Overview
- The French-language site recorded an 8% year-over-year drop in visits in 2025, coinciding with rising use of generative AI by about 44% of French users.
- Founded on January 15, 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia marks its 25th anniversary today.
- Roughly 20,000 monthly contributors on the French project emphasize collective debate over deploying AI in the editorial process.
- Wikipedia maintains an ad-free, non-commercial approach funded by donations and says it does not sell users’ personal data.
- The encyclopedia has grown to more than 65 million articles in over 300 languages, supported by an estimated 250,000 volunteers.