This [[Agora]] is a Free Knowledge Commons provisioned by a community for the benefit of sentient beings.
An Agora node presents an aggregated view of resources that are relevant for a query or location.
An Agora user is anyone who has contributed resources, either as part of a repository or as individual social media posts.
A quick tour will drive the point home better than a thousand words. To start navigating:
- You can browse all [[Nodes]] and [[Users]].
- You can visit the node called [[Index]] to see the community-maintained index of this Agora.
- You can visit [[Journals]] for an aggregated view of resources that seem time-related -- i.e. a timeline :).
- You can visit [[Random]] for a random node -- it can be fun!
The Agora is a bit different from most other sites in that joining is a two step process that begins elsewhere in the internet :) Thank you for your understanding.
- You can write to this Agora from the [[Fediverse]] (federated social media) by following and interacting with an [[Agora Bot]] such as https://botsin.space/@agora.
- You can send us a [[pull request]] adding your git repository (containing a digital garden, wiki or blog) to this Agora's [[sources.yaml]] -- or, if you don't know what any of that means, reach out to @flancian or another member of Flancia Collective to support you through the process :)
The Agora began back in 2017 as a thought experiment: we set out to try to make use of parts of the existing internet in novel ways to solve socially relevant [[coordination problems]]. With time, we developed free software to support this goal and help communities run their own Agoras as digital spaces.
The Agora can be described in a variety of ways, and we have done so extensively (and occasionally contradictorily!) in writing which can be found in this [[Agora]] proper and also in a more traditional published format. Through years of research the one concept that has come the closest to summarizing the intent behind the Agora is that of the [[Commons]], which is why we used it in our welcome above. More concretely, in its current shape the Agora can be described as a [[distributed knowledge graph]] assembled from the self-hosted writing of [[users]] -- a sort of loosely-coupled wiki where each page is made up of independent fragments expressing individual viewpoints.
Beyond these humble beginnings, the greater aspirational goal of the Agora project remains: to integrate and complement the constructive parts of the internet, helping us "hold it right" (it being the powerful and potentially risky tool that it is), both for the benefit of communities running Agoras and that of wider society.
See [[Agora architecture]] for details on how the Agora works and instructions to run your own.
Please reach out if you need anything, enjoy the Agora, and have a great day! 🍮