Hello all, This is Alek Tarkowski, I’m typically a lurker on this list, a Board Member at Wikimedia Europe, co-director at Open Future, and an expert collaborating with Wikimedia CH on a Wikimedia strategy for knowledge commons and AI. Writing here in my personal capacity, and wanting to share a few ideas - having spent the last 9 months thinking intensively about Wikimedia, knowledge commons and the challenges that we are facing.
First, I think the traffic drop is just a symptom and while it is a problem for Wikimedia, it might not be the biggest one. It’s pretty obvious by now that traffic to Wikimedia will be dropping, it’s no longer a question of “if”, but “how much / how fast”. But how do we know what it means? We should look more at “post growth” scenarios: Wikimedia traffic might have peaked, but what are the various scenarios ahead of us? Are all of them scenarios of decline? Is there a “small but beautiful” scenario? Having said that, one thing that is clear is that something has to change. Wikimedia cannot operate anymore like it’s 2022. Thanks Christoph for ringing the bell every few months. Let’s be mindful that even on the matter of traffic, it’s been almost a year since the traffic drop was announced in a Diff blogpost. How much progress did we make on dealing with these issues? For me, this issue is in the end not about AI, or search traffic, but about the Movement’s ability to innovate. I support what Galder wrote recently (and powerfully) about freedom to innovate. There are lessons to be learned from how Wikimedia Movement has been innovating, both successfully, and also from failed cases. There are also lessons to be learned from other movements, and from other technical organizations similar to WMF. And let’s keep in mind that a young movement of several years innovates differently than one with 25 years under its belt. (I see the same trend in other organizations that I know, like Creative Commons - there’s both potential in tapping back into the raw energy of the yearly days, and need to be mindful about who we are today). One of the smartest things I heard in recent months was an observation that Wikimedia Movement is a complex system with emergent properties. But is rarely treated as such. Complex systems cannot be “fixed” with simple interventions. But, again, there is a lot of expertise around us on how such systems operate, in organic ways - and people who could advise on how to tap into this emergent capacity. I think that it has to do a lot with the interaction between Movement’s communities and organizations. Yes, we might not need consultants to tell us what to do (Though this faith in Wikimedia’s exceptionality and ability to sort things out on its own is risky, as very clearly the communities on their own both did an amazing job building a global encyclopedia, and failed at many things, like knowledge equity.) But we need people who will help us figure out what to do, and understand better what we are - and navigate the complexity. Without that, I fear that we will seek simplest solutions to hard challenges - and these are typically about defending ourselves, instead of opening up to change and innovation. Last thing, since trustees were mentioned (and, once again, I want to underline that this is my personal opinion). I believe that the various Boards and trustees of the Movement entities play a key role in our Movement. As a relatively recently appointed Board member of one of the organizations, I am surprised that there are few interactions between the various boards. Each of these boards has a fiduciary duty to a specific organization. Acting together, they could express a fiduciary duty to Wikimedia as a whole. It would be great to tap into this potential of our Boards, at this time of crisis. Thank you, Alek -- Director of Strategy, Open Future | openfuture.eu | +48 889 660 444 At Open Future, we tackle the Paradox of Open: paradox.openfuture.eu/ > On 6 Jul 2026, at 21:46, Risker via Wikimedia-l > <[email protected]> wrote: > > This is a technical post, which trims prior responses. Each new addition to > the thread has resulted in every new post going to moderation for being over > size limits. Please trim your posts when replying further. Thanks! > > Risker/Anne > One of the Wikimedia-L list admins > _______________________________________________ > 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/Z2HQ6OV7D7NLP4SWV4BVBBZP5TEIAKMU/ > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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