Hi! As we know, Wikimedia's mission isn't to build an encyclopedia (that's Wikipedia's mission) but rather "a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge". Perhaps the new landscape will slowly strip Wikipedia of its leading role in the Wikimedia movement, and perhaps (hopefully) some other project will take over. I agree with Chris in that our core strength is our community, and I also agree with James in that writing tertiary sources is becoming outdated. How can we keep striving for our vision, while making the most of our strength (the community) but through a project that doesn't involve writing tertiary sources?
Here's an idea: Wikiversity could become so much more than what it currently is. It could become a real "online university", multilingual and global, where real-time courses with real humans are taught (as well as the asynchronous courses that already exist today). And not just courses, but eventually entire university programs that award real degrees. I'm sure our community is filled with excellent teachers, academics and experts that could lead such courses in many languages, as well as many others that could support them in other ways (answering questions, preparing reading material, exercises, exams, etc). We'd need to develop and integrate some software like Zoom or Meet, and much more, of course, but that's beyond the point, as we could start with existing software now, and develop better tools as we go along. Humans teaching humans, would be a good summary of the idea. I could digress for a while, but I might be delusional, so I'll stop here. However, if anyone supports or would like to talk, I'd be happy to continue on-wiki (User:Sophivorus). Cheers! On Mon, May 4, 2026 at 7:47 AM AcDc CluvR via Wikimedia-l < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi Christophe. Tnx for writing this! I used to be member of the board, > chapter, moderator, arbitration committee ... User Dolledre on some wiki's, > mostly nl.wiki. In my opinion crawling 'our' data should not be so darn > easy for AI models. Willing to block them by hand if they keep > hallucinating on 'our' data. Interrogating like 4 of them daily, mainly on > how they work. Do know how to lead them towards total confusion. Even if > Wikipedia could develop the best AI code in the world, we would still be > sharing it. It's the paradox to sweat out till humanity is either > hallucinating as a whole either returning till mental sanity. Kind regards. > D. PS: Want a free image of a fox eating a banana in my kitchen? ;-) > > Op za 10 jan 2026 om 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/TYXFRDYSUH3WUYM5P4MADNQI42NZXWTX/ > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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