Wikipedia Needs You!
The online encyclopedia is being destroyed by AI.
Billy is an artist and writer that is a member of the Wake and Think Collective. He has been in the community from the start. You can see Billy’s work here on Substack, Soundcloud and his Youtube Channel.
The death of Wikipedia is in full public display and we are all complicit. The rise of AI and other LLMs has caused an 8% drop in users since its introduction. Why is this a problem? Lack of traffic to open resources like Wikipedia destroys public knowledge ecosystems that rely on transparency and community participation. AI puts into question its long-held principles of verifiability and community-based authorship. So what can we do? For Wikipedia to combat the rise in AI WE have to donate what we can afford. This isn’t a passive problem, but a problem we can fix. This is us vs convenience being the knife that kills our humanity.
WTF? WHAT’S GOING ON?
To give a little context, the decline in users became apparent after Wiki upgraded its bot detection systems to better distinguish real readers from automated traffic. What this told them is that the more AI is integrated into search engines, the less people are going to Wikipedia. But it’s not just the “AI Overview”. There is a shift in user behavior overall, meaning more and more users are getting information through Youtube, TikTok, etc. This has created this feedback loop-telephone game scenario. Wikipedia acts as the backbone for most LLMs, however AI is notorious for taking its own liberties with information and a lot of times just being outright wrong. What this ends up doing is spreading false information to the sources people get their information from (TikTok/YT), which in turn creates the sources that AI can pull from.
DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM NOW?
Wikipedia verifies information through a community-driven process based on three core policies: verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view. All factual claims must be attributable to a published, reliable source, and editors must cite their sources with inline citations. The community relies on volunteer editors to check for vandalism, review new pages, and ensure information is presented fairly. Is this perfect? No.But what it does is hold the editors and publishers accountable to the information they present online. The AIO (AI Overviews) you see online has spread false information 60% of the time, but the convenience of not digging through articles has made the user okay with this stat. Not only is the AIO wrong 60% of the time it’s been known to “hallucinate” information. Which is a nice way of saying it’s completely making up the things it’s telling you.
WORD. SO WHAT DO I DO?
I’m glad you asked. To solve this,Wiki and its community of editors have increased efforts to preserve accuracy. Deleting AI-generated articles, improving detection systems like “Edit Check” and “Paste Check”, and stricter rules requiring clear attribution and human review of AI-assisted edits. At the same time, Wikimedia is pressing AI developers and search companies to properly credit and link back to Wikipedia content, ensuring fair reuse of its open data. Rather than rejecting AI entirely, the organization is trying to use it as ethically as they can. It’s an attempt to adapt to the AI era without compromising its central commitment to human oversight, Wiki is also attempting to support editors with translation tools, automation of repetitive tasks, and vandalism detection. So how do we support them? A yearly donation of about 3.99 helps continue Wiki’s efforts to combat AI’s takeover and spreading of misinformation.
As consumers we are passive. We accept things as if they are set in stone and that is what’s going to keep us in the same place. .Constantly being told “This is the next best thing, you HAVE to try it”. Some might argue that Wikipedia has survived challenges in the past. From concerns about how reliable they were in the 2000s to the rise of social media. However, AI represents a fundamentally different threat. It takes from Wikipedia’s knowledge without properly crediting them, while also reducing the traffic that sustains its volunteer community. AI is never going anywhere and the pace at which it’s being integrated into our lives isn’t gonna slow down.
The question is not whether AI will be part of our information landscape, but whether the transparent, community-driven sources that AI depends upon will survive long enough to keep that landscape honest. Without Wikipedia’s rigorous verification process, AI systems will increasingly train on misinformation, creating a cascade of unreliable information that no algorithm can easily correct. So we have to stop being passive consumers. We have to ensure that the systems put in place don’t completely erase the human touch.
Whether it’s in everyday jobs, art or a Wikipedia article, human hands matter. Save Wiki. Donate today. Whatever you can. A little under $3.99 (if you cover the transaction fee) for a donation may feel small, but Wikipedia’s model has always been built on collective action. The choice is simple: invest a few dollars and a few extra clicks now, or inherit an internet where the difference between truth and lies becomes impossible to discern. Wikipedia is not just a website. It’s a principle worth defending.
