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Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

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Re: Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

#121

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

al_borland wrote: post #48
irjustin wrote: post #3

I'll go out on a limb and say we _need_ Wikipedia and it's okay that traffic falls. Physical print encyclopedias got replaced by Wikipedia, but AI isn't a replacement (can't ever see how either). While AI is a method of easier access for the end user, the purpose of Wikipedia stands on its own. I've always scoffed at the Wikimedia Foundation's warchest and continuously increasing annual spending. I say now is the tim…

> Become self sustaining through investments so it can live for 1000 years. I always wondered why more companies or organizations didn’t do this. Pile up money during the good years to allow themselves to not need continued outside income to keep going, so they can do what is right instead of compromising their vision for the sake of hitting quarterly earnings. That isn’t to say they can’t keep making money, but do i…

Because unless the company is temporarily making losses because of temporarily macroeconomic conditions, what’s the point?

Having a war chest wasn’t going to help any of the retail companies, the technology companies who couldn’t pivot, etc. There is no reason for a company to live forever.

Re: Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

#122

Post by dns_snek »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #73
aeternum wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need Wikipedia competitors. Wikipedia is a victim of it's own success, it was excellent at avoiding bias for quite awhile and the vast majority of articles are extremely well written. However it's massive popularity and dominance have also led to, well this guy put it best: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_...

Wikipedia is fine. Bias cant be avoided, only made explicit, and the fact that you think it can means you should probably move to Conservapedia or whatever slop Musk will release.

> Conservapedia

This is the first time I've heard about it. Is that meant to be a satire website? I can't tell anymore.

Re: Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

#123

Post by convolvatron »

consumer451 wrote: post #60
mmooss wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many said (some still say) that Wikipedia is not a replacement for traditional encyclopedias with articles written by domain experts, such as Britannica. Many more scoffed at that, saying those people were just stuck in their old ways and unable to adjust to the obviously superior new thing. Is that you? AI applications are different than Wikipedia and are better in some ways: Coverage is much greater - you can get a…

> post-truth era. I know it’s completely normalized and the official name, but this has to be the most dangerous euphemism of our time. It’s the era of lies.

this is pedantic, but I think its important. We can say that a truth and lie are exclusive. when we lie, we know the truth. we just make up something else because it fits our agenda better. post-truth implies that the distinction doesn't matter anymore. nothing is true, everything is true. no statement can be evaluated outside the intent in which its delivered. that's much more substantial shift than just presenting a set of lies as the truth. a post-truth society is almost compelled to devalue science or any other pursuit of knowledge. by making all the voices selfish and mundane, it explicitly rejects beauty and accomplishment.

Re: Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

#124

Post by at-fates-hands »

consumer451 wrote: post #69
sixtyj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right. But “era of lies” doesn’t sound nice because nobody wants to be a liar… so “post-truth” sounds better: “I'm telling the truth. Almost. But I'm not lying.”

The inevitable AI investment bubble popping is going to be a big deal, but I believe that the larger bubble of political lies popping is much more interesting to think about. What is that going to look like? How does one hedge against that eventuality?

>> I believe that the larger bubble of political lies popping is much more interesting to think about.

Does this mean that politics will finally get out of everything and give me back my sports that will be free of the constant political pandering?

Re: Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

#125

Post by zerd »

somenameforme wrote: post #37
kibwen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until LLMs gain the ability to cite their sources, they will be, at best, a search engine on top of Wikipedia, and not a replacement for it.

Most/all LLMs have already been able to cite sources for quite some time now.

I've had LLMs cite me bullshit many times, links that don't exist and claiming it does. It even cited a very realistic git commit log entry about a feature that never existed.

Haven't yet had the same issue with Wikipedia.

Re: Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

#126

Post by pojzon »

Looking how editors can fabricate stuff OR argue like little kids whether original source from origin country should be mistrusted vs encyclopedia britanica is enough for me to know Wikipedia is no longer what it was and lost its purpose.

The further aways ppl stay from it the better.

Re: Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

#129

Post by sixtyj »

consumer451 wrote: post #88
sixtyj wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll probably be a black swan anyway. So it's best to stay calm, because to hedge against it... Stephen Emmott ends his book Ten Billion with the line "Teach my son how to use a gun."

Interesting reference. I had not heard of him, or that book from 2013. 10B is now projected to be our peak, and at 7B we have so much spare food that we burn it as automotive fuel. And now... we realize that population "collapse" is much more likely to happen than endless growth. Obviously I have not read the book, but do you think it holds up in 2025?

Many books on the subject are very much "doomsayers" or "preppers" style.

The Roman Empire has been crumbling for 400 years, so it's likely that we won't experience the collapse of society as described in most history books either - life is too short for that. Unless a black swan comes along…

To answer your question, I like to come back to the book because it's written in the style of Dan Brown :) - short, punchy chapters. And it still makes sense (to me).

Re: Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

#130

Post by Liquix »

khamidou wrote: post #32
qingcharles wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are highly dependent on web traffic for revenue. And their costs are even increasing because while human viewers are decreasing they are getting hugged to death by AI scrapes.

If you look up their latest annual report ( https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/W... ) you can see that they're allocating ~1.7% of their expenses towards hosting. I doubt that they're getting "hugged to death" by AI scrapers.

this is a very eye-opening read on their financials: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
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