profits and compensation increase. They are thus incentivized to ignore individual winning bids from liars, trolls and fools. A little cash now would cost a lot later.
Of course, the dictator for life must still select managers of sound judgment and character. Lies are often more profitable than truth.
Having multiple easily accessible versions of a page encourages debate and accountability. Paying for version rank surfaces the most serious counterarguments. The ranked auction structure is a satisficing solution to the much harder problem of objectively determining truth and of separating factions without using market feedback.
The #1 spot is the most important for dissemination of truth. But if necessary, managers can veto winners of #2, #3 slots etc as well.
** Followup project ideas
MILCOUP
One might use the profits from this project to create “MilCoup” (called something different of course), a social network democratic platform wherein ID-verified members of the US military can hold direct-democratic votes on various propositions. This would facilitate info coordination necessary for coups, but also disseminate that information so that the Fedgov would preemptively swing right to forestall the coup. One might also include gun owners and cops. The problem would be balancing security against the need to verify users. Gun and political dissident registration are useful to the Fed, which would want to penetrate the database. This is mostly Moldbug’s idea.
If the centralized solution is unworkable due to the above concerns, one might implement a decentralized version instead using the same syssitia nested network plan I’ve described elsewhere. Then verification of gun ownership, identity and trust would be handled by the network members rather than the site admin. The site would merely permit syssitias to organize and nest upwards to scale. Then it would report faction voting results and enable social networking at the desired privacy and permissions levels.
PROPCOIN
Background:
http://blog.jim.com/economics/bitcoin-crisis/
Bitcoin is currently slowing down due to the transaction per second rate limit. Its incentives are poorly structured to drive proper development decisions. In particular, the China mining block’s incentives are misaligned. Therefore, one might fork Bitcoin to give it a propertarian bent.
This would be accomplished by eliminating the free coins mining bonus and giving transactors the ability to flexibly specify to which miners their transaction fees should go. Thus hashing power and the development future of Bitcoin software would be placed in the hands of miners accountable to transactors, who provide the liquidity that makes Bitcoin useful. Miners will compete to win transactor trust and provide excellent customer service. In essence, they will become like banks. The incentive to mine still exists because in order to collect earmarked transaction fees, a miner must be first to mine the transaction into a block. Transactors may choose to give a favored miner exclusive knowledge of a transaction or publicly announce the transaction with a fee schedule for preferred miners.
MISC
Uberfactious expansion to Properpedia. A transition from individual buyers to faction buyers would increase price.
Cryptocorporations, crypto-escrow