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WardCunningham
Smallest-Federated-Wiki
JavaScript2011–2021
WardCunningham / Smallest-Federated-Wiki · Archived

Smallest-Federated-Wiki

This wiki innovates by: 1. federated sharing, 2. drag refactoring and 3. data visualization.

Data & Databases
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
18Distinct people
18Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

This wiki innovates by: 1. federated sharing, 2. drag refactoring and 3. data visualization.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year18 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2011-08-16 18:48:10 UTC to 2021-08-29 20:16:45 UTC.

0123452011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 2 submissions, 2 comments20112012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC422
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
This repository exists as both a historical document and a community of interested parties. This is not where you want to find the current source for Federated Wiki. Smallest Federated Wiki Goals The original wiki was written in a week and cloned within a week after that. The concept was shown to be fruitful while leaving other implementors room to innovate. When we ask for simple, we are looking for the same kind of simplicity: nothing to distract from our innovation in federation. We imagined two components: a server component managing page storage and collaboration between peer servers, and, a client component presenting and modifying the server state in server specific ways. The project is judged successful to the degree that it can: Demonstrate that wiki would have been better had it been effectively federated from the beginning. Explore federation policies necessary to sustain an open creative community. This project has been founded within the community assembled in Portland at the Indie Web Camp: http://IndieWebCamp.com Software development continues elsewhere within github: https://github.com/fedwiki Install and Launch The preferred implementation is distributed as npm module wiki, and a corresponding github repository. With node/npm installed, install wiki with this command: npm install -g wiki Launch the wiki server with this command: wiki -p 3000 Your wiki will now be available as localhost:3000. If you have a public facing site with a wildcard domain name then you can launch wiki as a virtual hosting site we call a wiki farm. We'll use the more conventional port 80 assuming you also have root access. wiki -p 80 -f Heavy wiki users will want a farm of their own. License You may use the Smallest Federated Wiki under either the MIT License or the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

18 sources
58x14·Aug 29, 2021
Hey, congratulations and great job! I find there's a perpetual equilibrium between feeling confident in your output / yourself, and recognizing that much of what you do will likely be incomplete, messy, sub-optimal. This seems to be a fundamental part of being human as it extends across all types of creation. Authors have stream-of-consciousness to overcome writers' block. Athletes get the 'yips'. Developers have probably heard "if you're not ashamed of your MVP, you took too long to ship." (does anyone know who originally said this?) Doubt is a massively powerful and underrated tool that tends to signify the presence of many new variables. It's like a beacon saying "hey this is unprecedented" and the pursuit of any challenge will naturally yield unprecedented outcomes. In your context, you went from "hey let's do a thing" to "the Github
Read the rest
CEO wants to call me and talk about this thing and there are multiple people that want to do this thing" and that is pretty damn unprecedented. I've experienced >3 truly remarkable situations like you, and wandered between inflated ego, utter confusion, guilt, and pure existentialism. Honestly, I'm glad I felt such a spectrum of emotions because in retrospect those lenses provide me a lot of clarity when I invariably encounter another entirely baffling scenario. I think your self-assessment is as balanced as it can be, and I'm certain that as you continue, you'll adjust the weights (heh) and become more comfortable... or maybe not. Maybe a hallmark of being a creator, founder, leader, is to double down on the discomfort, and rest later. Kind of like a marathon. I'm following along. Good luck. P.S. if you see this in time can you ask Nat what he thinks of the federated wiki? https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki
In What I'm Up to Now
TuringTest·Sep 23, 2019
Copying a file so as to get intermediate drafts is an inferior solution to proper versioning, as any developer using a version control system will tell you (moreso if, like me, they started programming before VCSs were a widely used industry standard). I agree proprietary lock-in is a pain and a huge risk, but I'm talking about fundamental storage models here, not particular implementations (where the problem is lack of interoperability, not the storage model; a proprietary file system doesn't create lock-in, because there are open standards to get your data out of it). The best content storage model for end users I've seen is the wiki, where you get content versioning for free, although it doesn't separate storage from publication. A wiki where you could keep local separate branches of content would be ideal, but a.f.a.i.k. the only wiki
Read the rest
system using that model (shareable local copies) is the Smallest Federated Wiki[1], and it hasn't gained much tracktion. [1] https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki > And asking the user if he really wants to save the file is probably just a good idea. If he ignores the message and throws away some work, he has learned a valuable lesson See, that's the kind of comment explaining why users secretly (or openly!) hate computers and think they go after them. Too many developers creating their software are actively disrespecting user's work and their time, even decades after human-computer interaction specialists found the best practices for caring about the user and making their life easier.
In The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)
mbrock·Feb 2, 2015
He doesn't mean that each server uses a distributed database to store its documents. The wiki is federated, much like Usenet is through the network of NNTP servers. For more info, see Cunningham's documents "On Federating Wiki" [0] and "Federation Details" [1]. This is distributed in the sense that Git is a distributed source control system. [0]: https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki/wi... [1]: https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki/wi...
In A complete rewrite of wiki as a single page application
spindritf·Aug 23, 2014
It’s interesting that Andreessen can’t see the solution, but perhaps expected. What a weird dig. It's neither expected, nor established that he can't see a solution. I'm not as smart as Andreessen and I could come up with half a dozen solutions. Author's favourite is fine but far, far from obvious. How viable is it to run your own federated wiki anyway? Are there packages for popular systems? Are there plugins for major browsers? Is there any federation actually happening? I skimmed the resources[1] and don't know. Does anyone here run one? That would be a solution, this seems more like an idea. And it's not like no one's doing anything. There are services like Pocket or Readability to store an article until you want to read it, Evernotes, Google Keeps... Our very own 'idlewords will archive the contents of your bookmarks for a fee[2]. Fi
Read the rest
nally, there's archive.org. [1] https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki#ho... [2] https://pinboard.in/tour/#archive
In There’s a simple alternative to the current web
pitay·Apr 7, 2014
Smallest Federated Wiki[1] is something you may be interested in. Smallest Federated Wiki is a distributed wiki. It allows anyone to fork a page by clicking the fork button; this copies the page to their own wiki and they can edit it. The original wiki owner(s) can then decide whether to merge the change into the original page. Ward Cunningham has a few short videos about it at http://wardcunningham.github.io/. [1] http://fed.wiki.org/ and https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki
In Ask HN: Idea Sunday

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