Dear wikimedians, I recommend reading the very interesting diff post by Marshall Miller about new user trends on Wikipedia: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/17/new-user-trends-on-wikipedia/. The post talks about two main trends affecting our views: AI summaries and video consumption by new generations. We don't have a good solution about the first one, but I would like to talk about the second one, because in the Basque Wikimedians User Group we have been working on this for some years now, and I think our experience can be part of the solution.
Five years ago we detected this trend and saw that, while there was a rise on educative/informative videos for learning, those videos were mainly done in English or hegemonic languages. Students and teachers were using videos more than ever, but those videos weren't free nor in Basque. That's why we created the platform Ikusgela on wiki and external media channels (Wiki platform: https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari:Hezkuntza/Ikusgela, other links to social media and video platforms there)
After four years creating videos we have nearly 250 free educative videos in Basque, many of those subtitled in other languages. We cover topics from philosophy to evolution, from literature to basic science. And now we are publishing an average of 2 new videos per week. We are now working on two new series about migrations/rights and linguistics. The videos have received the highest award in the Basque Country for communications and are used now in education by teachers in many schools and MOOCs. More than 540 articles in Wikipedia have a video from Ikusgela available, with many more to come this school year.
Making good quality videos is expensive, and we are making this in our own with our funding and from competitive grants. However, once the videos are made, remaking those in other languages should be cheaper. Building the videos together is also cheaper than doing it alone. If your chapter or user group is interested on that, let me know and we can make things together.
We, Basque Wikimedians, saw how this trend was coming and worked to take advantage from it, instead of seeing how it decreases our relevancy. I hope efforts from the WMF and other affiliates can go in the direction of multimedia soon.
Best,
Galder