Have Wikipedia and Mozilla passed a point of inevitable decline?

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@rhelune @pizaaman I don't give my answer to polls until the end of the poll. I don't like colouring people's responses.

If you don't think it's in decline, answer that. If you think it's in decline but that decline is not inevitable -- it could still recover -- answer that.

I just did a quick Google search for "Wikipedia decline" and there were a lot of hits, so I think this topic is relatively easy to research yourself. And if you don't want to do that, skip the poll.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@rhelune The question that @pizaaman asked is very close to the question in the poll. I guess the difference is that they asked what other people think about Wikipedia.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@philip I don't think it's a good idea for me to convince you either way. Use a search engine if you're curious. If you find evidence that makes you think one way or another, use that to inform your answer. If that's more work than you think a poll is worth, feel free to skip the question.

[anime_reference@wetdry.world]

@evan mozilla absolutely, but I can't figure out why wikipedia would be on this poll

[rhelune@todon.eu]

@evan @pizaaman All right, making my uninformed decision.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@anime_reference ok, so, how did you answer?

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@anime_reference also did you try searching for "Wikipedia decline" or doing other research?

[anime_reference@wetdry.world]

@evan I voted "mozilla only", as their market share is long gone and they've recently torched all the goodwill they had left

I just now searched for 'wikipedia decline' and pretty much every result was a headline about AI search summaries. which isn't a real problem

[anime_reference@wetdry.world]

@evan well, you deleted your post, but what I can say after reading some amount of all that is:
if the wikipedia team honestly thinks pageviews is a reliable metric for anything I'm slightly more worried than before

but I still think the site's in good shape, especially after the recent decision to reject AI contributions

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@anime_reference I'll add them back when the poll is over! I broke my own rules about polls, so I deleted them.

[wlach@mastodon.social]

@evan I don't like to think anything's inevitable. I've been disillusioned with both for different reasons, but a turnaround is always possible. Still use Wikipedia heavily and Firefox as my primary browser.

[nickapos@mastodon.oncrete.uk]

@evan Mozilla yes, Wikipedia no. Wikipedia is a lot more than user traffic. When someone wants to actually check the sources of AI they have to go to the source.

[preinheimer@phpc.social]

@evan I went with both.

I think they're both in decline currently, and perhaps this state was inevitable. However I do think it would be possible for both of them to reinvent themselves into something that works in the current era.

[funcrunch@me.dm]

@evan

I'm a long-time Wikipedian, Firefox and Thunderbird user. I voted for Mozilla only, but hope I'm wrong on that.

[funcrunch@me.dm]

@nickapos @evan

Agreed on the importance of Wikipedia, but it's important to recognize that the encyclopedia itself is meant to be a tertiary source. To really check the sources, you need to go to the citations on the Wikipedia pages.

[prism@infosec.exchange]

@evan Mozilla and Wikipedia are the absolute worst standard barrers for open source technology, apart from all the others.

[funcrunch@me.dm]

@astraleureka @evan

What do you mean when you say "fork wiki", and how would it be in any way easier than forking a web browser? Do you mean something like Grokipedia (which I certainly do not recommend)?

[astraleureka@social.treehouse.systems]

@funcrunch @evan Like I said, froma development perspective. Actually forking the contributor base would be a lot harder, although if there was a sufficiently bad enough incident I am sure many contributors would willingly join an alternative project. whether that'd be sufficient for critical mass is hard to say however

[nieuemma@mastodon.de]

@evan I think it's important to remember that you don't always have to answer a poll just because you see one. If you're really not sure, you can skip answering!

I share this message for the benefit of everyone.

[nickapos@mastodon.oncrete.uk]

@funcrunch @evan Sure, no objection about that.