Hustler Words – Wikipedia, often hailed as a bastion of reliable information amidst the internet’s chaotic landscape, is experiencing an unsettling trend: a decline in human pageviews. According to a recent blog post by Marshall Miller of the Wikimedia Foundation, the online encyclopedia has seen an 8% year-over-year drop in traffic. This decline raises serious questions about the evolving nature of information consumption and the impact of emerging technologies.
The Wikimedia Foundation has been working diligently to differentiate between human and bot traffic. Miller notes that the decline became apparent after an update to Wikipedia’s bot detection systems revealed that a significant portion of the unusually high traffic in May and June was actually generated by sophisticated bots designed to evade detection.
But why the drop in genuine human engagement? Miller points to the growing influence of generative AI and social media on how people seek information. Search engines are increasingly leveraging generative AI to provide direct answers, bypassing the need to click through to sources like Wikipedia. Simultaneously, younger generations are gravitating towards social video platforms as their primary source of information, further diverting traffic away from the open web. While Google has challenged the notion that AI summaries diminish traffic from search results, the trend is undeniable.
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Despite the decline, Miller emphasizes that the foundation welcomes "new ways for people to gain knowledge." He argues that Wikipedia’s importance remains undiminished, as its knowledge continues to reach people even if they don’t directly visit the website. Wikipedia itself even experimented with AI summaries, although the project was paused following concerns from editors.
However, this shift presents significant risks. As fewer people visit Wikipedia, the pool of volunteers who contribute to and enrich its content may shrink, and the number of individual donors who support the project may decline. Miller stresses that AI, search, and social media companies that utilize Wikipedia’s content have a responsibility to "encourage more visitors" to the website itself.
Wikipedia is actively taking steps to address this challenge, including developing a new framework for attributing its content. The organization also has teams dedicated to expanding Wikipedia’s reach to new readers and is actively seeking volunteers to assist in these efforts.
Miller urges readers to "support content integrity and content creation" more broadly. He encourages individuals to "look for citations and click through to the original source material" when searching for information online. He also emphasizes the importance of discussing the value of trusted, human-curated knowledge with others, highlighting that the content underlying generative AI is created by real people who deserve support.
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