Have Wikipedia and Mozilla passed a point of inevitable decline?

[jonnyt@mastodon.me.uk]

@evan Mozilla definitely imo. They don't have a large enough user base to recover and they're burning their bridges with the type of people who'd sustain them enough to survive. They're no Apple who found themselves in a similar position. (1/3)

[jonnyt@mastodon.me.uk]

Wikipedia not inevitable. (I've read your replies). Maybe it'll become inevitable within the next decade but they aren't there yet. And what will LLMs be without being able to perpetually scrape Wikipedia? I don't think you are going to get many people voluntarily correcting LLMs unpaid (and this will become necessary eventually, especially if Wikipedia goes). (2/3)
@evan

[jonnyt@mastodon.me.uk]

They're rightly seen by the people who might be willing to do that as ruthless, capitalist US businesses whose sole objective is to make money and shit on people and the rest of the world, not as noble charitable organisations with a global ethos worth helping and preserving. (3/3)
@evan

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@aeva I think you have an adorably romantic mental model of how big Open Source works.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@evan i blame christine lol

[atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org]

@evan For what its worth, I used to think CBC was a hopeless organization in the face of Netflix and YouTube. But it turns out that it's now one of the few news sources I trust, and they've done more for Canadian sports than Rogers.

Sometimes it takes a catalyst for people to realize why an institution is important.

[funcrunch@me.dm]

@evan

Sounds like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, or any number of other "cozy" games that don't focus on combat. (Which doesn't really help your analogy, admittedly)

[evan@cosocial.ca]

I say all this with deep love and respect. I have lived and will die a believer in wikis. I believe in open source and the open web. I love my friends and colleagues at both organisations and I hope they keep their jobs and thrive. I want them to succeed.

[openrisk@mastodon.social]

@evan Just some other guy, but it seems game over to me. The land lies in waste. The orcs rule every square of the board and are erecting blood sucking factories, sorry meant "data centers", in each and every one.

There might be some sort of restart, with new rules. But it will need outside help. Deus ex machina. Maybe some enlightened democratic government deciding this *is* existential. Maybe a trillionaire in their death bed wishing to pass through the head of a needle.

[ayo@social.ayco.io]

@evan @luis_in_brief Thank you for sharing!

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@pizaaman my long response is here.

Evan Prodromou (@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.

CoSocial (cosocial.ca)

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@rhelune @pizaaman my long response is here.

Evan Prodromou (@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.

CoSocial (cosocial.ca)

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@philip here's my long response.

Evan Prodromou (@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.

CoSocial (cosocial.ca)

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@anime_reference here's my full response:

Evan Prodromou (@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.

CoSocial (cosocial.ca)

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@nickapos Wikipedia is *NOT* a lot more than user traffic.

Evan Prodromou (@evan@cosocial.ca)

@anime_reference@wetdry.world 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.

CoSocial (cosocial.ca)

[mkljczk@pl.fediverse.pl]

@evan@cosocial.ca @anime_reference@wetdry.world Wikipedia edits depend on autism.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

I should also say that the Wikimedia editor community is a big drag on developing new interfaces for editing, since the editors are also the fact checkers. Getting a flood of new edits from ChatGPT users or Alexa users or Google search users is a WP editor's worst nightmare.

[madbob@sociale.network]

@evan Firefox had a transformative impact, providing the platform upon which the modern web could be built. I still can't stop thinking about the impact Thunderbird would have had on the world of digital communications if it had had the same resources and attention.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@mkljczk @anime_reference lol

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@funcrunch both of those are economic games that depend on growth. They're fine examples. You can get boxed in on both games.