25 Years of Wikipedia

Mission, fundraising, and “bloat”

• Several commenters see the 25-year celebration as emblematic of Wikimedia Foundation mission creep and spending growth, arguing fundraising banners overstate the cost of “keeping Wikipedia online” while much money/staff go to less-known initiatives.
• Others counter that for a top-10 site the budget is modest, that sister projects (Commons, Wikidata, etc.) are integral, and that nonprofits must fundraise regularly to keep donors engaged.
• A recurring argument is that with its endowment, Wikipedia “should be set for life” instead of continually “burning” donations; critics fear a traffic shock (e.g., from AI) could trigger a rapid financial spiral.

AI, LLMs, and the future

• One camp predicts Wikipedia will be “StackOverflowed” by LLMs: traffic drops, funding falls, and a fragile org collapses, even if content persists.
• Others respond that LLMs still depend on high-quality human-written sources like Wikipedia, and that an ad‑free, donation‑funded encyclopedia isn’t in the same business model as SO.
• There’s concern about a “training data doom loop”: as the open web fills with SEO/AI slop and key knowledge platforms weaken, future LLMs may have worse data.

Neutrality, bias, and contentious topics

• Many praise Wikipedia as one of the least‑biased, most transparent sources, especially if you read talk pages and histories.
• Others say political and geopolitical topics have become “ridiculously partisan,” citing:
  • The “Gaza genocide” article explicitly asserting genocide in Wikipedia’s voice despite ongoing legal dispute.
  • The Gamergate article, seen by some as rewriting events in line with one side’s narrative.
  • Topic bans, coordinated editing, and reliance on a “reliable sources” list that favors some outlets over others.
• Concrete examples of cross‑cultural bias include the English vs German circumcision articles: one foregrounds medical benefits, the other controversy and children’s rights.
• Several note neutrality is structurally impossible: choices of inclusion, ordering, labels (“terrorist,” “genocide,” “pseudoscience”) inevitably encode a viewpoint.

Editing culture, governance, and contributor friction

• Long‑time and would‑be editors report growing bureaucracy: complex rules, “civil POV pushing,” and small groups effectively “owning” pages, especially in politics.
• Some describe harsh gatekeeping (reverts without discussion, VPN blocks, abrasive responses) that discourages new contributors and leads people to stop editing or donating.
• Others emphasize that disputes are documented, that anyone can use talk pages and policies to push back, and invite specific problem cases instead of general complaints.

Founding history and co‑founder dispute

• A substantial subthread focuses on Larry Sanger’s role.
• Critics object that 25th‑anniversary material foregrounds Jimmy Wales and “volunteers” while downplaying or omitting Sanger, despite Wikipedia and other sources describing him as co‑founder and early organizer.
• The widely shared interview clip where Wales walks out when pressed on “founder vs co‑founder” is seen by some as evidence of personal vanity; others say he’s tired of a politicized, bad‑faith line of questioning.
• Views differ on how much Sanger’s later hostility to Wikipedia, brief tenure, and failed fork should affect present‑day credit.

Internationalization, translation, and AI usage

• There’s interest in systematically translating the “best” article versions across languages using modern MT or LLMs, especially for low‑resource languages.
• Several warn that current LLM use has already damaged smaller Wikipedias with hallucinated content that lacks enough expert reviewers.
• Officially, efforts like Abstract Wikipedia aim for a structured interlanguage representation rendered into local languages, avoiding neural MT’s opacity; there’s also the Content Translation tool.
• Some suggest keeping AI translation at read‑time (via external tools) rather than flooding Wikipedias with AI‑written text.

Design, usability, and access

• Some users dislike the newer interface and fundraising banners/popups, seeing them as a regression for power users; others note you can switch back to legacy skins when logged in.
• There are complaints about edit blocking via VPNs, which in some regions effectively excludes many potential contributors.

Value, preservation, and alternatives

• Despite criticism, many call Wikipedia “the best thing that happened to the internet,” surpassing Britannica and serving as a global public good.
• Concerns are raised about censorship and political pressure; commenters want robust dumps, mirroring, or even IPFS‑style distribution so the corpus survives even if WMF falters.
• Wikimedia Enterprise deals with tech/AI companies (Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, etc.) are noted as a new revenue and sustainability layer.
• Alternatives like Musk‑backed Grokipedia/“Encyclopedia Galactica” are mentioned but viewed with skepticism, especially around search quality and perceived agenda.