Six more AI outfits sign for Wikimedia's fastest APIs
I get The Register's tone here and welcome it, but the reality is that you can download all of Wikipedia, always have been able to do so, any time, and I've done it. The whole shebang. Edit histories. Images. Previews. And if they tried to lock down AI bots and keep them from using the content, that's a whole can of worms. Putting AI spiders on rails is smart. At the same time, Wikipedia is losing its share of voice on the Internet—its impact appears to be dwindling. I don't think there are any answers; more than that I believe that there is probably some unholy union where Wikipedia content is regurgitated by AI in various ways that becomes the dominant way people read Wikipedia (https://lnkd.in/gkmnf7eX) The overlap between the worlds of LLM-generated text and user-generated content are way more subtle and interesting than I think either side is ready to comprehend; the UGC cohort loathes the spiders, and the spider handlers are hesitant to engage because they always get their fingers (claws? legs?) burned, either by angry cohorts of the spidered, or by enormous lawsuits because they gobbled up all the pirated treats without any sense. So this is SOMETHING.From that second article, from Wikipedia itself:Some will ask: why do page views matter so much? We're a nonprofit. We don't sell ads. Who cares if fewer people visit?Three answers:- Page views are how we fund ourselves. The donation banners that sustain this movement require eyeballs. Fewer visitors means fewer donation opportunities means less money. This isn't abstract. It's survival.- Page views are how we recruit. Our most successful contributor pipeline has always been: someone reads an article → notices an error or gap → clicks "edit" → becomes a contributor. Fewer readers means fewer potential editors. The contributor crisis and the readership crisis are linked.- Page views are how editors know their work matters. The feedback loop that has sustained volunteer motivation for 25 years is simple: I write, people read, I can see the impact. Break that loop and you break the engine for some contributors. Social glue would then be the main retention lever we'd have.So when I say page views are declining, I'm not pointing at a vanity metric. I'm pointing at survival, mission, and motivation, all under pressure simultaneously.