Is Wikipedia Dying?

An 8% decline in traffic bodes ill for the online encyclopedia

It might sound dramatic to suggest that Wikipedia is dying. Yet even Google, the most profitable company in human history, is scrambling to safeguard its business model in light of the rapidly accelerating AI revolution. So imagine how this looks for Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), an NGO that still devotes considerable resources to its DEI commitments.

In reality, things are worse for Wikipedia than they seem. As I discussed in an article for UnHerd, WMF recently discovered that Wikipedia has seen an 8% decrease in traffic. Despite its 400-strong workforce of engineers and product specialists, WMF had no idea this was going on until it stumbled on the data during a bot purge.

Seeking to allay fears, WMF deployed key messaging in a blog post, writing:

[I]n fact, Wikipedia continues to remain highly trusted and valued as a neutral, accurate source of information globally, as measured by large-scale surveys run regularly by the Wikimedia Foundation.

That calm-the-waters statement, however, actually reveals how dire the situation is. The link in the statement takes you to WMF’s latest Brand Health Report, a quarterly analysis of Wikipedia’s public image. In the very same section that the blog post links to, WMF states that:

“[E]very key reason for using Wikipedia, from fact-checking and following current events to academic research and sharing knowledge, has dipped compared to earlier waves.”

The term “dipped” is doing a lot of lifting. In reality, the report reveals that in just two years, Wikipedia has seen double-digit percentage drops in the number of people who visit the site for every major motivating reason (e.g. to fact check or to stay informed).

By SOworu - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=171479693

Readers of NPOV know that I’ve previously described Wikipedia as a “methane fire” — a flame that burns invisibly. WMF, in deploying its “most trusted source of information online” message, has blinded itself to reality: people are losing trust, and generally for good reason.

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Also this week: NPOV posted a new video about how Katherine Maher, the former CEO of Wikimedia Foundation and current CEO of NPR, led the organization through a transformation called the Movement Strategy.

Under the Strategy, Wikipedia’s mission shifted from building an online encyclopedia to creating a social justice movement rooted in “knowledge equity.” Check out the video here:

Please subscribe! We’ll be covering the Movement Strategy in depth, so, if you haven’t already, subscribe to NPOV.