I think time is an important variable, I should have stressed it more in the question. Sure, we would eventually get to the same ideas, but how long would it take? I suspect some development are somewhat expected as multiple people are simultaneously looking at the same underlying problem, while others come as a little more surprising.
It is very simple and few people, but it does work.
I don’t know the details on how to rehost wikipedia by myself, and also how to search and access unofficial wikipedia servers either. If this is all common knowlege for internet users, I am seriously lagging behind here. But maybe you are right and there really is no universal appeal for this, and overall people just prefer to see wikipedia as a single entity. But I think there would be benefits in federating wikipedia. Basically it becomes harder to take down information, and allows us to bypass wikipedia’s own strictness and bias. I know there are wikipedia alternatives but I would like to be able to access different view points seamlessly in the same platform, just like it happens here.
Im pretty sure historians would disagree with this statement.