I don’t think a federated wiki is solving any of the problems of wikipedia. You’ve just made a wiki that is more easily spammed and will have very few contributors. Yes, Wikipedia is centralized, but it’s a good thing. No one has to chase down the just perfect wikipedia site to find general information, just the one. The negative of wikipedia is more its sometimes questionable moderation and how its english-centric. This has more to do with fundamentally unequal internet infrastructure in most countries than anything though. Imperialism holds back tech.
I agree that it might be fine for niche wikis but again, why in the world would you ever want your niche wiki federated? Sounds like a tech solution looking for the wrong problem.
Self-hosting any wiki software solves the problems of Fandom, surely? I fail to see how federation solves any of Fandom’s issues.
No, for the same reason forums can’t replace reddit. Self hosted wikis have been around before and after fandom. The reason it became popular was giving you all the fandom wikis together, one account, discoverable, user friendly so regulars can contribute. If I have to sign up to every fandom wiki I can contribute to, learn a new interface (likely something old and not mobile friendly) and rebuilt up any reputation to gain extra editing rights… I just won’t.
Ibis then in theory allows you to use one account, federate your reputation, use one interface, with lots of third party options if you don’t like the official one (if lemmy is any indication) and have discoverability of new wikis.
There is actually at least one other: Conservapedia. It’s for people who live in a weird right-wing fantasy land.
Arguably even Fandom / Wikia is ruined by plain old greed more than centralization. What’s wrong with it isn’t content, it’s the fact every page loads seven ads, a roll of clickbait, and a goddamn Discord server. A weird blog site for editable text and tiny images would work fine if it wasn’t twisted to feed Engagemagog.
