What do you think the demise of Wikipedia would look like?

[Ognistysztorm]

See the title. For example most of their chapters would defect to another platform or otherwise secede from WMF to start their own, while in the end Wikipedia get absorbed by Botipedia.

[badmachine]

i doubt wikipedia would die, but if the wikimedia fdn was to let go of their former moneymaker (theyre now a fake charity funded by the gloablists like Tides Fdn, Clinton Fdn, &c.) i reckon wikipedia would be absorbed by google or Wayback, or some other internet entity. just my two cents. :^)

[ericbarbour]

Very rarely do cults (especially ones this large and successful) completely collapse. They change their name and continue, or they break into several groups and fight amongst themselves over members and money.

The only thing that might slow WP down is, MAYBE, changes to Section 230 and other internet law. If the WMF was forced to take responsibility for the crap their crazy "editors" post, it would instantly become invitation-only.

No one remembers DMOZ. It started out as a semi-closed project, run by abusive admins. And got worse, and more biased, and more full of self-promotional and secretly paid links, as years went by. But search engines loved all that free-to-use DMOZ content. So they kept going, for almost 25 years, until their owners at AOL pulled the plug. It developed a terrible reputation for brigading and harassment early on. But people WANTED it to exist.

And oh, yes, hundreds of DMOZ insiders migrated to Wikipedia in its early years. In case you were wondering.

[Cla68]

People have been bombarding Elon Musk with requests to buy Wikipedia, but he hasn't responded. Obviously, the WMF has no interest in entertaining a buy-offer from him, since they're getting plenty of money in donations. However, as Eric stated, if Section 230 suddenly disappeared, that might change the situation, as the WMF executives might be antsy about being legally liable for the craziness that WP editors bring to the site. If Section 230 goes kaput I think it wouldn't only be Musk that would be a potential buyer of the database.

The thing is, without legal cover, any person or organization who buys it would be very wary of having a heap of information that "anyone can edit." So, Eric is probably right that it would quickly become invitation only. If Google bought it, they might keep a lot of the current established editors and admins since many of them seem to share the same politics as the Google executives. However, if someone, like Musk, buys it who isn't controlled by the current progressive, globalist establishment, I think Google, MSN, and other companies would probably stop favoring it in search results and with diminished power and influence, many of the current activists involved in it would leave even if they were invited to stay. I guess that would create a power vacuum in the world of free, online "encyclopedias."

[wexter]

I cannot answer your question so I asked ChatGPT

write a song "on the demise of wikipedia" to rock song "go go go godzilla"

Verse 1:
Once a source of all our knowledge
Now it's dying, losing its leverage
Editors leaving, donations drying
No more crowdsourcing, no more trying

Chorus:
Wikipedia, oh Wikipedia
You're fading away
Wikipedia, oh Wikipedia
You're dying today

Verse 2:
Once it was the go-to place
Now it's just a memory space
No more articles, no more pages
Just a shell of what it used to be, in its golden age

Chorus:
Wikipedia, oh Wikipedia
You're fading away
Wikipedia, oh Wikipedia
You're dying today

Bridge:
We can't let it end this way
We need to save it, make it stay
But it's too late, it's on its way
To being just a memory, a relic of yesterday

Chorus:
Wikipedia, oh Wikipedia
You're fading away
Wikipedia, oh Wikipedia
You're dying today

Outro:
Wikipedia, oh Wikipedia
We'll miss you when you're gone
Wikipedia, oh Wikipedia
You'll live on in our song

[ericbarbour]

If Section 230 goes kaput I think it wouldn't only be Musk that would be a potential buyer of the database.

Musk would never waste the cash. He has too much debt to pay interest on already.

My money's on Google/Alphabet buying it. And leaving it to run in the same corrupt/lunatic way it always did, like DMOZ before it. Only with a completely closed userbase, more like DMOZ. No doubt some WP insiders would LOVE that. Then they could embark on a totally crazed defamation campaign against people and organizations they dislike.

(I dunno, if Sec 230 vanished, I would not be surprised to see Alphabet go belly-up. They made $14 billion in net income just in the third quarter of 2022. But a LOT of that is extremely dependent on YouTube and tracking advertising, which is heavily dependent on Sec 230 and other US federal laws. Changes would shrink their business, at the very least. If YouTube had to take legal responsibility for the thousands of hours of total garbage (and copyright violations!) their users upload every day, it would be like Black Tuesday outside their offices. Bodies hitting the pavement and so forth.)

[ericbarbour]

I cannot answer your question so I asked ChatGPT

looks like something the Byrds would have recorded in 1966, apart from the word "Wikipedia"

(Only mentioned the Byrds because David Crosby died yesterday. He was a good songwriter, but I don't think he was the godlike genius his aging fans perceive. Old hippies age badly--just like old punks.)