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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

#431

Post by Panzer04 »

warkdarrior wrote: post #207
Panzer04 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money locked up in companies is managed at the leisure of its management, regardless of how good that might be for anyone else (ie. the shareholding owners). Money sitting there doing nothing is a poor use of it, so most companies are encouraged to run with only enough working capital to keep operations going. It sounds weird, but this is better for shareholders and the economy (and companies can raise capital as nee…

> Money locked up in companies is managed at the leisure of its management, regardless of how good that might be for [...] the shareholding owners But the management is aware that the shareholders can apply (direct or indirect) pressure for the money to be used in certain ways. Ultimately the shareholder can sue the management if they think the money is misused.

In the ideal case, but shareholders are distributed and often it's nontrivial to get enough involved to justify the effort and expense.

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

#432

Post by phs318u »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #50
al_borland wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It takes a pretty altruistic leadership team to plan for 1000 years; even the multi-billionaire tech bros only plan to live for ~200 or so.

Wake me up (from my cryo-sleep) when even a single one of the longevity tech-bros gets to 150.

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

#433

Post by chris_wot »

Gander5739 wrote: post #321
chris_wot wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could make significant contributions, then get banned because of ignorant sociopaths like BrownHairedGirl and her coterie of followers.

She was banned a few years ago.

Indeed, and those same supporters are still there.

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

#434

Post by int_19h »

brabel wrote: post #393
DocTomoe wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems with that argument are that first, the Viking culture was mostly rural and agricultural, the raiding and pillaging was a tiny side-effect that mostly happened during times of economic hardship, not as a way of life ... and that today's Sweden is rapidly recessing back to a less-tolerant, anti-multicultural society for many reasons. You also conveniently ignore the much more bloody 'military superpower' p…

If you really want to be accurate about history in what is now Sweden, let’s also mention the horrific mass graves discovered in Birka and surroundings which seems to imply that massacring whole villages, women and children included , was commonplace even before Viking times. The later imperialist period seems less brutal to me.

Pre-agricultural societies are generally much more brutal because you need a lot of territory to feed relatively few people. Agriculturalists can conquer other people and make them work for them in a way that doesn't scale for hunters-gatherers. The consequence is that the combatant/noncombatant distinction is much more blurry, and genocide is often an explicit goal of the war.

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

#435

Post by int_19h »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #413
andersa wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of money moving through Wikipedia is absolutely mind blowing, and next to none of that is even being used to sustain the site. Hope those still donating to it feel smart about what they're supporting...

Because that's how you build up a foundation that will be self-sustaining when the donations run out. It's not a bad strategy. I've looked at Wikimedia's financial statements and have no problem giving a small monthly amount to them considering how much value I get from the site. I certainly prefer my money going to them than to Zuckerberg or Altman or MSFT shareholders.

The real question, given how handy Wikipedia is as training data, is why it's your money going to them, and not Zuckerberg's or Altman's or Nadella's.

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

#436

Post by int_19h »

warkdarrior wrote: post #210
redwall_hp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craftsmen care about what they make, pursuing excellence even if it may take generations. Businessmen care about robbing you now in the most efficient way.

Efficient robbery is a craft too, just not one you (or most people) appreciate.

We do appreciate it! There's even posters for the most famous players, posted in prominent public places free of charge.

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

#437

Post by int_19h »

epolanski wrote: post #411
jdiff wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biased in what way? The traditional "reality has a distinct liberal bias" way or some other way I'm unaware of?

In countless ways, there's endless wars among admins. An example though is that several historically relevant facts are edited out to favor some narrative. E.g. Crimea, the Ukrainian autonomous republic that seceded/was annexed by Russia, tried to split 3 times from Ukraine, once even during the Soviet Union, but those events have been edited out on multiple pages to favor some western-centric narratives.

It literally has an article on this exact thing you're complaining about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Crimea_(1992%E2%80...

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

#438

Post by int_19h »

vee-kay wrote: post #356
SchemaLoad wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually tried editing wikipedia? It's extremely difficult to get anything approved. You have to provide multiple credible sources for things or else the mods just revert/delete your page.

And yet Wikipedia is biased (and hence may even be misinformative) on many topics, because its editors and moderators are biased. Source: the Wikipedia founder himself.. https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/10/12/wikipedia-co-founder-... And the real reason that editing Wikipedia is difficult, is because of the ideological bias of the moderators so they support only the editors to conform to their ideology and reject any…

Larry Sanger is famously mad at Wikipedia for a very long time now because they wouldn't allow his pseudoscience on it. Later on that also extended to his (increasingly far right) politics.

Ironically, the supposedly-censored Wikipedia has a lengthy article covering all of it including Sanger's accusations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger

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

#439

Post by int_19h »

bawolff wrote: post #233
amiga386 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were any on these topics? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contentious_topics#L...

I love how this list goes: Arab-Israel conflict, abortion, ... All making sense so far. But then: Article title capitalization. Somehow this is peak wikipedia.

It's peak human. There's a reason why bikeshedding is called that.

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

#440

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #89
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…

There should be many offline copies of Wikipedia since it makes data dumps publicly available Perhaps Wikimedia is only mentioning a drop in traffic as it suggests how www users may be gathering information, not because it is commercially significant, e.g., decline in audience for advertising Indeed, it is okay for traffic to fall when a website is not trying sell out www users to advertisers. It does not mean the in…

I think number of "active Wikipedia editors" is more important than number of "active Wikipedia users"

"AI search" might cause a decline in active users, but I cannot see how "AI search" would cause a decline in Wikipedia editors

Many Wikipedia editors are responsible for low traffic pages. I would imagine they are motivated to maintain these pages due to interest in the subject matter not interest in web traffic

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