YHK - yet another hacker news clone

We can't, we don't know how to do it.

And before that it was the #1 result for most Google searches.

The comcept of the end of history, including Fukuyama's thesis, is an interesting intellectual topic, and I would argue that it's become even more interesting and relevant with the threat that AI could become.

A LAMP stack is still possible. Some lean toward alternative "frugal" stacks, like https://learnbchs.org/

It’s not like choice is not there.

It’s not just the code, but the collaboration to write the actual pages.

Regarding PHP, a small wiki or cms was always a starter project back in the day. For sure it’s a good way to wrap your head around a language and project

PHP can hosted in so many places for so cheap. It still has a place, like everything

Today you can use LLM to get most of that. Whether anyone is willing to commit to the success of a LLM-driven project and a different problem.

1) I doubt The Economist is suggesting that technical complexity is the reason they think that something like Wikipedia won't happen again.

2) You still have LAMP, even if the A is now often Nginx and the M Postgres. That stack is at least as easy as back in the day (signed someone who in my teens loved PHP so much that I made CLI utilities and IRC bots with it, auch). But that's besides the point, because several programming languages and web frameworks now come with their own built-in web-server for development, so you don't even need a stack to get started! This part is easier today.

I don't think the languages changed; our minimum standards did. Standing up a bare-minimum user login in PHP for a homework assignment is easy. Now fix all the SQL injection, encrypt the passwords securely, lock down the database, make sure your cookies are always first-party, etc. There's a lot to hold in your head for secure web development in general.

Oops, guess it was rage bait. (not OOP btw). I just figured the economist article was about programming. Don't have JS on this computer, so I couldn't read it.

No.

Wikipedia became popular despite its programming. Anyone who has ever tried to edit a Wiki page knows its editor is absolute garbage, for example. Want to create your own basic DIY wiki in 2026? Just set up a GitHub Pages which auto-accepts pull requests, you'll be up and running in less than 30 minutes.

Besides, nobody is forcing to to use the current programming paradigms. A classic LAMP stack will still work.

However, it's now operationally much harder to make sure that the contributors actually are humans.

The real test is the creation rate for those projects.

From your list, I think most were started 15-20+ years ago[1] so your argument isn't contradicting the original point.

* * *

[1] OSM, Fandom and TV Tropes were started 22 years ago. Wikipedia itself was started 25 years ago.

Many longtime OSM mappers have sensed that there has been some decline in interest and a risk to the long-term future of the project as a truly amateur-enthusiast phenomenon. Causes include: younger generations raised on corporate platforms and their phone apps are less aware of non-corporate alternatives, and might even be suspicious of libre and altruistic movements (this is a concern in Free Software circles, too); as the map got filled in, there were fewer obvious blanks that struck a total newbie as a place he/she could contribute; corporations got onboard both as OSM users and stakeholders, and then some idealistic anti-capitalistic people have asked why they should contribute if the map can benefit corps, too, etc.

It’s the infinite value extraction hustle that’s killing the fun of projects.

I used to contribute to [X] project because it felt good to make something, but realizing that someone is getting a dollar on the back of my work that I am not is just not worth it.

Not enough humans even care about the snake eating its own tail. We are rapidly approaching post-truth.

The wikipedia images are incredibly easy to follow for me and I like that it is easy to copy and paste the info or download a copy, search it, annotate it/modify it, etc. Just recently, there was a thread here about different ways to ties your shoes laid out similarly with images. Many people talked about easily trying them out.

Even if you are the type of learner who requires a video to learn, online video platforms, like youtube and tiktok, with ads & overlays when you pause them (and it might be hard to pause while your hands are full of silk...), with no out of the box way to download the videos, autoplay to who knows what next video, etc., are terrible vehicles for that. You can't search or annotate them. The quality varies as you stream it.

Youtube and tiktok will not be better than wikipedia because the primary goal, the raison d'etre, of these products is to make money, track your behavior, sell your data to the highest bidder and show you ads based on it. I'm not naive to the fact that Wikipedia does this, but it's obvious that wikipedia is primarily a collective effort and not a corporate product, and I have more faith in a collective group of people than a tech CEO.

Lastly, a video is a video. It is not another person. A person you can ask questions to, they can offer real time advice. I learned to tie a neck tie from family. Teaching someone how to tie a tie, your child, grandchild, nephew, etc., learning how to be an adult from a role model, is famously a rite of passage. If you think a video from a company trying to sell you clothes, hosted on Alphabet's servers, is a substitute for another person, especially in this age of AI generated content, I suggest you take a step back and reflect on what human connection really means.

It shouldn't take away from the benefit the project provides.

You say, building ontologies with a specific intent will actually lead to intelligence at a similar level of current AI?

This would be a severe blow to the bitter lesson, and generally vindicate the AI researchers of the 80s that put a bet on symbolic processing

What do you mean? Linux is thriving and companies benefit.