---
title: 🌐 Open information (OI)
tags: build
description: Open information
image: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_banners/3540691454/1535710532/1500x500
---

<h1 style="text-align: center;">🌐 Open information</h1>

<p style="text-align: center; font-style: italic;">OI </p>

# Opening and decentralizing collaboration protocols

The vision of open-source information is to expand the ability for communities to coordinate and build with open access to knowledge. Open information (OI) includes relevant resources from public domains, individuals, both company and project's documentation, and etc. Open information makes use of collective knowledge that has the potential to simultaneously cover more surface area and be more in-depth than more centralized sources of truth.

> There’s only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle - [Jim Barksdale (CEO) and Marc Andreessen (Co-founder) of Netscape](https://a16z.com/2013/12/18/the-future-of-work-cars-and-the-wisdom-in-saying-no/)

This also applies to how distributed sources of information can centralize over time. As information moves faster than ever this poses risk to collaborative decision making if information's origins are not known (closed-source) and controlled by a few gatekeepers (centralized).

Distributed technology, self-ownership of accounts, and data have the opportunity to make open information the norm for individuals, communities, and institutions, with [inspiration from many projects, protocols, and organizations](#Inspiration).

# Strategy

- Make useful tools and processes for individuals and then expand usefulness to many people and organizations.
- Progressively improve upon open-source, decentralization, and security.

# Platform features

No existing platform has all of these features and some features have not been fully created yet.

## Accounts

- Self-ownership of account
- E.g. Sign in with Ethereum (SIWE)
- Sybil resistant verification
- Avoid bots

## Editor

- Markdown based (`.md`) files: [Open info](https://hackmd.io/@openinfo/markdown)
- Keyboard shortcuts for productivity
- What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)
- Graphical user interface (GUI) to write in Markdown
- Set metadata
- Sets the information that shows in the browser window/tab and link preview.
- E.g., Title, description, tags, image, and etc.
- Save templates based on use case/topic
- Spell and grammar check

## Viewing

- Copy and paste content in all browsers
- Format ordered and unordered lists with multiple levels of nested children
- Autogenerated table of contents (ToC) for the page
- Autogenerated global navigation menu
- Links to other pages
- Dynamic re-sizing
- Table of contents and global navigation menu re-size with the screen
- Deeplink into Markdown and HTML elements
- E.g., H1, H2, H3, and H4
- Default readable links
- E.g. `hosted-platform's-domain.com/open-info`
- Custom links using "owned" domain
- E.g. `my-custom-domain.xyz/open-info`
- Search
- Shallow: Page titles
- Deep: Page contents
- Automatic light/dark mode based on user's device settings
- Customizeable user interface (UI)
- E.g., Font, colors, sizing, and etc.

## Version control systems (VCS)

- UX for version control
- Powered by Git
- Manage versioning without interacting with Git directly
- E.g., GitHub, GitLab, and Radicle

## Security

- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Data stored and transferred is end-to-end encrypted (E2EE)
- Export and import Markdown (`.md`) files
- Self hosting
- E.g. Docker
- Decentralized hosting
- E.g., Arweave and IPFS storage

## Governance

- Access controls of team and contributors
- New member edit access
- User contribution tracking
- Contested info
- Ability to fork pages for heavily contested information
- Users can save their page fork preferences
- Information consensus mechanisms
- E.g. Twitter's community notes: [What do I think about Community Notes?](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/08/16/communitynotes.html) *by Vitalik Buterin*
- E.g. Snapshot voting: [Open info](https://hackmd.io/@openinfo/daos#Snapshot-voting)

## Programmability

- APIs
- E.g., Publishing to decentralized networks such as Arweave and IPFS, self-hosting, backups, and etc.

## Platforms

- Mobile app or great mobile web app
- Offline viewing and editing
- Desktop
- E.g., Microsoft, Mac, and Linux
- Sync files locally (Similar to Dropbox and Google Drive's apps)

# Inspiration

- [Wikipedia](https://www.wikipedia.org)
- [Markdown](https://hackmd.io/@openinfo/markdown)
- [HackMD](https://hackmd.io/@openinfo/hackmd)
- [GitBook](https://openguide.gitbook.io/gitbook)
- [Notion](https://openguide.notion.site/openguide/Notion-f2be2968060847d08307f685d2af861d)
- [Fileverse](https://hackmd.io/@openinfo/fileverse)
- [Logseq](https://logseq.com)
- [Docusaurus](https://docusaurus.io)
- Sample: [docs.radicle.xyz](https://docs.radicle.xyz/)
- [Material for MkDocs](https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material)
- [GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com)
- [Skiff Pages](https://drive.proton.me/urls/9Q9G186SRW#FWCciJQ7Ay76) (Shut down in 2024)
- [Google documents](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h5SlVd8rRue17lOPDPNXifzc3TyhHZ987n9KuKSze-U/edit#heading=h.buz70iz4rq18)
- [Dropbox Paper](https://www.dropbox.com/paper)
- [Quiver](https://happenapps.com)
- [StackExchange](https://stackexchange.com)
- [Arweave](https://hackmd.io/@openinfo/arweave)
- [ArWiki](https://arwiki.wiki)
- [Permafacts](https://permafacts.arweave.dev)
- [Alex](https://alex.arweave.dev)
- [Akord](https://hackmd.io/@openinfo/akord)
- [IPFS](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1BEauu3Ohyf8IAjrRgos7qOUYw17Q-5LjMdLq72BY0ck/edit)
- [Bitcoin Wiki](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page)
- [Gemini's Cryptopedia](https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia)
- [IQ.wiki](https://iq.wiki) (Formerly [Everipedia](https://everipedia.org/about))
- [Kiwix](https://www.kiwix.org/en/about)
- Many more...

<p style="text-align: center; font-style: italic">This is not technical advice. Do your own research.</p>