Overview
- Founded on January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia now spans millions of articles in hundreds of languages with billions of monthly page views and roughly 250,000 active volunteers.
- Almost every major language model trains on Wikipedia’s openly licensed content, while Wikimedia reports heavy bot queries that raise server load and costs.
- Wikimedia is promoting its paid Enterprise data feed to tech firms, with Google the only publicly known paying customer to date.
- Direct visits have declined as users turn to AI answers and summaries, with reports ranging from about an 8% drop year over year in 2025 to roughly a quarter since 2022, reducing visibility and opportunities for donations.
- Administrators are deleting waves of AI-generated fakes—highlighted by the fabricated ‘Amberlihisar Fortress’—as the community enforces a 2025 policy that keeps generative AI to auxiliary tasks and contends with stagnant, demographically skewed participation.