🐫:Mycoverse

Mycoverse is a network of websites and tools, used by the smolfolk, running software speaking common open formats and protocols, mostly written by me and having biological naming influences. Usually they are focused on long-term content.

Adjacent and intersecting domains are wiki, Indie Web and Fediverse.

Existing parts

I am the malevolent dictator behind all these projects:

• Mycorrhiza, a wiki engine. Build your digital garden, share your knowledge.

• Betula, a bookmarking tool. Collect thousands of links, organize them and share.

• Mycomarkup, a markup language.

History of Mycoverse

The first project was Mycorrhiza, which later gained Mycomarkup. Being a wiki, links are very central. You can link local documents, named hyphae, you can link external documents as well. For external links, URL:s exist. https://communitywiki.org/wiki/BeBold works. But there is also a special syntax: cw>BeBold. That cw> specifies that this is an interwiki link. These special prefixes are configured per-wiki. In general, wiki administrators set up interwiki links for sites they link the most. One could say this is the proto-Mycoverse, although I think it's a stretch.

Mycomarkup features the transclusion element, which lets you embed contents from one document to another by referencing it in a special way. Something like link and quotation at the same time. This garden runs Mycorrhiza, here's a little transclusion for you:

Interwiki transclusion is not supported yet. This is in plans for almost 4 years, I think. Interwiki transclusion, or cross-site content embeds in general are also in scope for Mycoverse.

The next big project was Betula, your favorite bookmark manager. From the early times, I wanted to make it federated, so one could subscribe to other people's bookmarks. Also, Betula is inherently personal, every instance is single-user.

At first, I tried to implement some Indie Web standards, somewhat extending them in a convinient way. Then I just decided that Fediverse is better, mostly because they have much more people. I never regretted this decision. There are still some microformats2 leftovers all around Betula markup. I think it's good to have it.

2023-09-23 the first ever federated action happened: a repost was made in Betula. It is the birthday of Mycoverse. Mark it in your calendar.

• Repost announcement

So, now Mycoverse is the Betula network, as part of the wider Fediverse, and Mycorrhiza will at some point join it too. Wikis in general don't really fit the Fediverse model, because this model is made for streams, not gardens. But standards like ActivityStreams, NodeInfo and WebFinger are still useful, I can see how wikis can benefit from them.

Federation examples from the future (circa 2025)

• Alice hosts a Betula and collects bookmarks about web development in a category named simply webdev.

• Bob hosts a Betula too, and he really likes Alice's collection! He wants to show nearside his own, though his category is named web devel. He tells Betula to federate her category, and so it fetches it daily and shows it nearby. A WebMention is sent back, so Alice gets a backlink.

• Charlie is an avid Mycorrhiza user, he writes guides about everything on his wiki. Sometimes other people join him in his project. Charlie really likes Bob's collection! So he writes this at the bottom of his hypha about web development:

  <= https://bob-bookmarks.tld/cat/web_dev | 30 latest

  30 latest bookmarks get shown nicely in a box.

• Diana is a really good programmer, she has implemented a new software for the Mycoverse in a weekend. Her program fetches all latest changes from the three persons mentioned above, formats them and uploads them to her eink reader. This evening she will read it while sipping tea with lemon.

Standards I want to specify and implement at some point

• Mycomarkup should get a spec, have broken parts fixed, missing things added, and the main library should be refactored (or even rewritten).

• Cross-site transclusion needs some careful planning.

• Shared interwiki name servers or something? Fediverse Server Alias Database, or FediSad.

Hesitations

Web seems to be the most fitting place for Mycoverse to exist in. The thing is, I don't want to lock on the Web, like Indie Web does. Internet is not always there, and will not always be. But all these microformats and protocols, they just smell Internet. I have no idea how a web-less transclusion would work. Mycomarkup has always been designed to avoid weblock. Maybe I should submit to the Web fully hmmm. Web is cool after all.

Thinks to look at

• https://github.com/jhass/nodeinfo