Wikipedia is often called the internet’s last bastion of good, in a digital world increasingly dominated by toxic social media and AI-generated content. However, the online encyclopedia appears to be facing some of the same challenges, with human pageviews dropping 8% year-over-year, according to a recent blog post by Marshall Miller of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The foundation distinguishes between human and bot traffic, and Miller notes that the decline “over the past few months” came to light after an update to Wikipedia’s bot detection systems. This update revealed that “much of the unusually high traffic for the period of May and June was coming from bots that were built to evade detection.”
What’s causing the traffic decline? Miller suggests “the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information,” especially as “search engines are increasingly using generative AI to provide answers directly to searchers rather than linking to sites like ours” and as “younger generations are seeking information on social video platforms rather than the open web.” (Google has challenged the assertion that AI summaries decrease search traffic.)
Miller states that the foundation welcomes “new ways for people to gain knowledge” and contends that this doesn’t diminish Wikipedia’s importance, as knowledge from the encyclopedia still reaches people even if they don’t visit the site. Wikipedia even experimented with AI summaries of its own, but the effort was paused after editor complaints.
However, this shift poses risks, particularly if people become less aware of the origins of their information. As Miller explains, “With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.” (Some of these volunteers are truly extraordinary, reportedly disarming a gunman at a Wikipedia editors’ conference on Friday.)
Therefore, he argues that AI, search, and social companies using Wikipedia’s content “must encourage more visitors” to the website itself.
And he says Wikipedia is also taking action, such as developing a new framework for attributing content from the encyclopedia. The organization also has two teams dedicated to helping Wikipedia reach new readers, and it’s seeking volunteer support.
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Miller also urges readers to “support content integrity and content creation” more broadly.
“When you search for information online, look for citations and click through to the original source material,” he writes. “Talk with the people you know about the importance of trusted, human curated knowledge, and help them understand that the content underlying generative AI was created by real people who deserve their support.”
