Knowledge Standards Foundation

Tired of political donation requests? We are too. 
Invest in the future freedom of knowledge. Invest in us, the Knowledge Standards Foundation. We are building the ENCYCLOSPHERE—decentralized access to all of the world's encyclopedias, where anyone, anywhere can access the world’s knowledge. 

IMAGINE all the encyclopedias in the world, connected into one decentralized network, the way all the blogs are loosely connected. You've heard of the blogosphere. We are building the ENCYCLOSPHERE. We are keeping the world's knowledge available, searchable & findable for future generations. 

"No small group of elites deserves the power to declare what is known for all of us."
[Dr. Larry Sanger, Co-Founder of Wikipedia; Founder & President of the Knowledge Standards Foundation]

What is the Knowledge Standards Foundation?

The Knowledge Standards Foundation, a 501(c)(3c) non-profit, is busy developing OSS code and building a #decentralized encyclopedia network. We are networking together all the encyclopedias (past, present, and future, free & proprietary). We’re a global group of developers and volunteers creating the standards and tools for the future ENCYCLOSPHERE. We’re making a decentralized knowledge network, not an app.

The Knowledge Standards Foundation was founded in September 2019 by Wikipedia ex-founder Larry Sanger and a growing team. We are located in central Ohio with volunteer developers and a volunteer crew around the world. 

We began in 2021 with an ongoing months-long conference seminar about free, decentralized networks. Then we developed forums, which specialize in ongoing long-form discussions about decentralizing the Internet and particularly about decentralizing encyclopedia articles and access to the world's knowledge.

For both technical development and funding, we rely on donations from the general public: individuals and families. We will take donations ONLY from individuals and foundations (not for-profit corporations or governments). We carefully review the sourcing of any large donations. We are committed to keeping the ENCYCLOSPHERE every bit as politically neutral as the blogosphere or the DNS (website naming and locating) system.

Redistribution of information & removal of 
gatekeepers has become a moral imperative.

What is the Encyclosphere?

The ENCYCLOSPHERE is a universal network of encyclopedias—an ownerless, leaderless, centerless knowledge commons. Like the blogosphere, it is a decentralized series of “feeds,” — but feeds of encyclopedias & individual articles posted from anywhere online. Data from these feeds can be aggregated by different services, then developers use the aggregated data to build encyclopedia reader apps, with no central control or "power".

The ENCYCLOSPHERE is a decentralized open network of encyclopedias and the world's knowledge. We are organizing collections of encyclopedias, individual encyclopedias, and individual articles into the ENCYCLOSPHERE, defined by our brand new technical standards. We are building a decentralized encyclopedia network, connecting together freely all the encyclopedias (past, present, and future, free & proprietary)

We have several decentralized projects in the works.

We already have built search engines — EncycloSearch (ES) & EncycloReader (ER) — that let you quickly sift and read over 15 (and counting) encyclopedias: . We have over 700,000 articles and article references across our network at present, and this number will soon top 1 million. In the end, you will be able search many, many more articles than Wikipedia—unfiltered, uncurated, uncensored, private & free. 

We have created Minifeed — a plugin for WordPress that converts a regular old blog into a social media-style feed, tying together all the social media networks into a single mega-network that you can never be shut out of. You should own and control all your social media data and followers.

Help us.

The Knowledge Standards Foundation faces a difficult task: to get publishers and developers to agree on a set of technical standards (concerning article formatting and metadata) that will make it possible for the Encyclosphere to exist neutrally—remaining free of undue influence by any central power, corporation or government.

We need you.

The Knowledge Standards Foundation will reject all funding from corporate and governmental sources. We accept funding from individuals and the general public, and we hope individuals will form a solid base of financial support so we can continue to support our mission and projects, to build and develop a decentralized knowledge network.

What we want to build is not a product, but a centerless neutral knowledge network, a public knowledge commons defined strictly by standards, that will, like the internet itself take on an independent life of its own. Help us invest in the freedom of knowledge and our children’s future freedom to access the world's knowledge uncensored, unfiltered, and unsolicited. 

Donate & Support Us Today. We Need Your Help.