The fundraising team would be the first to say that revenue is the
means, not the end. They can tweak the numbers by running more/different
banners, but that does not mean the project is healthy.
Bigger picture point: at WikiCredCon, it was suggested that this year's
strategic discussions would focus on last year's 6-8% decline.
I would go a much different direction. After the 1st quarter, *our
strategic process has to start by asking the hardest possible question:
what if "reading an encyclopedia" is mostly over, like reading a print
newspaper?* In other words, what if our long-term on-wiki readership
graph looks like this one?
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/
*So, for purposes of strategic discussion: assume that within 2-3 years
our on-wiki readership will be at 5% of peak. Or even braver: assume
that on-wiki readership goes to essentially zero, with only editors
reading it. *I'm not saying this is the most likely outcome, just that
approaching the question from that frame is much more likely to generate
interesting and important ideas than trying to slowly tweak our decline.
What then?
"zero on-wiki readers" wouldn't mean our mission is over: there are many
ways (including many new and fun and productive ways!) to collaborate on
open knowledge, many partners we could co-create with, and many channels
to distribute that knowledge. And despite the general downturn, at least
some outlets adjacent to us are thriving right now:
https://lu.is/2026/04/web-collaboration-five-graphs/ So I'm not saying
"all is doomed".
But approaching our mission *without* assuming the magnetic force of the
wiki would force us to be creative--to start experimenting widely and
boldly. I think we need to place 1,000 bets with 10,000 motivated
volunteers, sooner rather than later.
This is not going to be easy. Among other things:
- lots of old habits to unlearn. (I admit my own first public experiment
is on... en-wiki. Hopefully #2 will be on wikidata, at least! And I've
finally bought a .wiki domain for #3...)
- if those 10,000 volunteers have to do this entirely on their own time
(and own GPUs) then we'll again be building a movement by and for the
(relatively) wealthy. Hopefully we can find many funders, not just WMF,
so that we have a diversity of approaches and risk-tolerances.
- lots of those experiments are going to fail, and we're going to have
to pick ourselves up and try again anyway. (Shades of Mako's paper:
https://mako.cc/academic/hill-almost_wikipedia-DRAFT.pdf)
- we're going to have to find new signs of success. It might be readers,
but it might not, or it might be different kinds of readers, or it might
more explicitly be GLAMs, or... we don't know yet. But the One Big
Number of readership likely will never be The Thing again.
Anyway, I'm mostly going to go back to experimenting (and hopefully
sharing more about that experimentation). But had to get that off my
chest. Hope it spurs others to plant some seeds and run some
experiments!
Trying to be Bold-
Luis
On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 6:30 PM Anders Wennersten via Wikimedia-l
<[email protected]> wrote:
Facts states (worldwide figures):
*Donation is up
*Number of new pages is up [1]
*number of edits från users is up [2}
That is not figures of a crises
The 20% decrease represent a different way of accessing info. we
have to learn how to adjust to these changes but is is NOT a
general crises,
Anders
[1]
https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects/contributing/new-pages/normal|bar|2-year|page_type~content|monthly
<https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects/contributing/new-pages/normal%7Cbar%7C2-year%7Cpage_type~content%7Cmonthly>
[2]
https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects/contributing/edits/normal|bar|2-year|editor_type~user+(page_type)~content|monthly
<https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects/contributing/edits/normal%7Cbar%7C2-year%7Ceditor_type~user+(page_type)~content%7Cmonthly>
Den 2026-04-28 kl. 17:31, skrev Christophe Henner via Wikimedia-l:
Hi,
3 months later, a new statistic: mobile page views dropped by 19%
in one year.
We are back to the mobile traffic levels of 2018.
https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|2016-01-01~2026-04-28|(access)~mobile-app*mobile-web+agent~user|monthly
<https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal%7Cbar%7C2016-01-01~2026-04-28%7C(access)~mobile-app*mobile-web+agent~user%7Cmonthly>
At this rate, our mobile traffic in 2026 will be at the levels of
pre-2013. 2013...
In the meantime, Ericsson is reporting a global mobile usage
growth of over 20%
https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/mobility-report/dataforecasts/mobile-traffic-update
When I published my essay, I mostly received gentle to
aggressive push back. Back then I was displaying a 8% drop. Now a
20% year over year.
Why did I pick mobile traffic? Because historically bots are less
using desktop browser UAs which makes the data a bit more
reliable for trends.
3 months ago I said we had 24 months ahead of us before
irrelevancy. Well at this rate, in two years we will have lost
half of our traffic. And the sad part is that those downhill
trends tend not to slow down.
And what now? Well being very blunt, there's only one body in our
movement that can muster leadership, energy and resources to
tackle this topic head on, that's the board of trustees.
And if 20% doesn't trigger fast and real actions, I have no idea
what would.
PS: yes this email is written with a lot of emotion, but minus
20% YoY should trigger that reaction in everyone.
--
Christophe
On Sat, 10 Jan 2026 at 00:40, Christophe Henner
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hey everyone,
I struggled with the object, the most honest one would be
"Last exit before irrelevance" but that would be a bit violent.
So, Wikipedia turns 25 next week. I've been here for over
twenty of those years, including stints chairing Wikimedia
France and the Foundation Board. And honestly? I'm worried.
Scared to be honnest.
Over the last years, I've been regularly crunching data and
sharing on different channels my worries. But in the last few
weeks I decided to make a much more structured "essay" of my
findings
Since 2016, the internet nearly doubled in size.
Our page views? Down. New editor sign-ups? Down 36%.
The people keeping this thing running are working harder than
ever, but there are fewer of them every year.
I wrote it all up: the numbers, what I think went wrong, what
I think we need to do about it. Fair warning: it's long, it's
opinionated, and some of it will probably make you mad.
*Here it is:
*https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Schiste/what-now
I'm not trying to be doom and gloom for the sake of it. I
genuinely believe we have maybe two years to make some hard
calls about AI, about money, about who we're actually
serving. After that, the window closes and we become irrelevant.
Could be wrong. Hope I am. But I'd rather we have this
argument now than wish we had later. Well I'd rather we had
this argument two or four years ago, but now we will make do.
Read it, tell me where I'm off base. Let's argue and debate.
That's what talk pages are for, right?
PS: Foundation board mailing list is bcc'ed, change cannot
happen without their commitment. And fast.
--
Christophe
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