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