What is Wiki Beag? #

Wiki Beag is a rust powered headless wiki application. I also created a minimal frontend that can be used in tandem with the main application. I made this as my final year university project, and a potential treatment for local cultural amnesia.

Picture of an implementation of the frontend being used for local political candidates.

Why did I make Wiki Beag? #

When I was a child I used the Library an obscene amount and as an adult I utilize wikipedia and archive.org more than most, both for work and leisure.

Having sources of information such as the aforementioned, throughout my education and professional development has forged in me a deep value for free information. In addition I have attained a deep value for local history, living in such an old and culturally rich part of the world I have bared witness to how easy it is for important historical events to be passed over and forgotten about in the history books.

My aim with wiki beag was to make a lightweight wiki style system that could be instatiated in a community and allow history to be shared, recorded and democratised.

How does it work? #

When the API is first set up, a primary administrator is assigned with full authority to approve or reject submitted content. As users contribute content that gets approved, their individual trust scores increase over time.

[1] Image of a normal sigmoid function

This trust system is modeled similarly to a sigmoid function, ensuring that trust grows gradually and making it difficult for users to become highly trusted too quickly. Early contributions help, but advancing to higher trust levels requires consistent, quality input over time.

I developed a streamlined API that allows users to easily create and manage content, similar to a traditional wiki platform. What sets Wiki Beag apart, however, is its automated trust-based progression system. As users build trust through approved contributions, they can unlock moderation capabilities of their own at different tiers likes supervisor and eventually admin—enabling the community to scale governance organically.

What I learned #

I really loved making this project, It taught me alot about rust and designing extensible code for stretch goals. I also significantly developed my planning, Ci/Cd knowledge and use of containerization.

Repos #

Backend : https://github.com/jackvnm/politiwiki Frontend : https://github.com/jackvnm/politiwiki.github.io

References #

[1] Baugh, L. S. (2024, December 6). Sigmoid function | Formula, Derivative, & Machine Learning. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/sigmoid-function#/media/1/2257728/349857

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