Agora
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A [[protocol]].
- #pull [[agora protocol]]
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A [[platform]].
- #pull [[agora platform]]
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A [[graph]].
- #pull [[agora graph]]
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A [[commons]].
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The Agora is a distributed knowledge graph and experimental social network.
- See [[go/agora slides]] if you'd like a 10' introduction to the key concepts.
- See [[go/agora doc]] if you are interested and have half an hour :)
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The [[Agora]] you're likely reading this in, https://anagora.org , is designed to be just one of many.
- Anyone can run [[an Agora]] of their own if they so desire. This Agora is [[open source]]: [[go/agora]].
- To [[sign up]] for the Agora, which means volunteering your writing and media to it, please consult [[agora editor]].
- This Agora wants to be [[maximally inclusive]], but it is in its infancy; it is a [[work in progress]]. If you want to participate and can't, please also send email to signup@anagora.org to let us know.
- Through projects such as [[Agora bridge]], we hope to make this Agora available for writing to anyone that has access to a [[digital garden]] or a social media account.
- Follow an [[agora bot]] if you'd like to contribute to this Agora from [[social media]]:
- If you want to learn more about the [[experimental]] nature of this Agora, please refer to this Hacker News comment. If you want to keep up to date with development, consider adding me on Twitter or Mastodon: [[flancian]].
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Agoras are spaces kept by communities with [[good intent]] while expressing explicit [[goals]] and open [[protocols]].
- This section, made up of items in a [[markdown]] list, is an example of an Agora protocol.
- This [[agora protocol]] is a set of simple conventions on top of [[plain text]] or other [[supported formats]].
- #pull [[agora howto]] [[an agora]] [[agora doc]]
- [[git]] https://github.com/flancian/agora
- [[bugs]] https://github.com/flancian/agora/issues
- [[bug]] https://github.com/flancian/agora/issues/new
- [[nutshell]] https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1487110385446576134
- [[architecture]] https://social.coop/@flancian/108346148663576473
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The Agora is a distributed knowledge graph and experimental social network.
- [[agora containers]]
- [[agora ext]]
- [[agora-server]]
- [[agora ctzn]]
Agora
This looks like a really cool way of aggregating digital gardens into one place. To produce a community garden (or, an agora). Interesting to contrast with how a solely P2P way of connecting gardens might work, no central aggregator.
An Agora is a distributed, goal-oriented social network centered around a cooperatively built and maintained [[knowledge graph]]. The implementation you are currently looking at tries to assemble such a graph out of a collection of digital gardens.
See also [[sister sites]].
See: [[What do I think about the Agora?]]
Welcome to [[boris mann]]'s section of the agora!
We're experimenting with [[Connecting to the Agora]], and what some of the configurations and conventions are. The [[Anagora]] page has my notes and feature requests.
Status
- This document was mostly written in 2018. The Agora was then just a thought experiment. It has since grown to be a living project.
- As late as 2020-10-17, the Agora barely existed as a concrete implementation -- it was not a single tool but rather many which you could use in tandem following a convention, which I provisionally named Agora Protocol.
- As of 2022-01-02, a reference Agora is online on https://anagora.org . Using terminology gained and derived in the last three years (with the help of the Agora community!), I can now describe it as a [[knowledge commons]].
Regardless of implementation details, an Agora can be assembled out of off-the-shelf parts available on the internet, mostly for free:
- Knowledge management tools used for the purpose of building a distributed knowledge graph, following the aforementioned convention based on lazily evaluated [[wikilinks]]. See https://anagora.org/agora-editor for a review of some of the tools in this space, or Roam Likes for an older take.
- Social networks and the constructive bits of the internet as we have them, annotated and enriched using open tools and standards.
- An explicit constructive social contract. For reference you can consult the anagora.org default.
If you are interested in collaborating on building Agoras or similar constructive spaces, please reach out or peruse the Git repository.
See also: https://flancia.org/go/agora-howto , https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1322619094563258370.html.
Head
You can think of the Agora as a convention based social network; an optional, user-controlled annotation layer that can be applied over any internet platform which supports user-generated content.
I think one of the best possible uses for such a network would be to use it to pro-socially maintain a distributed knowledge graph tailored specifically to the goal of solving problems: those of its users and society at large.
Its users, as a cooperative group, could by default take a naive but rational approach to problem solving:
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For each problem in the set P of all problems:
- Describe it as thoroughly as possible.
- Maintain a set of known or argued possible solutions, S(P).
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For each solution in S(P):
- Describe it as thoroughly as possible.
- Maintain a set of resources (people, time, attention, money) needed to implement it, R(S).
Individual users could also declare their views on the state of the world explicitly: they define which subsets of P, S and R they agree with, in the sense that they believe they are feasible, true, interesting.
Users that agree on their defined subsets can then efficiently collaborate on solutions as they become available by pooling of resources.
We apply some good old recursivity and seed the Agora with the problem of how to build itself. That is, how to build a system that allows participating users and entities to collaborate optimally in the face of adversity (such as biases, irrationality and even actual ill intent)1.
The Agora should be built on a federated protocol to limit the harmfulness of diasporas. Groups might temporarily diverge in their views enough to want to run separate Agoras, but different Agoras should be able to cooperate on problems and solutions for which there is enough ideological alignment, and eventually merge.
Tail
I have a more focused and detailed unpublished document which will probably replace or complement this chapter soon.
I know the premise sounds almost like a joke: what the world needs is a new social network. The internet and social networks are technologies we are just barely learning to live with, and the recent cause of a lot of polarization and political escalation and Trump Being President2. It doesn't sound at first like we should add another stick to that particular dumpster fire. But hear me out.
We need a designated place in the internet where we can discuss ideas in a constructive way. In particular, where we can discuss possible strategies to face the problems that humanity is facing. This is already happening, for sure; but is it happening somewhere on the internet where everybody can contribute? I don't think so. If the Agora exists already, please point the way -- I'd like to get there, and building it from scratch would be hard. The network of universities and institutes are the closest we have and I love them, but the Agora should be fully open and available to all over the internet, so every participating individual can contribute work and thought. Of course the whole internet could be an Agora; but the internet as a whole is chaotic and disorganized and thus its implicit Agora is entangled with places that are not constructive and not safe. There must be a better way.
Nick Bostrom has a paper on existential risk where he talks about a kind of lottery of ideas; humanity is constantly playing this game, the metaphor goes, and drawing ideas out of big lottery wheels of Science and Technology and Culture. Some of the balls in this wheel are colored white; these are good ideas. They contribute to human good, and we're glad we found them.
There are also black balls, though. These are bad3. They are things that, on the whole, produce enough bad to be existential risks to humanity. Nuclear power seemed to be this for a while; perhaps mutually assured destruction could have resulted in an apocalypse. But it didn't! Aren't we lucky? If (and it's a big if) things stay this way, we got away with playing with something dangerous. Perhaps we can use the idea for whatever good it holds (cheap and relatively safe energy), or perhaps we decide to bury it underground in a big vault of ideas (this one doesn't have to ever spin again) that says Do Not Go There, Trust Us. For now, though, the idea might still turn out to be black; we could, perhaps, represent this situation as a grey ball of whatever shade we deem most likely.
We need a social network for discussing ideas. For talking about Bostrom's lottery urn, and what it has in it for us. In the Agora, we discuss ideas and their shades and merit; we discuss, first and foremost, ethics. We talk openly and clearly about how to best move forward as a society of humans, with the knowledge we've gotten and the resources we have.
What if social networks are grey? How dark is their shade? The high modernist in me wants to believe that the structured flow of information is more of a good thing than a bad thing. But we need to be cautious, and this is why I wrote this and you are reading it now.
I need your help.
In Flancia there is no poverty.
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To start with, discussion in the Agora should follow the tried and tested Principle of Charity.↩
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what if Twitter is already a decent Agora, and Trump just woke up to the fact that it's a superior meme transfer device sooner than others?↩
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White = good and black = bad is in the original paper. Now, an apology: I don't like the fact that our culture encodes bad things as black, it's associated with death, etc. I think associating black with badness is a bit trite in a world that puts so much stock on being a particular kind of yellow.↩
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[[distributed knowledge graph]] & [[experimental social network]]
- [[social knowledge graph]]
- [[wiki]] [[wikilinks]]
- [[digital garden]]
An agora, in its broadest sense, is a conceptual space where people attempt to bring an increased level of intentionality, explicitness, and mutual agreement to the principles and protocols for interacting in that space. A further aspect of the idea of an Agora is that it is a space which enables collaboration. In particular, it is a space that allows for collaboration guided by specific shared interests, without requiring the co-consitutients of the agora to be aligned more fully or generally in terms of their intentions, values, etc.
Some topics that the idea of an Agora is related to: [[transparency]] [[decentralized structures]] [[egalitarian principles]] [[judgement]] [[algorithms of interaction]] [[communication]] [[collaboration]] [[knowledge sharing]]
There are (infinitely) many possible variants of how this idea might be implemented in concrete, real-world situations. For example, an agora could be a space that is opened up inside a conversation between two people. Or it could be a collaborative project that is accompanied by specified rules. Or it could be a collective agreement about how to handle certain types of situations.
One variant of the idea of an Agora is a place where personal notes are shared, with the common goal of pooling information and sharing knowledge. One implementation of this idea is https://anagora.org . See also https://flancia.org/go/agora .
The term "Agora" and the basic idea come from [[Flancia]].
Agora
The [https://anagora.org agora] is a cool place to learn stuff
[[agora todo]]
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css"> <button class="pull-url" value="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css">">pull</button>
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a [[chapter]].
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#push [[agora chapter]]
- written for [[pkg book]].
- #go https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DXJRDh9Ss5VCRBi3oirDw9d7yjn3H2hMqfN2ETTyjIc/edit?usp=sharing
- #pull [[agora pkg chapter]] ~ [[agora chapter]] (these might converge, I use them in different contexts)
- #pull https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DXJRDh9Ss5VCRBi3oirDw9d7yjn3H2hMqfN2ETTyjIc/edit#heading=h.lxyhsegwtr4m
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the above should work, try iframes with [[google docs]]
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it doesn't work :( "Google Docs benötigt Zugriff"
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oh, but you can click on "click here" to get through!
- only on Firefox
- it doesn't work at all on Chrome :(
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oh, but you can click on "click here" to get through!
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it doesn't work :( "Google Docs benötigt Zugriff"
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#comment https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DXJRDh9Ss5VCRBi3oirDw9d7yjn3H2hMqfN2ETTyjIc/edit?disco=AAAAhUbCJIQ
- great top level comment by [[ivo]], see push here for summary (G1-G8).
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#push [[agora chapter]]
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a [[thing]].
- [[distributed knowledge graph]].
- The brain of an [[Agora commons]].
- See [[agora doc]].
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a [[project]].
- I want to graph both the Agora as a whole and the context of a node in the agora, as per [[agora ui]].
- local graphs: done (partial implementation).
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global graph: running in dev but very resource intensive, may need to refactor/redo.
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it could be cool to get a graph in [[agora doc]] though...
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could be nice to do this through [[runnable subnodes]]:
- [[javascript subnodes]]
- [[python subnodes]]
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could be nice to do this through [[runnable subnodes]]:
- did [[rdf]] first: exposed rdf for the agora and use something like [[rdf grapher]] to graph
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it could be cool to get a graph in [[agora doc]] though...
- #go https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1380210191837315073
Agora Howto
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To join an Agora:
- [[pull]] [[agora signup]]
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To run an Agora:
- [[pull]] [[agora install]]
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css"> <button class="pull-url" value="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css">">pull</button>
<div class="container-fluid text-center">
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<h1>500 Internal Error <small>wtf.</small></h1>
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- #pull see also [[agora pkm chapter]].
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a [[protocol]].
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A series of conventions that sentient beings can agree to follow while trying to communicate optimally for the [[common good]].
- A series of explicit assertions.
- Announced customarily in [[schelling points]].
- Extended through [[agora rfcs]].
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With such a [[protocol]] we can build ([[provision]]?) a common [[pattern language]] and bootstrap a global [[knowledge commons]].
- An [[Agora]] is a [[repository]] of [[patterns]].
- A [[flancian]] uses [[Agora Protocol]] to try to define their [[intents]] publicly and cooperate with others optionally for the benefit of beings, but all aspects of Agora and Flancia are meant to be fully optional.
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A series of conventions that sentient beings can agree to follow while trying to communicate optimally for the [[common good]].
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a [[document]].
- #go https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JdaC_9J0uYFNFp7g7x4VNtMxJSZQsE2MQkOMmydLCCc/edit
- Trying to [[bootstrap]] the above [[protocol]].
- Plus a roadmap for a [[platform]] or federated [[network]] making use of it.
- #pull [[agora paper]].
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In [[an agora]], [[agora protocol]] is meant to enable people to exchange [[resources]] mapping to [[patterns]] in a (by default) free global [[commons]], which I also call the Agora for short.
- This Agora is a [[knowledge commons]] but seeks to enable [[communities]] to bootstrap a physical [[commons]] to provision for their needs as well.
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[[meta]]
- I started with [[google docs]] in 2019/2020 and then I tried moving to [[hedgedoc]] but actually I think I might just go back to the [[google doc]]. It's just a rich experience, and several potential collaborators already use it (they left comments).
- Update (2022): revamping now ocassionally while writing [[agora pkg chapter]], but it may be that the source of truth becomes [[agora paper]].
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a social [[convention]].
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A list of social [[conventions]] and [[assertions]].
- Focusing on improving the ability to communicate with each other with good intent.
- [[text based]] to begin with.
- This means you can use it anywhere you can write down text by default.
- Using this basic quality, we can make use of [[adversarial interoperability]] as we want to.
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[[agora protocol]] can be used everywhere.
- It is already used in [[wikis]]. You might as well call it [[wiki protocol]] used in new contexts.
- You already use it in [[digital gardens]].
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You can use it in [[books]].
- Books written today with Markdown u[[git]]
- In [[email]].
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In [[chat]] and [[social networks]].
- -> [[agora plan]]
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[[Around the web]] in general.
- -> [[agora ext]]
- This [[Agora]], resolved by default using common [[Agora endpoints]] at https://anagora.org , welcomes all [[people]] and [[formats]] a priori.
- This [[Agora]] welcomes all groups except [[fascists]] and the [[violent]].
- It is the opinion of this Agora that the use of [[agora protocol]] in a medium defines an Agora, in the sense that it designates the contexts in which the protocol is used as part of some Agora by default; and the medium as potentially interoperable with the [[Agora network]].
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A list of social [[conventions]] and [[assertions]].
What follows is Agora Protocol in a nutshell: https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1437079533253976066 .
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[[layer 0]]
- [[layer 1]]
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You can use [[wikilinks]]. This expresses an intention to make use the [[wiki protocol]], of which the Agora is a special case.
- The reference Agora, in which you are probably reading this, also has some limited [[hashtag]] support.
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An Agora is any virtual space you can define in any way you want as long as it is [[explicit]] and by default [[public]].
- Each Agora publishes a set of definitions of intention as expressed by its [[users]].
- This Agora is [[rational]], [[pro social]] and [[heterarchical]].
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a [[protocol]].
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for [[federation]].
- can be bootstrapped with [[agora exchange format]]?
- #pull [[knowledge commons]]
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[[plain text]] plus as layer 0 (bootstrapping layer).
- indented bulleted lists designate a useful [[heterarchy]].
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[[wikilinks]] and #hashtags at layer 1, plus other link conventions and metadata extensions.
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successive layers are explicitly discussed through [[agora rfcs]] and settled through a [[governance layer]] called an [[agora]] and defined by convention.
- agora protocol payloads may be exchanged for knowledge for [[free]] in any designated [[agora]].
- this [[agora]] is built around a [[pro social]] [[distributed knowledge graph]], that is, a [[social knowledge graph]].
- see [[go/agora-slides]] for more.
- to see the communally maintained text of the full protocol, please refer to the [[stoa]] below.
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successive layers are explicitly discussed through [[agora rfcs]] and settled through a [[governance layer]] called an [[agora]] and defined by convention.
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a [[protocol]] is a set of explicit conventions that can be followed for a purpose.
- conventions can be optional or necessary and must be marked as such. The default commitment level for this protocol is [[optional]]. [[use must if you must]].
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for [[extensions]]:
- push to or modify [[agora rfcs]].
- this is as kept by the community agreeing to cooperate on such a list: the community of the [[agora]].
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#push [[agora]]
- an [[agora]] is a seed that wants to grow into a [[tree]], and from there into a [[distributed]] network.
- the [[seed]] of this agora is [[go/agora/git]], defining a [[commons]].
- [[flancia collective]] is the keeper of https://anagora.org .
- [[agora bridge]], [[agora server]] contain input (write) and output (read) code respectively.
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#push [[agoras]]
- Compatible [[agoras]] are expected to assemble into a greater federated [[agora network]] where they can fork and merge as wanted.
- [[agoras]] must communicate clear [[goals]].
- [[2020]] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JdaC_9J0uYFNFp7g7x4VNtMxJSZQsE2MQkOMmydLCCc/edit#
- [[the agora is a markup convention]]
- [[2021]] I presented in [[i annotate]], refer to [[go/agora-slides]] or recording if interested.
- [[2022]] writing [[agora pkg chapter]]
- [[twitter]]
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for [[federation]].
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css"> <button class="pull-url" value="https://doc.anagora.org/css/center.css">">pull</button>
<div class="container-fluid text-center">
<div class="vertical-center-row">
<h1>500 Internal Error <small>wtf.</small></h1>
</div>
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An Agora
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a [[thing]].
- [[free software]]
- #go https://anagora.org
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This particular [[agora]] you're reading this in is just [[an agora]].
- A [[garden of forking paths]]!
- This one is a particular implementation, limited in nature by my skills and available time and resources.
- I hope there will one day be many better.
- This [[Agora]] tries to be a [[schelling point]] for [[rational]] [[problem solving]].
- This Agora contains a list of known [[agoras]].
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#push [[agoras]]
- [[an agora]] is run by [[flancia collective]] [[for the benefit of all beings]].
- An [[Agora]] is like a [[bag of holding]], and it contains among many things [[other agoras]].
- public document at doc.anagora.org/agora.md
- video call at meet.jit.si/agora.md
(none)
(none)
(none)
agora
agora bot
agora bridge
agora containers
agora ctzn
agora doc
agora editor
agora ext
agora graph
agora howto
agora platform
agora protocol
agora server
agora todo
algorithms of interaction
an agora
anagora
architecture
boris mann
bridge
bug
bugs
collaboration
commons
communication
connecting to the agora
decentralized structures
digital garden
distributed knowledge graph
egalitarian principles
experimental
experimental social network
flancia
flancian
git
go/agora
go/agora doc
go/agora slides
goals
good intent
graph
judgement
knowledge commons
knowledge graph
knowledge sharing
markdown
mastodon
maximally inclusive
nutshell
open source
plain text
platform
protocol
protocols
root
server
sign up
sister sites
social knowledge graph
social media
supported formats
transparency
what do i think about the agora?
wiki
wikilinks
work in progress