🌬️❤️🔥— to you both. Christophe, I think you are right on the data and implications fronts.
There is also a larger picture of the projects' embedding in the broader world, and how far our collective capacity to collaborate has come. The fragrant opportunities in the air are to do something new, with that growing ecosystem who love multiplayer knowledge production, and love the wiki spirit. Let's make sure we are trying and supporting a wide range of such new approaches this year. In terms of reorienting the old established efforts: there are simple things we can do immediately, to get out of our own way. We can help those that are growing to keep doing so (stop throttling fast growing projects), help promising young approaches scale (give them new high-volume draft spaces that don't interfere with existing workflows), and promote local successes across geographies and languages. S 🌍🌏🌎🌑 On Fri, Jan 9, 2026, 11:59 PM Ad Huikeshoven via Wikimedia-l < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi Christophe, > > Thanks for your concerns. I myself have made long enough chats with > several chatbots to tevognize chatbot output immediately. Are you going to > aytend the Future Lab hosted by WMDE at the end of this month? That would > be a great pkace to discuss this. Your numbers are right, but won't > convince WMF. As long as they rake in over 100 million dollar a year > easily, they eon't change. And remembervthat once the WMF was the US > non-profit with the fastest revenue growth.a > My analysis in an essay published months ago points in another direction: > neglect of the online communities of editors, the people who create > Wikipedia everyday, but only online. Their collective behaviour creayes a > hostile frontier steering away nearly every newcomer. How you are goingbto > change that? > > Regards, > > Ad > > Op za 10 jan 2026, 00:41 schreef Christophe Henner < > [email protected]>: > >> 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 >> _______________________________________________ >> 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/X3SQ2WA7QF2XS56XV2EOPDPUZ6UQPCR4/ >> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > 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/BKN4B56GDJ6JFTQX66BSD6MNUNJTX66Z/ > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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