" it looks like Wikipedia will be mainly the base for training AI" I would like to challenge that claim. It is less and less true by the day and if we keep on losing editors it also means our content will be less up to date, less complete, less multilingual, less localized which all lead to less interesting training datasets.
OpenAI has already started to invest in local journalism because they need fresh, actual and local content to make sure their model improves. Which gives hope, we're years ahead from them but we're not on a good trend on that either. -- Christophe On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 at 10:18, Yaroslav Blanter via Wikimedia-l < [email protected]> wrote: > I do not think Google Zero will be (is) experienced by anyone except for > us as a problem. > > Sure, the current AI search is not perfect, but it will be much better on > a horizon of months. It is unfortunate that the end users take the results > uncritically rather than checking them clicking on the source links, but it > is what it is. May be this culture would change, but this timescale is way > way longer than the time to improve the AI search quality. > > Except for obvious financial implications (which are very important > though) it looks like Wikipedia will be mainly the base for training AI. It > is ok, in real life most people do not read encyclopaedias. It is important > to be the training base as well, but we should also realize that if this is > our role then some priorities must be shifted. For example, AI do not care > whether the article looks nice or not, they do not care about usability. > They probably do not care about categories and many other things we spent > years trying to make them perfect. They do care about content though. > > On the other hand, there are clearly things AI can not do, which were > already mentioned here. They can not read offline material, and much of the > paywall material. They can not produce pictures out of nothing - which > means Commons might have a very different role from what it has now. It > might even become the flagship project (unlikely though with the current > Commons community). But all these things require attention, and many of > them will be resisted by the community in the first place. > > Best > Yaroslav > > On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 9:33 AM Anders Wennersten via Wikimedia-l < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> I agree we ought to analyze better our situation, before we run to >> conclusions and discuss remedies >> >> Swwp has seen a decrease in traffic like others but in June we have seen >> an increase even if we include only accesses from mobiles (at least for >> June) >> >> >> https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/sv.wikipedia.org/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|2-year|(agent)~user|monthly >> >> What we have seen more clearly though is that accesses of the most read >> articles per day in decreasing. >> >> We have also more subjectively from media, and social media seen a >> growing skepticism toward AI-generated results and an increase in the trust >> of Wikipedia results >> >> Our general conclusions this far are >> >> *We are doing well in our core encyclopedic articles (like of >> administrative divisions within a country) , but less well in newslike >> articles (which the internet readers asks more frequently, but where >> newswebsites always been stronger). And we should concentrate our efforts >> where we are strong >> >> *We are in a late stage in our general product life cycle and must accept >> this. We will never have the increase in editors etc like we hade 15 yeas >> ago, but must do what we can do thrive in a this mode. For us - less angry >> internal argument, partially done by avoiding articles of infected subjects >> like Israel-Palestine >> >> And for Google Zero. I believe it is them who has a problem not us. Early >> on, and still, all new PC user were forced into Microsoft Edge and Bing >> which lead us to Firefox and Google. Google zero as I see will lead to an >> exodus från Google, there are many other search engines that works fine >> >> Wikipedia is great >> >> Anders >> >> >> >> >> Den 2026-07-09 kl. 08:35, skrev Kimmo Virtanen via Wikimedia-l: >> >> Hi, >> >> Secondly, I'd love to see initiative outside of enwiki. If you look at >>> all the ~1000 Wikimedia projects, almost all of them are seeing an increase >>> in traffic ; only a few big old wikipedias are seeing a decrease (which are >>> also the ones with the most traffic, hence why it's more visible but it >>> obfuscate at the big picture) >> >> >> Based on stats total pageviews of human users of all wikis are dropping >> - >> https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|all|(agent)~user|monthly >> >> >> Br, >> -- Kimmo Virtanen, Zache >> >> On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 9:13 AM Nicolas VIGNERON via Wikimedia-l < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Hi y'all, >>> >>> First could someone remind me how much traffic comes from Google (I have >>> a vague memory from last year that this is already very low - maybe 10 or >>> 20 % - and that LLMs are already bringing more traffic to Wikipedia, if >>> true we essentially are at Google Zero already). >>> >>> Secondly, I'd love to see initiative outside of enwiki. If you look at >>> all the ~1000 Wikimedia projects, almost all of them are seeing an increase >>> in traffic ; only a few big old wikipedias are seeing a decrease (which are >>> also the ones with the most traffic, hence why it's more visible but it >>> obfuscate at the big picture). >>> I think we should start by looking at and learning from the "successful" >>> projects instead of focusing on the declining ones. For instance, >>> Wikisources always have been badly to not-at-all referenced by Google and >>> yet there is a strong increase in pageviews recently. >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Nicolas >>> >>> Le jeu. 9 juil. 2026 à 03:38, Michael Snow via Wikimedia-l < >>> [email protected]> a écrit : >>> >>>> On 7/8/2026 12:52 PM, Luis Villa via Wikimedia-l wrote: >>>> > - Scale of impact is important, but it isn’t everything. Sometimes >>>> > we’ll have to build things without knowing if they’ll scale, or even >>>> > perhaps knowing that they won’t scale (eg Depths of Wikipedia is one >>>> > of the best community-builders we have even though it has “only” a >>>> few >>>> > million followers). “That’s good but it won’t scale to enwiki” can >>>> > never be allowed to be a blocker for anyone. If the experiment is >>>> > actually great, then we’ll figure out a way to get it onto enwiki. Or >>>> > not! That shouldn’t stop people. >>>> >>>> At this point, no single initiative (whether community, chapter, or >>>> WMF-led) will have an inherent capacity to scale to enwiki. To do so >>>> would require corporate-style resources with a corresponding top-down >>>> mandate for implementation, and risk (rightly) triggering resistance to >>>> the point of launching a true durable fork, for once. Instead, the best >>>> approach would be to find ideas that are good enough to propagate, >>>> encourage them, and when they have propagated enough, they will scale >>>> with relatively little intervention needed. >>>> >>>> --Michael Snow >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> 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/6EQOFSG34E3BC6FIYL55HYBTQBAW4XFN/ >>>> 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/4WPCSTZNDMBDMYHWHV27BN2EZLGY5LXB/ >>> 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/W24PTVEX2A7YSR4YNHIUQTCGMAIMF2S3/ >> 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/XEKWEBKCXK2V4B3M2JSVFF4E53CWOKI3/ >> 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/6N356SKKS2KZEDCV2PFC4GSCERTB7D3E/ > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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