Re: Wikipedia at 25: A Wake-Up Call (essay)

Christophe,
James,
Galder,
All,


Hello. Building on Galder's points, I had a quick idea: what about a periodic contest for short videos showcasing "encyclopedia of the future" concepts and ideas?

As envisioned, each year, there would be category winners, e.g., prizes for innovative technical concepts and ideas, graphic design, UX design, and video production, and there would be overall grand-prize winners.

All of the entries could be viewed by the Wikimedia community. Perhaps the community could vote on the entries or, perhaps, instead, there would be an elected contest committee and appointed judges for the contest's categories and grand prizes.

Regardless of its important details and particulars, a periodic contest would be a fun means to gather and celebrate concepts and ideas from around the world.


Best regards,
Adam Sobieski


________________________________
From: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga via Wikimedia-l <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2026 2:20 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <[email protected]>
Cc: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <[email protected]>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia at 25: A Wake-Up Call (essay)

Thanks, Christophe, for commenting this issue again.

Some years ago, when the WMF was receiving enough money to hire, pay waves and distribute to the movement, some of us were working on multimedia, interactivity, children encyclopedias, inter-project integration and many other things to make our platforms better. Every suggestion to the WMF to go on that direction, not because we said it, but because we had an actual strategy to become the center of the free knowledge ecosystem by 2030, was treated with disdain. Every proposal for innovating on free knowledge was dismished. Every breakthrough technology was instantly rejected.

Now we are seing the result: readership is down, we are further away from being the center of the free knowledge ecosystem, and there's less money, so we can't innovate because innovation is expensive.

We still can make things better. But the attitute towards innovation should change. Or just be happy with our one generation wonder.

If someone who has power to change things wants to hear suggestions, I think they will receive very good ideas that should be working five years ago. They only have to ask and hear.

Best,

Galder
________________________________
From: James Heilman via Wikimedia-l <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2026 6:40 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <[email protected]>
Cc: James Heilman <[email protected]>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia at 25: A Wake-Up Call (essay)

We have had falling readership for years now (when it comes to health content at least). And yes lately this has picked up. People are turning to AI for answers, Google "search engine" now provides AI answers at the top and then the rest is mostly adverts and their partner Mayo Clinic.

We missed video, when Youtube exploded in popularity as a learning platform. We had a collaboration with Ozmosis for video content but the community sent them away. We are only just now developing infrastructure to determine if people watch the small number of videos we currently have (with some saying this is not needed as they believe the answer is few).

Yes we are turning into a niche product. The internet has turned into a walled garden, with folks staying within their apps like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, etc.

But what should we do? Some of us are working on introducing limited video but growth is slow. We fund abstract Wikipedia to the toon of millions. Revolutionary projects are hard to invent. This is not something the WMF can solve. But us being more of a niche project is also not the end of the world.

James

On Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 5:32 PM Christophe Henner via Wikimedia-l <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi,

3 months later, a new statistic: mobile page views dropped by 19% in one year.

We are back to the mobile traffic levels of 2018.
https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|2016-01-01~2026-04-28|(access)~mobile-app*mobile-web+agent~user|monthly<https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal%7Cbar%7C2016-01-01~2026-04-28%7C(access)~mobile-app*mobile-web+agent~user%7Cmonthly>

At this rate, our mobile traffic in 2026 will be at the levels of pre-2013. 2013...

In the meantime, Ericsson is reporting a global mobile usage growth of over 20%
https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/mobility-report/dataforecasts/mobile-traffic-update

When I published my essay, I mostly received gentle to aggressive push back. Back then I was displaying a 8% drop. Now a 20% year over year.

Why did I pick mobile traffic? Because historically bots are less using desktop browser UAs which makes the data a bit more reliable for trends.

3 months ago I said we had 24 months ahead of us before irrelevancy. Well at this rate, in two years we will have lost half of our traffic. And the sad part is that those downhill trends tend not to slow down.

And what now? Well being very blunt, there's only one body in our movement that can muster leadership, energy and resources to tackle this topic head on, that's the board of trustees.

And if 20% doesn't trigger fast and real actions, I have no idea what would.

PS: yes this email is written with a lot of emotion, but minus 20% YoY should trigger that reaction in everyone.

--
Christophe


On Sat, 10 Jan 2026 at 00:40, Christophe Henner <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

Hey everyone,

I struggled with the object, the most honest one would be "Last exit before irrelevance" but that would be a bit violent.

So, Wikipedia turns 25 next week. I've been here for over twenty of those years, including stints chairing Wikimedia France and the Foundation Board. And honestly? I'm worried. Scared to be honnest.

Over the last years, I've been regularly crunching data and sharing on different channels my worries. But in the last few weeks I decided to make a much more structured "essay" of my findings

Since 2016, the internet nearly doubled in size.

Our page views? Down. New editor sign-ups? Down 36%.

The people keeping this thing running are working harder than ever, but there are fewer of them every year.

I wrote it all up: the numbers, what I think went wrong, what I think we need to do about it. Fair warning: it's long, it's opinionated, and some of it will probably make you mad.

Here it is: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Schiste/what-now

I'm not trying to be doom and gloom for the sake of it. I genuinely believe we have maybe two years to make some hard calls about AI, about money, about who we're actually serving. After that, the window closes and we become irrelevant.

Could be wrong. Hope I am. But I'd rather we have this argument now than wish we had later. Well I'd rather we had this argument two or four years ago, but now we will make do.

Read it, tell me where I'm off base. Let's argue and debate. That's what talk pages are for, right?

PS: Foundation board mailing list is bcc'ed, change cannot happen without their commitment. And fast.

--

Christophe
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--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian

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