You paint the problem as being about us adapting to changing
demographics. I'm not so sure--if only because the notion of
attention-impaired millennials appears to be one of those
self-propagating ideas whose supposed statistical support turns out to
be fabricated.[1][2] If the concern is about getting more _readers_,
by providing a digestible version of articles, Google already attempts
to do that, and I'm sure we'll see better efforts down the line.
I think the bigger problem, and I'm not breaking any new ground here,
is that our vectors for bringing people into the editing fold may be
shrinking. Short versions of articles, whether we provide them or
Google does, do not readily lend themselves to participation by
outsiders. Mobile devices are inherently challenging to edit with:
the WMF rightly has great people working to make it easier, but at the
end of the day, I don't know if I would have ever started editing if
I'd had to do it on a phone. (I hope my millennial brethren are
hardier than I am.) And, as Frederick notes, even if someone gets to
the point of editing, finding sources that we consider acceptable is
going to be hardest for the areas in which we're most lacking
coverage. These are hard problems, and I don't claim to have the
solutions, but I don't know if your proposals would help on this
front.
In any event, "slowly d[ying]" doesn't quite seem "imminent".
Call it
a side issue, but I'd prefer not to be clickbaited on this list.
Emufarmers, editor, a few edits
[1]
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790
[2] There's gotta be some Person's Law I can cite here, right?