Have Wikipedia and Mozilla passed a point of inevitable decline?

[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.

[drpen@mastodon.social]

@evan @pizaaman I didn't notice Wikipedia in decline at all. Maybe this is a north American thing, or Chrome user thing. I turn off all ai summary stuff as its not good or reliable enough. Wikipedia is always my first check. Wikipedia is vital in many parts of the world.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@anime_reference Wikipedia edits depend on page views. People edit the the pages when they read something that's untrue, clumsy, or misspelled. If they don't get page views, they don't get edits.

Wikimedia Foundation revenue depends on page views. People donate to Wikimedia when they land on a Wikipedia page with a donation request banner. If there aren't page views, WMF doesn't get donations.

Page views are a very big deal for Wikimedia.

[anemone@ebiverse.social]

@evan@cosocial.ca Mozilla is cooked, I don't think Wikipedia is out yet despite the challenges it faces due to AI

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@DrPen @pizaaman It really is. Did you try googling for "Wikipedia decline", or are you just going to go by your personal experience of the product itself?

[evan@cosocial.ca]

I like playing video games and board games with an economic component. In these games, you build farms or factories or mines or whatever, and they generate resources that you can use to build armies or research centres or monuments, which in turn let you build more farms and mines and so on.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

There's a moment, when you're losing this kind of game, that you realize you don't have the resource generation needed to drive growth, or even to maintain what you have. The orc armies are moving in, and you don't have enough manganese to make Armoured Infantry II. So you lose those wheat fields you do have to the orcs, and now you have even less resources, which gives you even less optionality for defence or growth.