10/10 Ultimately, the project values matter. Grokipedia is less an encyclopedia than a simulacrum of one. It’s a spite house, not a quest for knowledge. Wikipedia shouldn’t worry too much, but it’s no reason to be complacent. www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
9/ But Wikipedia should consider stealing some ideas from Grokipedia: letting AI assist with overlooked topics, loosening some sourcing requirements, and creating a user-friendly suggestion box. www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
8/ Grokipedia seems unlikely to replace Wikipedia: licensing and competitive issues hobble it in the tech world, and there’s no popular discontent with a site most people use for mundane fact-checking. www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
7/ Finally, sourcing. Grokipedia allows primary sources and more detail with it, but sometimes also Nazis. Wikipedia opts for higher-quality sources, at the expense of completeness. www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
6/ Third, perspective. Grokipedia is clearly partisan (even if it won’t fully admit it) while Wikipedia’s pluralistic approach aims to converge on the best result, albeit imperfectly. www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
5/ Second, governance. Grokipedia is centeralized—what Musk says goes, but zero consensus means zero transparency. Wikipedia’s model is slow and sometimes exhausting, but carries more legitimacy. www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
4/ Grokipedia differs from Wikipedia in 4 key ways. First, production. AI content has advantages in speed and scale, but includes hallucinations. Human curation is slower but brings judgment and nuance. www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
3/ Wikipedia is increasingly under fire from the far-right, which now counts Elon as one of theirs. Instead of trying to beat Wikipedia at its own game, he’s trying to do it with LLM technology. www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
2/ Wikipedia has faced competition from rival encyclopedia projects before, but this one is different: not only is it sponsored by the world’s richest man, but the political and technological environment have changed. www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
1/ It’s almost two months since Elon launched Grokipedia, an AI-powered encyclopedia to compete with Wikipedia. Should Wikipedia regard it as an existential threat, nothing to be concerned about, or something else? www.thewikipedian.net/p/grokipedia...
7/7 Whoever gets the job takes on one of the hardest roles in the nonprofit world. Read the full post here: www.thewikipedian.net/p/wikimedia-...
6/ The real challenge: Wikipedia is publishing, tech, community, and a global nonprofit all at once. No one can be everything to everyone—but the next CEO will have to try.
5/ There’s no consensus on how to respond. Some say WMF needs tech leadership; others say not so fast. Few want a political hire, but the only name offered was former US CTO Megan Smith.
4/ Two dark clouds loom over Wikipedia’s future: generative AI, which depends on it but draws attention away, and rising political threats to open knowledge in the US, UK, and India.
3/ Some wonder if the Foundation is doing the right job at all—raising concerns about its size, fundraising style, and spending. Has WMF gotten too big to keep up with changing media habits?
2/ The good news for Iskander: her leadership got high marks for listening, facilitating, and not playing the hero. The catch? What most people want sounds a lot like... Maryana Iskander.
1/ Who should run Wikipedia next? The Wikipedian asked a cross-section of insiders what they want in a successor to WMF CEO Maryana Iskander, stepping down by year’s end. www.thewikipedian.net/p/wikimedia-...
5/ Wikipedia isn’t perfect. But its flaws are debated in the open, by a community that cares deeply about facts. The WMF now faces a choice: bend to a bad-faith inquiry—or stand up to this intimidation. www.thewikipedian.net/p/maga-wikip...
4/ The right has been laying the groundwork for this for years. Wikipedia is open, collaborative, and built on consensus—everything MAGA hates. Now it’s being folded into the broader campaign to delegitimize institutions beyond its reach. www.thewikipedian.net/p/maga-wikip...
3/ Martin isn’t the IRS. His office has no role in nonprofit oversight. But that isn't the point. Instead, the letter repackages long-standing grievances from MAGA circles as official concern. www.thewikipedian.net/p/maga-wikip...
2/ The letter demands documents and answers to 12 questions by May 15. Martin claims Wikipedia’s global contributors “subvert American interests,” and implies Google and AI companies are laundering biased content via Wikipedia. He cites no evidence. www.thewikipedian.net/p/maga-wikip...
1/ Last week, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation accusing Wikipedia of political bias, foreign influence, and propaganda. It’s not just overreach—it’s a political threat disguised as a legal inquiry. 🧵 www.thewikipedian.net/p/maga-wikip...
A report from WikiCredCon—and why eroding trust in media institutions is a problem for Wikipedia, by @formerlytomato.bsky.social
Loved the deep dive—nothing like exploring a good Wikipedia rabbit hole.
"Was Wikipedia manipulated as part of the Blake Lively smear campaign?" a compelling investigation + a good read by @dflovett.bsky.social
Fin/ So what should happen? Should the WMF step in, as it did in Croatia? Or should Wikipedia communities settle this themselves? The future of Hebrew Wikipedia—and maybe more—is at stake. www.thewikipedian.net/p/hebrew-wik...
7/ Now the WMF must decide: intervene and risk inflaming critics, or do nothing and watch Hebrew Wikipedia become even more insular? It’s a test of whether institutions can still act—or if they will continue standing by as consensus collapses. www.thewikipedian.net/p/hebrew-wik...
6/ This isn’t the first time a Wikipedia has been "captured" by one side. In the 2010s, Croatian Wikipedia was taken over by a far-right faction. The WMF finally intervened in 2021, stripping power from admins and resetting governance. www.thewikipedian.net/p/hebrew-wik...
5/ The conflict is influencing site content, too. In 2021, Hebrew Wikipedia changed the article "Israeli occupation of the West Bank" to "Israeli rule in Judea and Samaria"—a nationalist framing. The fight over content is also a fight for control. www.thewikipedian.net/p/hebrew-wik...
4/ The secular editors want the WMF to step in. The nationalists say the other side engaged in its own off-wiki coordination, and besides, most hewiki editors agree, and by the way they most every claim in the RfC is false. www.thewikipedian.net/p/hebrew-wik...