In the worst-case scenario, they will keep harassing you off-wiki, hunting for your digital footprint across other social media platforms. I actually had to retire several of my internet handles because of this wiki drama.
I hope anyone can start their own private wiki in peace and for free.
Today, we already have free blogging platforms, newsletters, photo sharing, and microblogging, but we are in dire need of a free wiki platform (and maybe a knowledge base tool too).
I'm currently experimenting with building exactly that. So far, so good, but the setup is still too difficult for non-technical people, even though it is already free to register.
The Wikipedia community proudly states that they're not a democracy [1]. I don't even know how that works. People simply think their opinion is the best one while hiding behind statements like, "This is THE consensus, you can't do anything about it. Oh, Wikipedia IS NOT A DEMOCRACY, so your pathetic voting attempt has literally no power here."
I also have problems with Wikipedia, sure, but I resolved them simply by setting up a private wiki, and it's been quite peaceful.
Changing the whole institutional culture at Wikipedia is more of a social challenge than a technical one, and I am not well-versed in that area. So, I would rather fork some wiki software, write code, and write articles for myself.
Will my wiki be able to compete with a giant like Wikipedia on the internet? I don't know. I don't even know whether mine is indexed by search engines yet. But I love writing articles, so I'll keep doing it as long as I can.
It really works. Very cool. I’ve been looking for this kind of service for a long time since I started learning Japanese, and I’ve rarely been satisfied with the available services.
I wonder whether the emergence of a single, true Wikipedia competitor would actually put an end to this never-ending fundraising criticism (since people could simply donate to the competitor as a form of protest)
> "I'm just not sure there's a good solution to this."
The democratization of local journalism, where anyone can become a reporter: reporting events in the field, interviewing key people, and publishing opinions. With the internet, anyone could set up their own news outlet.
This idea is quite well-tested in my local area, where audiences directly send donation money to individual reporters who run their own sole-proprietorship news outlets.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html