Dmitriy Perelstein (DP): Hello @lsanger. Thank you for being here. Can you please introduce yourself and the project you are working on?
Larry Sanger (LS): Sure. I'm Larry Sanger, Ph.D. Philosophy (2000, Ohio State), co-founder of Wikipedia (from 2000-2002) and many other websites, and I am now (as of last September or so) the CIO of Everipedia. The project I'm working on is Everipedia, the "encyclopedia of everything." I got on board when the team told me they were thinking seriously of moving their content to an EOS-based blockchain, becoming the first encyclopedia network online. My role is to theorize the whole endeavor and plan out some long-term goals; I also help with community management and spreading the word (like this AMA). I just finished a 7000-word essay I need to find a publisher for... All about how to improve on Wikipedia using the blockchain, more or less.
DP: So what exactly do you see as Wikipedia's weaknesses that Everipedia is trying to solve?
LS: The biggest, most fundamental weaknesses are related to the kind of community that it is. I mean that it is dominated by a certain kind of youngish techie male who don't play well with others—or when they do, it tends to resemble mob rule. This is why, despite having hundreds of millions of monthly readers, they only have something like 10,000 regular contributors (defined as someone who can vote--doesn't take much work to get to that level). But... ...there's a broader problem with the community. It's just one community. If you want to organize all of the world's intellectuals to create a ginormous free online encyclopedia, it just seems unlikely that any single community could satisfy all of them.
DP: Hmm, I actually didn't realize this. I thought it was a very democratic society contributing to the Wiki project.
LS: It's democratic in the sense that anyone can try to participate, for sure. I don't want to take that away from them. You don't even need to make an account!
DP: So you don't think Everipedia that is based on the Blockchain technology in the crypto universe where 95% are young tech-savvy males will be significantly different in terms of the community?
LS: I think we're a lot more open, friendly, and tolerant in many ways. Also, the guys (quite impressively to me) coded a WYSIWYG editing interface in the space of a few months, whereas Wikipedia spent years and millions of dollars and still couldn't do it. So it's a lot easier to contribute to. So, we'll see if in the long run we have a broader contributor base. I think so. But now we're just talking about Everipedia.org, the website. What about the Everipedia Network? You don't have to know anything at all about blockchain to contribute to Everipedia or its broader network. Any community or publisher that plugs its users contributions into the blockchain will be able to participate. So you can create whatever community you want, of any sort, to appeal to the broadest range of humanity. Everipedia.org = the present website. Everipedia Network = the collection of contributors (including various websites and publishers) that will, eventually, contribute to the blockchain.
Kurt Braget (Kurt): @lsanger so how will the data be moved to the blockchain? is this in progress now? also any info on IQ Token would be valuable to our users who love their tokens... 💰
LS: The data will be moved to IPFS, or possibly a Block.one-created competitor of IPFS, or so I gather. That's more Sam's wheelhouse.. Links from the blockchain to a distributed database like IPFS will be done by the end of the year, I believe. The token part of the blockchain launches in June! The IQ token will be airdropped in June to anyone who hodls EOS off-exchange when we take the snapshot. The airdrop itself happens I think??? June 17.
Our white paper is here:
https://github.com/EveripediaNetwork/Everipedia/blob/master/TechnicalWhitepaper110.md
That should give you our latest thinking about how it'll develop. Bear in mind that the website already exists and has good traction. Going forward, you'll create value (in the form of tokens) through your labor on Everipedia.org.
Kurt: why isn’t the white paper in the Everipedia site itself?
LS: Golly, I never bothered to ask Sam. Not sure. Because he's a geek and it's Github?
RH: So how will we get companies and website help contribute to the network?
LS: We've already been in discussions with a few existing encyclopedia publishers. We'll do more outreach as everything comes online. One established and active encyclopedia has already said they'll put all of their content on the blockchain.
DP: So can you walk us through the process? If I want to post an article about Kurt Braget 💰. How does it work with Everipedia? 😜
LS: It will work very similarly to how it works at present. Start a new article, save it, etc. Now when the article branch of the blockchain goes live, we'll add some logic that says, "To make this edit, you must stake n tokens. OK?" And if your article is not accepted for whatever reason, you've lost those n tokens.
DP: And if it is accepted, you get to keep your tokens AND earn some more?
LS: Yes! Important to point out of, course.
Kurt: so how are you guys going to monetize and afford to pay the collaborators in a sustainable way?
LS: Well, this isn't quite the right way to think of it. We aren't an employer or publisher (except of our own staff's contributions). We just happen to be the org that is starting an independent, decentralized network. So we aren't actually *paying* anyone. They are unlocking value for themselves via the blockchain's automated smart contracts.
Kurt: who ultimately decides which articles are published or not?
LS: IQ token hodlers. But one thing I personally want to insist on, and Sam and crew are on board with this, is that the bar must be kept extremely low. If there is a high bar for contribution, then a whale can wrest control of the editorial mechanism for his own nefarious purposes. So basically, the only thing that it will be appropriate to reject will be vandalism, total nonsense, etc.
Jed Grant: What's your anti-spam mechanism?
LS: There are two questions here, actually: about everipedia.org and about the broader blockchain network.
DP: If say, a group of say government-backed hackers (read: unlimited capital resources) wants to push their propaganda and start posting fake news articles – how does the system prevent that from happening? Won’t they always be able to vote for the articles they are creating?
LS: They more or less can. But it's not as big of a problem as you might imagine. I mean, as long as you're talking about the blockchain and not Everipedia.org. Everipedia.org will have much higher standards than that. (And does.)
Jed Grant: I have personally seen some wealthy people pay tens of thousands of $ to have their Wikipedia entry made more favorable... remove the scandals and highlight the charity. How will you prevent this?
LS: Because it's an open protocol meaning that anybody can contribute a competing article on any topic; we will also be publishing rating metadata about the articles; so those who use the EP Network's rating data can show the best rising to the top. That said, I'm sure there might well be rules at the margin that will take care of some of the issues you have in mind. I just don't want the process to get political *at the blockchain level*. Each app or community can draw on the resources of blockchain to construct their own notion of a great encyclopedia. On Everipedia, we have a paid staff that can keep standards high. But that's just our own content, produced via our own wiki software. As to the Everipedia Network, the answer is shocking but it'll make sense if you'll hear me out.
DP: There was an article that I've read that talked about people posting fake news about the Las Vegas gunman, for instance. Pointing fingers to the wrong guy. That sounds to me like similar issues that have been in the news lately. Is that going to be fixed somehow eventually?
LS: The answer is, we won't! We'll invite the public to compare and rate various articles. We'll also invite them to share info about themselves, such as their specializations, institutional affiliations, race, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, politics, religion, etc. You'll be able to see if people who think like you have rejected some article as a fluff piece. You might choose to use an app that never even lets the fluff pieces onto their local platforms. That was a bit of fake news about a very temporary problem of a sort that Wikipedia has had many, many times in the past. It was itself fake news about Everipedia because by the time the hit pieces about EP appeared, we had already corrected the error (which we did very quickly).
Jonathan Grace: so the stronger (larger) the community , the more resources are brought forth to the blockchain , in essence putting the construct and its hardiness in the hands of the contributors and their supporters?
LS: Yes, that's the idea. And in time, this will doubtless be much more robust than anything our local "wisdom of experts" (or, anyway, paid editors) can achieve by themselves. Think of it this way: nobody has ever created a platform to rate all the encyclopedia articles online, and to attach info about the raters to those ratings, so you can slice and dice the ratings data. So you'll be able to see what experts really think by weighting their opinions properly. If you want to know what hoi polloi thinks...that'll be available too.
DP: Can we talk about privacy a bit? There was a portion in the whitepaper talking about how eventually pubsliher of the article, as well as the editor will have an option to remain private. When will this be available?
LS: I can't give you a timeline on that one, I'm afraid. I haven't talked about it with Sam and Travis recently. I personally (not speaking for the others now) think that there are some special difficulties associated with privacy of authors (i.e., allowing fully anonymous contribution). It's very fraught and not the sort of thing any one person can declare a policy on once and for all.
Kurt: are there any estimates on how much money people could make? for example in Steem it looks like people can make hundreds of dollars per article but that is if this is wildly popular. What is the incentive structure for the article writing like? Like how much money could be made and how does the traction (if at all) change the incentive?
LS: I haven't heard about any estimates. Our system borrows some ideas from Steem, so who knows--it might work similarly. Exactly how much money can be made, for what and under what precise circumstances, really hasn't been finally decided beyond the limited info you see in the white paper, I'm afraid.
DP: One more time, so that I understand it 100%. Example: I write an article and wager 10 IQ Tokens for it to be published. Kurt believes it’s a fake article or it adds zero value. He wagers 11 IQ tokens to have it rejected. So the article will be rejected because a wager to reject it is higher than to publish it. Is that a pretty accurate simplification?
LS: I really need Sam here to answer that particular question. Sorry.
Kurt: where can people follow announcements about airdrops and other announcements?
LS: High-volume? The Everipedia Telegram group: https://t.me/everipedia Lower-volume? The Everipedia Reddit group: https://www.reddit.com/r/Everipedia/ All important announcements are made in both places. We don't have a mailing list per se at this time (that I know of!).
Kurt: i think it’ll be interesting to know if it’s more like staking or if some people could actually make a living doing it
LS: I think there's no way to know in advance whether one could make a living writing articles for the Everipedia Network.
Jonathan Grace: Do you feel that the governance model that is inherent to the EOS platform will be the number 1 strong suit in becoming the most robust as well as fair and equal community encyclopedia platform , would it be possible to easily do it without what EOS provides?
LS: Let's just say that we don't feel 100% locked into EOS, but we chose them (and they're heavily supporting us in many ways) because it's the right tool for the job. There just isn't a better way to build both content and governance than EOS at present. But EOS is still under development! So we'll see! The EOS crew include some world-class, amazing developers. I think they can deliver a tool that will make all-important blockchain governance, not easy, but possible anyway.
Jed Grant: Will different communities supposedly have different token economics? For example, will the hedge fund guys have really expensive rates in tokens and the charity people will work at their rates?
LS: That's interesting. Can you explain a little further? My initial reaction is that it's a market and people are creating a more or less fungible product...bear in mind that we might be able to support articles that are behind paywalls. Some blocks might be encrypted...
Jed Grant: That's my thinking... would hedgies bid up prices to be a trusted author in their community?
Jonathan Grace: ^^ perhaps a built in mechanism to mediate or limit this possibility?
LS: Jed, I don't think it's going to work that way, i.e., I don't think it will work exactly like a bidding war to see whose article is the winner. Indeed, if it does work that way, then the whales can take over and thus it's no longer decentralized...and thus it's no longer really a proper blockchain. But the hedgies might be willing to pay a premium to unlock an article behind a paywall, and the blockchain might create a mechanism to let that happen independently of any given platform.
Kurt: Larry I know you’re a big philosophy fan, and so am I. For us philosophy nerds, how do you think Everipedia is serving us? For me a big knowledge base is more about deeper knowledge than what was popular this week
LS: There's really not a lot there that isn't in Wikipedia, or that's my understanding. So far, most activity has been on topics Wikipedia hasn't covered—lots of Internet and pop culture stuff. That will change when we start spending the $30M investment we received. One thing I'd like to do is hire an academic editor who can wrangle more effort in that direction. And bear in mind that as far as the broader network goes, we'll see competition among philosophy articles and we'll be able to identify philosophy Ph.D.s. That will help the best rise to the top and create all sorts of new markets, as it were, based on different points of view. (What's the best article about Ayn Rand according to Randians? What's the best article about Hume according to empiricists? Etc.)
Kurt: i’d be kind of worried if articles were weighted more highly for phds
LS: Thing is, if my vision is implemented (and I think our guys can do it), we can weight articles using all sorts of different categories. Slice and dice! Assume we've got a massive database of ratings. Then if you don't like Ph.D.s, you can go with the best according to B.A.s. Or people who think like you, or look like you, or combine tags, etc.
Kurt: Also one wiki I love reading lately is Investopedia. I was thinking that it would be cool to gain IQ from *reading*. I think we tend to forget about the importance of readers. Is this possible with IQ Tokens in the Everipedia network?
LS: Interesting...! I don't know know how much thought has been given to that one. I haven't thought about it at all.
DP: All right, guys. Looks like we've gone over an hour. This was really informative and insightful. Thank you very much for your time, @lsanger !
