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

Or we can react constructive and start think of Wikipedia  in term of

*articles with accesses still are up and content not reused by AI (yes 
those exist, like (list of) opinion pollings for elections)

*articles with content is fully reused by AI (I see no basic problem there)

*articles where AI gets better result than our articles, (and here have 
to think through how to react, change our behavior)

Anders

Den 2026-04-30 kl. 07:07, skrev Luis Villa via Wikimedia-l:
> The fundraising team would be the first to say that revenue is the 
> means, not the end. They can tweak the numbers by running 
> more/different banners, but that does not mean the project is healthy.
>
> Bigger picture point: at WikiCredCon, it was suggested that this 
> year's strategic discussions would focus on last year's 6-8% decline.
>
> I would go a much different direction. After the 1st quarter, *our 
> strategic process has to start by asking the hardest possible 
> question: what if "reading an encyclopedia" is mostly over, like 
> reading a print newspaper?* In other words, what if our long-term 
> on-wiki readership graph looks like this one? 
> https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/
>
> *So, for purposes of strategic discussion: assume that within 2-3 
> years our on-wiki readership will be at 5% of peak. Or even braver: 
> assume that on-wiki readership goes to essentially zero, with only 
> editors reading it. *I'm not saying this is the most likely outcome, 
> just that approaching the question from that frame is much more likely 
> to generate interesting and important ideas than trying to slowly 
> tweak our decline.
>
> What then?
>
> "zero on-wiki readers" wouldn't mean our mission is over: there are 
> many ways (including many new and fun and productive ways!) to 
> collaborate on open knowledge, many partners we could co-create with, 
> and many channels to distribute that knowledge. And despite the 
> general downturn, at least some outlets adjacent to us are thriving 
> right now: https://lu.is/2026/04/web-collaboration-five-graphs/ So I'm 
> not saying "all is doomed".
>
> But approaching our mission *without* assuming the magnetic force of 
> the wiki would force us to be creative--to start experimenting widely 
> and boldly. I think we need to place 1,000 bets with 10,000 motivated 
> volunteers, sooner rather than later.
>
> This is not going to be easy. Among other things:
> - lots of old habits to unlearn. (I admit my own first public 
> experiment is on... en-wiki. Hopefully #2 will be on wikidata, at 
> least! And I've finally bought a .wiki domain for #3...)
> - if those 10,000 volunteers have to do this entirely on their own 
> time (and own GPUs) then we'll again be building a movement by and for 
> the (relatively) wealthy. Hopefully we can find many funders, not just 
> WMF, so that we have a diversity of approaches and risk-tolerances.
> - lots of those experiments are going to fail, and we're going to have 
> to pick ourselves up and try again anyway. (Shades of Mako's paper: 
> https://mako.cc/academic/hill-almost_wikipedia-DRAFT.pdf)
> - we're going to have to find new signs of success. It might be 
> readers, but it might not, or it might be different kinds of readers, 
> or it might more explicitly be GLAMs, or... we don't know yet. But the 
> One Big Number of readership likely will never be The Thing again.
>
> Anyway, I'm mostly going to go back to experimenting (and hopefully 
> sharing more about that experimentation). But had to get that off my 
> chest. Hope it spurs others to plant some seeds and run some experiments!
>
> Trying to be Bold-
> Luis
>
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 6:30 PM Anders Wennersten via Wikimedia-l 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>     Facts states (worldwide figures):
>
>     *Donation is up
>
>     *Number of new pages is up [1]
>
>     *number of edits från users is up [2}
>
>     That is not figures of a crises
>
>     The 20% decrease represent a different way of accessing info. we
>     have to learn how to adjust to these changes but is is NOT a
>     general crises,
>
>     Anders
>
>     [1]
>     https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects/contributing/new-pages/normal|bar|2-year|page_type~content|monthly
>     <https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects/contributing/new-pages/normal%7Cbar%7C2-year%7Cpage_type~content%7Cmonthly>
>
>     [2]
>     https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects/contributing/edits/normal|bar|2-year|editor_type~user+(page_type)~content|monthly
>     <https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects/contributing/edits/normal%7Cbar%7C2-year%7Ceditor_type~user+(page_type)~content%7Cmonthly>
>
>     Den 2026-04-28 kl. 17:31, skrev Christophe Henner via Wikimedia-l:
>>     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]> 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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