Re: Wikipedia at 25: A Wake-Up Call (essay)
Anders Wennersten <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Very good and true! I hope we an enlighten the communities that it is what you write that is the essential (and not accedes via "our UI" to enwp) Anders Den 2026-01-20 kl. 10:14, skrev Gerard Meijssen: > Hoi. > When the Wikimedia Foundation was run as a company, it would consider > what our key performance indicators (KPI) are. It would be done in > order to improve our business. Our business is to share in the sum of > all knowledge. Our content is freely licensed so it is perfectly fine > for the leeches of this world to keep their knowledge base up to date. > The Wikimedia Foundation provides both them and us a great service as > they are providing a dedicated service to get at our data. Our benefit > is that there is now more bandwidth for us and our public. > Important is that in "sharing the sum of all knowledge" we have our > main objective. That is not open for discussion. The sum of all > knowledge is not found in any project. The Arabic Wikipedia knows more > about Egyptian politicians than the English Wikipedia, the French > Wikipedia knows more about Francophone countries than the English > Wikipedia. I made that observation but as an organisation there is > this bias that "there can be only one". When James complains about > translations, imho he is wrong when he expects room for translations > in the English Wikipedia; translations find their place in the > Wikipedias that are in that other language. There is a place for > translations from English and it is not in the English Wikipedia. > > When the traffic of the Wikipedias is considered, more and more > traffic is generated by the "other" Wikipedias. This is where we grow. > Consequently it could/should be a Foundation KPI to have all of them > share in the sum of all knowledge. All arguments from English > Wikipedians are not relevant; it is not their Foundation and it is not > their concern. When as a consequence fewer resources are available for > developing the English Wikipedia, any arguments for more resources > from the English Wikipedia demonstrate a bias that is hard to justify. > Particularly as the coverage of the sum of all knowledge is fractured > because much of what we know is in our "other" projects. > > NB What would happen when Mr Trump bans Wikipedia. Are we viable when > our US assets no longer are available to us? > Thanks, > GerardM > > > > On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 at 07:10, James Heilman <[email protected]> wrote: > > One of the big issues that is missed by Christophe is just how > unfriendly many parts of our movement have become. Much of the > community working on articles about roads split off to their own > Wiki as folks were unable to compromise around what is acceptable > here. Many medical editors either quit or split to mdwiki as > allowing space for translation into other languages was not > something certain folks here were willing to accept and things > became unpleasant. > > Some want to keep WP narrower in scope and this will keep it > smaller. Thankfully the right to fork is clearly founded in US law > following the Internet Brands lawsuit. And our movement is able to > innovate both outside Wikipedia and even outside the WMF. Folks > are free to innovate around AI using our material already for > example. And likely could get some movement funds to support this > work. > > J > > > Sent from Gmail Mobile > > On Sun, Jan 18, 2026 at 18:00 Steven Walling > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 10:55 PM Leinonen Teemu via > Wikimedia-l <[email protected]> wrote: > > I really enjoy this discussion. > > As it is the latency between human curiosity and > insight(s), Wikipedia is losing out to AI chatbots. > > The key in the AI chatbots is the UI, which feeds your > curiosity by imitating human-to-human dialogue. > > Would it be possible to build something like this to > Wikipedia, too? I would love to have ”chat” with Wikipedia. > > * > Teemu > > > It is 100% possible. There are free and open source models we > could build on, without creating a dependency on AI companies > or doing anything that tries to replace human editing and > authorship. I bet a lot of data scientists and AI researchers > would love to help us. > > Building our own model would likely be a prohibitively > expensive idea, but there are techniques for applying existing > models to search a specific source of data i.e. only answer > from Wikipedia. This is being done today by almost every > existing company with a database they/their users want to chat > with. > > Overall I would guess that the Foundation feels scared to > propose this because many people dislike AI on principle for > various reasons, and it might look like they are following a > trend started by for-profit companies that are reusing > Wikipedia content with zero attribution, to the Cunctator’s > point about copyleft. (I have considered starting a civil > class action suit by editors against OpenAI and other > foundation model providers for violating Creative Commons terms.) > > A lot of the search problems that exist in Wikipedia are > fairly basic, or at least don’t require AI chat to fix. For > instance, we handle typos (like if you misspell Liechtenstein) > very poorly, or otherwise searching for anything that isn’t > the exact name of an article (if you search “Halti mountain” > it will not show you the article for “Halti”, the tallest > mountain in Finland, nor “List of mountains in Finland”). It > makes me sad that we are the backbone of Google’s knowledge > graph and AI models, but have made no serious attempt to do > the obvious thing which is at least try and see if we > could build such things based only on our content and with > appropriate human control/safety in mind. > > This has been a good discussion in response to a usefully > thought-provoking essay by Christophe. Many good points > previously raised. > > Overall, I think Christophe was right to sound the alarm and > demand greater urgency. I started editing as a teenager. I am > now middle aged, and I want Wikipedia to be around and > bigger/better when I am dust. We must replace ourselves with a > larger, more thriving community if the project is to survive > and grow. You might argue with Christophe’s data analysis, but > it is not a good sign when I feel guilty that I can’t make > time to do English Wikipedia admin things, because the admin > pool has been shrinking on our largest project. > > Not all our problems are technological of course, nor do all > of them require the WMF to fix. This is perhaps the one > quibble I have with the essay—we are not so totally dependent > on the Foundation. It just depends what we want to do, who is > interested, and can we form a consensus. > > Steven Walling > > > * > > > > > *Lähettäjä: *Ori Livneh <[email protected]> > *Päivämäärä: *sunnuntaina, 18. tammikuuta 2026 klo 0.21 > *Vastaanottaja: *Wikimedia Mailing List > <[email protected]> > *Aihe: *[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia at 25: A Wake-Up Call > (essay) > > On Fri, Jan 16, 2026 at 1:35 AM Erik Moeller > <[email protected]> wrote: > > A huge reason readers may prefer AI summaries, even if > inaccurate, is > to get to an answer more quickly (the same reason > Wikipedia itself > outperformed other information sources even when its > quality was still > very uneven.) > > > Yes. It's latency. It was always latency. "Wiki" means quick. > > Wikipedia made the sum of human knowledge (or its > arithmetic mean, anyway) accessible near you: in your > home, in your backpack, in your pocket, on your person. It > shortened the distance from question to answer by > abstracting the trip to the library or bookshelf, the time > spent poring over the table of contents, and the wait for > the newspaper to arrive, for a new textbook edition, or > for the translation to appear in your language. > > For performance engineers like me, Wikipedia's "end-to-end > latency" is the time between a reader clicking a link and > the article fully rendering on their device. For many > years, I believed the key to Wikipedia's continued > relevance was shaving milliseconds off this number by > tuning Wikimedia's code and infrastructure. > > But /true/ end-to-end latency is not measured between > server and browser, but between curiosity and insight. And > it turns out that network and code latency contribute only > modestly to that number. The milliseconds it takes for > Wikimedia's servers to transmit an article to your device > are dwarfed by the time you need to wrack your brain for > the right terms to query, locate the relevant section of > the article, interpret its meaning, and relate it to your > question. > > Wikipedia improved on Britannica's end-to-end latency by > several orders of magnitude. Modern AI is now doing the > same to Wikipedia. I can describe to Gemini what I want to > know using vague, imprecise, or even incorrect terms, and > it tells me what I might be thinking of, using my > language: not merely the language listed in my Babel > userbox, but terms I understand that relate to concepts I > already know and are appropriate to my level of understanding. > > At its worst, AI generates hallucinated, sycophantic slop. > But at its best, it is an interface to human knowledge > that is not merely incrementally faster than browsing > Wikipedia, but categorically faster. > > I think the key to ensuring the future knowledge > infrastructure remains free and open is to once again beat > closed, commercial platforms on latency, ideally by an > order of magnitude or more. This is possible, if you again > consider true end-to-end latency and the invisible factors > that contribute to it, like the time it takes to > distinguish truth from falsehood, and information from > manipulation. > > I'm not sure Wikimedia should lead the charge. Even if > their relevance is fading somewhat, the projects are an > immense trove of value for humanity. Any rash effort to > remake them from within is likely to destroy more value > than it creates. But there is plenty of room out there for > new things. > > I'm glad to see you experimenting in this space, Eric. > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- > [email protected], guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/UOAYYQLZNSVXQBOGLV2OSVX2V5SY2NUD/ > To unsubscribe send an email to > wikimedia-l-leave-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], > guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/S7I3QKJIMIW5LZIXOU5MIDKD4PUOULUO/ > To unsubscribe send an email to > wikimedia-l-leave-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], > guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/O7TQZUVQVQJEA5CLNC6YE4WSNWZYERBQ/ > To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected], guidelines at:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines andhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives athttps://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/PJ56QUH4XC5VX66W2DXJZLQSTITBAU4W/ > To unsubscribe send an email towikimedia-l-leave-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/EDKPDKHWMTQRNQBJBHGTAJROY2PYEM6S/ To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave-RusutVdil2icGmH+5r0DM0B+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org