Hi all,
I can't join on Tuesday, so I'm leaving here what would have been my
three minutes. Speaking in personal capacity.
First, a request for whoever works on revenue. The essay proposes
expanding Enterprise into verification services that AI companies would
pay for. Enterprise has existed since 2021. Revenue in FY 2023-24 was
3.4M USD, about 1.8% of Foundation revenue; the figure comes from
Christophe's own footnotes. Five years, in the middle of the largest
spending boom on data this industry has ever seen, and the buyer has not
shown up. I am not saying the thesis is wrong. I am saying the numbers
we already have contradict it, and understanding why should be the first
task of that group, before any plan to scale. Is the product
underinvested? Is the price of something that is also legally free bound
to stay near zero? Is the demand somewhere we have not looked? I don't
know, and I would distrust anyone who answers too quickly.
The second point matters more to me. New editor signups are down 36%
since 2016, again from Christophe's data, and the community shrinks
every year. Every scenario discussed in these six months, including the
most optimistic ones, dies without editors. Yet the discussion has been
mostly about money, and a movement that mostly talks about money will
not convince anyone to give it their evenings.
Personally, I believe the case for contributing is stronger today than
it was in 2006. More and more of what people read is produced by systems
that can be tuned by their owners and inspected by no one. Ours remains
the one large project that anyone can audit, question, and repair.
Whether that argument can actually bring people in is exactly what a
contributor track should exist to find out.
Kind regards
Ilario
On 03/07/2026 21:22, Christophe Henner via Wikimedia-l wrote:
I'm forking my original thread
I love the discussion and energy so much that I'd like to offer a
"meetup" on the topic. I've created an event for next week, and to
avoid endless discussion on the call name: This is not a
meeting:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:This_is_not_a_meeting
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:This_is_not_a_meeting>on
Tuesday 19:00 UTC.
I tried to strike a balance between structured enough to manage
expectations but open enough too. I've added a stub of an agenda, with
a goal to create a baseline on things there's agreement on, plus
ideas, suggestions, etc. to move forward.
I would love to open the floor with 2 or 3 three-minute lightning
talks for people to present/share a view on the situation, so we can
start the discussion with a few statements. Anyone interested, just
send me a message or leave one on the Event talk page, I'll reach out.
And then break into groups for people to talk about specific topics
(I've made proposals on the page, but they would benefit from other
people's insights to improve them). Then re-group for discussion, no
more than 5 minutes. And I've added a 42-minute overflow, so that if
people want to linger around, they can. But if people can't do more
than an hour of meeting, they can very easily leave the discussion.
And that leaves us a few days to prepare and keep talking in writing. :)
Now that the discussion has started, I'd like to quote a great
philosopher about something we'd like to avoid: "For a moment, nothing
happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen."
Have all a great day :)
--
Christophe
On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 12:10 AM Samuel Klein via Wikimedia-l
<[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Nada, excellent framing. It is entirely in our control to
fix outreach, build welcoming and forgiving environments, make
strides with less-resource languages and communities.
Christophe, thanks again for persisting in this thread (and
planning a range of activities around Wikimania!) I see many
people engaged with these topics who don't want to engage in
discussion about angst over current problems, but are deeply
enthusiastic about, and actively engaged in, building new things /
working on new possibilities.
Brooke writes:
> Wikimedia is a participatory system... We have toput in the work
ourselves.
Absolutely. The civilized netizen's first duty is to be always
prepared to rewrite
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco> anything truly
important from scratch.
Galder writes:
One correction: I'm not a trustee!
But we surely trust you, including to make the world's best
Txikipedia.
We have many good ideas and talented people in the community. We
do need persistent spaces to discuss and make plans, in part
because inthe last growth spurt we fragmented communication
channels across hundreds of pages, sites, lists, and apps.
Recombining many of those streams would be good for coherence and
continuity.
But our wikis are better suited to experimenting, reverting, and
iterating than distilling large-scale consensus. Quick decisions
by ~sortition (or by the first few people to turn up) help polish
the roughest edges. Having spaces that push back against the iron
law <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy> of
oligarchy and preserve freedom to experiment is essential, even
when simultaneously waiting for delayed consensus.
Our strongest shared identity is as people committed to building
freely-licensed knowledge together, in every language, accessible
to the entire world. More people care about this today than ever
before. We simply have to make space for it again.
𝐖♡, SJ
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--
Ilario Valdelli
Skype: valdelli
Tel: +41764821371
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