TL;DR: https://wikiplus.video
I see the recent developments in AI and the death of traditional Google-style search as peripheral to our real problem: Wikipedia doesn't have anything to offer to an audience that mainly turns to video for knowledge instead of text (which is most of Gen Z and Gen Alpha). What Wikipedia offers an audience of text nerds (complimentary) is not — primarily — just more text. We have access to more published text than we know what to do with. Wikipedia offers a way to curate that text. For someone who has read enough about a topic to know the worthwhile texts from the trash, Wikipedia gives them a way to share they know about those texts. (The fact that creating Wikipedia is mostly about creating new text for readers is incidental, not essential, to this curation.) I think this concept of communal curation is what's missing from the video-centric information ecosystem. Just as most Wikipedia editors don't want to write the sorts of text they read and cite, the nerds who immerse themselves in learning from video don't necessarily want to create video. But they do — I believe — want to help curate knowledge and contribute what they know about which (video) sources are worthwhile, and fold that into the knowledge commons to help others. I've created a prototype for "Wiki+" — all the content of Wikipedia, plus video (from YouTube, etc) about the topic. As a reader, you get everything Wikipedia has to tell you about some topic, alongside the best of what video creators have to say about it. As a curator, you can find the best videos to complement the Wikipedia text, and add curation notes to provide context and flag errors. https://wikiplus.video -Sage On Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 9:40 AM James Heilman via Wikimedia-l < [email protected]> wrote: > We have had falling readership for years now (when it comes to health > content at least). And yes lately this has picked up. People are turning to > AI for answers, Google "search engine" now provides AI answers at the top > and then the rest is mostly adverts and their partner Mayo Clinic. > > We missed video, when Youtube exploded in popularity as a learning > platform. We had a collaboration with Ozmosis for video content but the > community sent them away. We are only just now developing infrastructure to > determine if people watch the small number of videos we currently have > (with some saying this is not needed as they believe the answer is few). > > Yes we are turning into a niche product. The internet has turned into a > walled garden, with folks staying within their apps like Twitter, Facebook, > Youtube, Instagram, etc. > > But what should we do? Some of us are working on introducing limited video > but growth is slow. We fund abstract Wikipedia to the toon of millions. > Revolutionary projects are hard to invent. This is not something the WMF > can solve. But us being more of a niche project is also not the end of the > world. > > James > >
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