
WikipediaP2P - bpierre
https://www.wikipediap2p.org/
======
oceanofsolaris
I understand that this is an early implementation.

Nevertheless, I have a question: how does it make sure the site you receive is
actually the

a) correct one (someone could distribute incorrect pages e.g. about
controversial topics like North Korea or Climate Change; or inject some
malicious code that e.g. uses your account to submit changes to wikipedia)

b) most recent one (or at least a reasonably new one).

I imagine the first one could maybe be somehow guaranteed through the
protocol. Maybe you can just solve the second by invalidating your local copy
after it is more than one day old.

The github link on the homepage does sadly not work for me (firefox on linux),
so I can't check.

~~~
osense
> controversial topics like [..] Climate Change

You're making me sad on a Friday afternoon.

~~~
oceanofsolaris
Let's reformulate it then: topics where some actors have a strong incentive
(monetary or emotional) to manipulate other peoples opinion.

~~~
osense
I guess that's better :)

To expand a bit on my previous comment, the sad part is that even though we
know that the topic is not really controversial scientifically, we somehow,
subconsciously, refer to it as one.

Elections and all that.

~~~
ensignavenger
Even accepting the science, there is plenty of room for controversy over what
actions should be taken as a result.

~~~
blackflame7000
Yea the true controversy isn't weather the climate is changing but rather the
rate at which it is occurring and the degree to which humans should intervene
to take corrective action.

~~~
ensignavenger
And amongst the options of ways to intervene which ones to choose? Some of
which are probably mutually exclusive.

------
discreditable
A better way to support Wikipedia would be to donate. $10 probably covers more
than the strain you put on Wikipedia for a year.

[https://donate.wikimedia.org/](https://donate.wikimedia.org/)

~~~
atom_enger
I encourage a repeating donation. If you work a tech job you can very likely
afford 5/month. The site has changed my life for the better and I constantly
find myself on there satisfying whatever is piquing my curiosity at the
moment. To be clear, I'm not affiliated in any way just a huge supporter.

------
gield
For the sake of testing it, I have opened nearly every link in the
introduction of the Nikolas Tesla [0] page, the one used in the example. It
should now be possible to at least obtain all those articles through me, and
hopefully also through other people.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla)

~~~
qznc
It burns CPU like crazy for me. Would not use it on battery.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _WikipediaP2P uses WebRTC for all Peer to Peer communication._

Is this a sign that WebRTC isn't optimised yet, or is it the extension itself
that needs some love?

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rfrank
I feel like I should contribute more than a pun, but this is a missed
opportunity for wikip2pedia.org. The domain is available.

~~~
posterboy
thats gold rfrank, gold

------
pmlnr
We'd be better off by putting wikipedia on IPFS and IPFS into p2p cache.

~~~
tscs37
The problem is that it requires installing third-party software to function
(the IPFS client) or putting load on some IPFS gateway.

~~~
diggan
Not necessary. Either Wikipedia can help out with hosting their own gateways
in addition to the ones running on ipfs.io, OR they can include a js-ipfs node
in the browser.

~~~
tscs37
>Wikipedia can help out with hosting their own gateways

Which kinda defeats the point of saving bandwidth on their side.

>js-ipfs node

That could work, though I was under the impressino that the js-ipfs
implementation was WIP/Experimental (last I checked)

~~~
diggan
> Which kinda defeats the point of saving bandwidth on their side.

Traffic doesn't only need to be served by Wikipedia but could also include
other volunteers (think archive.org and others) and the setup for helping out
would be easy.

> That could work, though I was under the impressino that the js-ipfs
> implementation was WIP/Experimental (last I checked)

That is absolutely true, which WikipediaP2P is as well, and IPFS for that
matter. I was simply pointing out some ways you can make the whole "Wikipedia
on IPFS" thing to work in the future.

------
teekert
I've been wondering, would one reach the same principle if one would pin the
root folder of wikipedia on their own server using IPFS and then if wikipedia
would point their domainname to the ipfs.io gateway with a hash for that
folder, would Wikipedia auto update on my server and would IPFS provide the
load balancing/p2p part?

Or am I understanding IPFS or the ipfs.io gateway wrong? Does everything go
through the ipfs.io server in that case? Or is it still distributed/torrent-
like?

~~~
lgierth
For Wikipedia it would probably be more useful to embed js-ipfs [0] into
pages, and fetch additional pages and assets after first one from ipfs. js-
ipfs can currently speak WebRTC to peer with other js-ipfs nodes, and
websockets to peer with go-ipfs nodes.

[https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs](https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs)

------
executesorder66
Here's the cacheP2P discussion :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12752168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12752168)

------
nextweek2
I remember thinking about a similar concept a few years back. It would be good
to have a p2p archive of human knowledge for end of the world scenarios.

The problem is Bittorrent isn't the protocol for it, it doesn't allow
incremental changes. You also don't want the complete history like git, you
want something that passes a diff around.

It would be great to have a p2p network with Wikipedia, a load of academic
papers, maps and recipes, which anybody with a computer could contribute drive
space to storing.

~~~
markovbling
The database dumps are surprisingly small - can store the whole thing on 2 TB
hard drive incl media - or 64GB SD card if you just want the SQL database with
text and metadata

~~~
qznc
If you factor in the overhead of p2p, it is probably cheaper, if operating
systems come with a few hundred MB of the more popular Wikipedia pages.

------
krzyk
It's a pitty it doesn't have a firefox plugin.

~~~
elkos
Should be easy to do.

------
Izeau
Why the “Read and change all your data on the websites you visit” permission?

Also, the “Fork me on GitHub” banner on your website is behind the fancy
canvas so we can’t actually click it (Chrome 54).

Great idea otherwise!

~~~
dmytrish
Also, a separate domain, wikipediap2p.org, not (obviously) affiliated with
wikipedia.org. If it were p2p.wikipedia.org, it would be fine for me.

~~~
b3n
It says on the page: "This is an unofficial extension and not endorsed by
Wikipedia in any way, it's just an implementation of latest web-technologies
towards sharing of knowelege."

------
rocky1138
There is no way I'm installing this with those permissions requests. All data
on all websites I visit? No way.

------
stanislavb
This seems like a decent project that has the potential to become very
popular. I just tested it and it worked well; however, it clogged my CPU and
the extension crushed in the end.

------
thecatspaw
how does it handle cache invalidation, eg when a page gets updated?

------
yitchelle
I wonder if this concept could be extended to site aggregator such as HN or
Reddit? The amount of bandwidth saved could be significant.

~~~
timlyo
I don't think it would work all that well with content that changes so often.

------
iansowinski
Hmmm, maybe thats the option for saving twitter?

~~~
fermuch
Check out mastodon.social :)

~~~
iansowinski
Look nice, but problem with social network services is usually all about
number of users :)

Remember diaspora?

------
tscs37
GDI, I just flipfloped to Firefox... I guess no P2P goodness until Firefox
supports Chrome addons or the addon gets ported...

~~~
artemisart
Try [https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/chrome-store-
fox...](https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/)
(not guaranteed to work, I didn't test it)

~~~
tscs37
Thanks!

------
gield
I tested it in Chromium really quick. I have one small remark: when opening an
article obtained by a peer (a green link) in a new tab, it just opens it in
the same tab.

------
zymhan
So if I wanted to donate my computing resources and bandwidth to hosting this,
should I just install the plugin and leave chrome running on my "server"?

------
grondilu
This seems to be introducing synchronisation issues or something. I've just
made an edit on an article, when I go back to it I see the edited version only
if I manually refresh the page.

------
Fang_
Slightly related, there's Wikiwand:
[https://www.wikiwand.com/](https://www.wikiwand.com/)

------
shinski
fixing a typo on the main page would help improve its apparent legitimacy.

>""This is an unofficial extension and not endorsed by Wikipedia in any way,
it's just an implementation of latest web-technologies towards sharing of
knowelege."" <\---knowledge

------
SticksAndBreaks
The guild of censors disapproves..

------
shmerl
No Firefox support?

------
rkangel
Is it just me that gets put off by typos and other errors on a homepage? I
feel like putting a little effort in to checking for obvious errors isn't too
much to ask, but I may well be being overly snobby about such things, I'm
curious.

The two examples here are:

> This color means it's rearching for that article.

I assume that's meant to be 'searching'

And: > This is an unofficial extension and not entitled by Wikipedia in any
way

I'm assuming 'entitled' is meant to be 'endorsed'.

~~~
nicky0
I'm assuming non-native writer rather than sloppiness per se.

~~~
rkangel
I'd considered that. That would explain the second, but the first has to be
sloppiness. If nothing else, if you want to produce english content, set your
spellchecker to english.

~~~
GolDDranks
I think the first one is meant to be "reaching"?

~~~
guerrerocarlos
Both fixed, was my bad, if you see any other please tell me. Indeed non-native
over here.

------
robius
wouldn't cloudflare be more effective?

~~~
cpach
Could you see any reasons why people want to explore alternative options to
Cloudflare?

~~~
dx034
I can see that not everyone likes Cloudflare, but generally a CDN that allows
cheap delivery of the bandwidth heavy parts (e.g. images and scripts) makes
probably more sense in reality than P2P.

While the P2P idea is very nice, most residential lines are heavily geared
towards download speed. Upload speed is often only 5-10% of the overall speed.
Using a P2P network outside of your Lan will probably lead to a slower
experience than using a CDN that has PoPs very close to you.

Now I'm pretty sure that Cloudflare would save Wikipedia at least 95% of
bandwidth with the free tiers. And I don't think that Cloudflare would
complain, the gain of having them as clients would be larger than the costs
for bandwidth. Similar for other providers, Wikipedia and their traffic levels
would probably get very cheap offers.

But I can also understand that it would somehow question the independence of
Wikipedia from corporate interests. That's why they didn't do it.

------
fiatjaf
Stop using my internet connection without my consent!

~~~
detaro
How is a browser extension you explicitly have to install, from a page that
explains what it does, "using your internet connection without consent"?

~~~
fiatjaf
Not this, but cachep2p, which works in normal webpages.

~~~
striking
You consent to it by visiting the site. If you're so incensed, block the
cachep2p js file with your "hosts" file or extensions.

~~~
fiatjaf
You don't know what you're saying.

