Aye mateys, I wanted to share this with you as you may be interested in a discussion on having annas-archive linked to the fedi.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9006151

Hello everyone,

Books are still one of the most important sources of information we have as a human species. However, the media on which this information has been stored has changed considerably over time and with it its accessibility and influence on our society.

Nowadays you can find an enormous range of books and texts online. Most of the time, however, access to them is extremely fragmented, difficult to find, subject to a fee, incompatible with the software platform of your choice or, in the worst case, goes under with its provider over time.

To counteract this, annas-archive was founded to make the knowledge stored in the texts and books openly accessible and to preserve it for future generations. On the other hand, there are platforms such as Goodreads that aim to simplify the joy of reading and the exchange of information, as well as the review and discussion of books and texts.

Unfortunately, Goodreads is a centralized, proprietary solution that in addition also happens to be owned by Amazon. BookWyrm is a decentralized, open source alternative in the fediverse that steps in right here.

Now here’s the kicker: what if we combined the power of both platforms? What if we combined the enormous book database of annas-archive with the fediverse, i.e. BookWyrm? Annas archive could benefit from reviews and discussions about the books and BookWyrm could expand its still very limited database many times over.

From my point of view, this would be the perfect combination of two already great projects. What do you think?

TL:DR What do you think about combining annas-archive with the fediverse (BookWyrm)

  • ProdigalFrogAEnglish
    311·
    7 months ago

    Love the idea of this. I believe slowly building up these alternative, open-source and decentralized platforms will be pay off long term as the centralized platforms bloat and die via enshittification.

    • PropaGandalf@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      14·
      7 months ago

      Exactly. And as I already wrote: the worst part of it is that they may take valuable sources of information with them.

      • ProdigalFrogAEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        Mastodon will hopefully naturally grow as twitter continues to destroy itself. Lemmy might be a bit harder get people to stick with.

        If they can find an instance that really fits them, or most of their communities are here, then it should be an easy transition. But if they’re missing their favorites, it’ll be tough to get them to stick with it.

        • seaturtle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          Back when Mastodon was more in the news I told various friend groups to jump on it. I wrote up guides for them too. They largely didn’t, and some of them even got annoyed at me.

          Nowadays I see they’re still somewhat mostly using Twitter though some of them have started to slowly warm up to Bluesky. Sigh.