The essay got mentioned in Wired today: https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedias-existential-threats-have-never-been-greater/
On Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 1:35 a.m. Erik Moeller <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Jan 9, 2026 at 3:41 PM Christophe Henner > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Here it is: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Schiste/what-now > > Thanks for the thoughtful essay, Christophe, LLM-assisted or not :). > > You hint at improvements to the reader experience, and I think there's > a ton of work in that category that could make Wikipedia truly a joy > to use, without even wading into the contentious terrain of AI. > > Wikidata already contains a huge wealth of information that could be > made more visible in Wikipedia. The external identifiers alone for any > topic could give you a better "explore" page than Google's cluttered > search result pages. > > 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.) But Wikimedia has a lot going for it: no ads, no weird > AI hallucinations, no intentional clutter. Readers _want_ to like it. > > Consider the humble disambiguation page. Often, when readers look for > something not covered by existing wayfinders, the best option is to > scroll your way through a multi-page sectioned list of uses of the > term. Could a data-informed design get the reader to the right > selection much faster? > > Maps, media, and interactive learning materials have often been > discussed on this list. Giving editors more powerful cross-media > authoring tools will likely yield significant dividends. > > Regarding AI, I personally believe it can be the basis of powerful new > research and authoring experiences. However, opinions on this topic > are extremely polarized. Many reject generative AI, because they > believe it cannot deliver on anything it promises, because of the > harms it is causing (and there are undeniably many), or both. > > Wikimedia will likely be well-advised to keep the technology somewhat > at arm's length, which I think is consistent with your essay: > Wikimedia wikis as a trusted foundation. > > For folks who _are_ interested in experimenting with it as an > authoring tool, I took the occasion of the 25th anniversary as a kick > in the butt to get a small prototype up and running of an agentically > edited wiki. It's currently at https://agpedia.org/ and it is a _very_ > quick and dirty hack [1], but I'm going to keep at it to push my own > thinking forward. :) > > The idea here is that advanced AI tools can, in principle, mediate > authoring. "Research this topic, recommend some citations, check out > this PDF, now create a first draft, etc." I believe that this needs to > happen with humans firmly in the loop and accountable for edits they > make with the help of these tools, as opposed to the Grokipedia > approach, which is basically an ideologically poisoned accountability > sink. > > I doubt Wikimedia will go down this road anytime soon (or ever), but > if anyone reading this is interested in collaborating on this or > similar ideas, feel free to give me a ping! > > Warmly, > Erik > > [1] https://github.com/permacommons/agpwiki (again: prototype!) > _______________________________________________ > 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/JTX7QM3MD76G4EY6FLDWMCAMJBR7XVCT/ > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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