Federation of a wiki is... well, it's a bit strange, isn't it? Imagine if only one library at a time held a copy of a given book you need, and the only way to access that book was via an inter-library loan via library partnerships, or by visiting the library that has the book. This is assuredly the situation many academics are in for key reference texts, but it is not what I'd call ideal. It is in fact very fragile at times. There is a book I need right now, for example, but if I want to read it I will have to drive to see it... The library that has it won't send it for ILL. In a physical sense they "declined to federate."<p>The difference between a wiki and a social media network is that anyone can spin up a template social media site; the fundamental <i>user-side</i> barrier to entry is pretty small. The same is not true of wikis - at least not high quality ones. Documentary standards, tone, quality, reviewership, consistency, policy, moderation, accountability, leadership, thoroughness, these are all qualities that take time and commitment to develop. They are hallmarks of centralization for a reason: arguably the innovation of human governance is centered around qualities like these. They take a long time to develop.<p>As a counterpart to Wikipedia, well... fragmentation is often a death knell for efficient knowledge transfer. We are already losing massive swathes of our early Internet history due to fragmentation, attrition, and destruction. The thought that any piece of knowledge stored in a safehouse could go offline at once, without replication or warning, it scares me a bit. The thought that we don't really know who we're trusting as stewards of human knowledge in a federated model disturbs me too. You can have your issues with Wikipedia but at least you know who they are. You know their biases.<p>That's not to say there aren't use cases for this... but man, this seems like an easy way to lose or destroy important parts of our shared history on accident.