Wikimedia Futures Lab/Dashboard/Notes/Day 1 crowdsourced notes

These are crowdsourced notes from Day 1 of the futures lab. These have been copied across from the Etherpad as is - no checks for accuracy have been made and some notes may be inaccurate.

2026 Wikimedia Futures Lab Day 1 - Jan 30, 2026 Day 2 - https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Futures_Lab_day_2

Links:

   Main page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Futures_Lab
   Sign up for self-organized meetups for Friday evening: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Futures_Lab/Self-organized_meetups

Slides will be on Commons soon-ish.

Introduction Mention of Gutenberg (in Frankfurt!), then Jimmy Wales creating Wikipedia.

Introduction by Nicole Ebber (WMDE) and Nadee Gunasena (WMF) Mention of the Zukunft Congress, same but for the future of the German language wikimedia projects. Idea to ground our planning, this conference brings the questions to the wider movement. Not just an event this weekend but a whole process for the coming months.

General presentation of the three days and program: learn, think, do!

Collectively Defining the Future of Knowledge By Malika Older https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malka_Older

AUDIENCE ASKED TO DO THIS: Optional exercise to practice: Wikipedia entry from the future 1. Imagine an event, artifact, document, discovery, technology, etc from the next five years 2. Set up the relevant categories for an entry and start filling them in 3. Have fun!

The future is not under anyone control, but collectively we can have an impact.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND WILD IDEAS

How might we expand the offerings of the Wikipedia Library to include other services that benefit Wikimedians? Access to AI compute facilities, mental health resources, video/documentary subscriptions (CuriosityStream, Nebula, etc). (Fuzheado, TheDJ, SJ)
How can we improve the different ways to keep knowledge in a not written medium? (ie, oral history, techniques, etc). We are transitioning to a world digital and fully connected, but techniques, orally themes are getting lost due we aren't providing a clear way to preserve it. So, does it our mission? (Dennis) +1.

could we extend to all non-written content? (image, video, gif, 3D files, graphs, etc.) (Nicolas)

How we think the next Wikimedians generation will create, improve and use the contents?. Some of us are here over 20 years and the question is valid to create a framework or technology or anything the narrowing the potential barriers in the participation. In a brief example, I can't imagine a Wikipedia without local communities, and the local communities from some parts of the world is underrepresented (even here). (Dennis, again)
Inspired by afternoon panel - why don't we do more to be a lifestyle brand? Our merchandising and swag could be a lot more than what they are now. (Fuzheado)
Get Wikimedia being more multimedia
Do really we need to do more / another things? (Asking for a friend 😅)

Content and AI: Panel Discussion + Audience Q&A

Question from Christophe: more a comment about how the time is now! (related to his post: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Schiste/what-now ) Alek T. mentioned that he thought Wikimedia Enterprise is one of the best projects ever done by the Wikimedia movement, in order to have commercial entities and AI re-users fund and keep the knowledge commons going

Question from Ferdinando (Ferdi2005): what could Wikipedia do to reinvent to stay relevant?

   answer from Britanica, they developed some agentic layers (small by Wikimedia measure but still very large), human expertise really stand out. important not for regurgeating facts but for context.
   oddities: in the era of IA, they actually go more and more on Wikipedia to have an answer

??? (can't see who is pseaking) IA to identify the knowledge gaps and knowledge equity Max Senges: long discussion about inclusion/exclusion in Wikipedia, coming from the outside that doesn't make sense, the server space is virtually unlimited, why limit yourself? the rejection rate is way too high Bettina: about languages, we are struggling with that as well. We really want to value the human resource, document them on the digital world. Some people have time and leisure to document but it's important. Alex : as a polish speaker, my wikipedia is quite robust. I don't know what it's like for a small wikipedia. Keep that in mind in the break session.

- BREAKOUT SESSIONS**

Small group discussions on content + consumer trends and implications for Wikimedia. How are these content + AI shifts showing up in your region, project, or local context? What might the implications of these shifts be for the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement?

Breakout 3 notes:

   Talking about AI as a challenge to Wikipedia
   Concerned about the speed of AI developments and whether we can keep up (Christophe, DJ, Claudia)
   We have a deliberative community but it's not built for speed
   People will usually be "lazy" and get answers from AI rather than Wikipedia (Maciej)
   Tech adage: Almost always, convenience trumps fidelity (Fuzheado)
   Relates story about his twin boys – one a big AI skeptic and mistrusts it, one embraces it. So folks can have very different prejudices going in
   But does Wikipedia as democratizing knowledge provide an advantage for the future over AI

Will we be able to motivate our community to keep up? (Natalia summary) But we can determine whether we have time or not, can't we? (Franziska)

Wikimedia Lightning Talks: Consumers + Re-Use, Content

Go see some of these trends on the poster upstairs at the "data bar".

2026 key global trends - consumers : increasingly get information from zero-click (= no need to go further), wathcing video is the most common activity and a zero-click activity, same for IA overview (there is links to go further but noone clicks on it). - contributors : using AI in content creation for school, work, and coding

Anusha Alikhan: insights measure the brand sentiment on focus group and survey, + outside research, on all regions 40 countries three pilars of measure: presence (do you recognize us, do you come to mind?), purpose (are you aligned?), persuasion (will you donate/advocate for us?) Visibility is declining for most digital brands, including Wikipedia. One reason: IA summaries make us less visible. Same thing for trafic as well. the net promoter score (nps) how likely are people to advocate for us? it's at his lowest the good news: we seem to have more impact than other digital brands other brands are perceived as more "warmth", but it's high for ChatGPT because it's personalised... globally, interest in editing is declining lack of time/skill/knowledge are barrier for editing brand building is very important! (many hands raised who wanted to ask questions)

Selena Deckelmann, what does the world need from us now? 2026 and beyond (come to us the data bar for more data) pageviews fell, -8% YtoY comparison of human and bot traffic, bot are a higher and higher percentage account registration is also going down "how we found new users in the past will not be how we find new editors in the future" human traffic to Wikipedia is changing Google referal is going down 20%! and this is accelerating English Wikipedia is not the only one affected The decline is real and probably permanent

Consumers and Reuse: Panel Discussion + Audience Q&A

 Anusha Alikhan again is leading a panel

Bourree Lam, Executive Editor of Nothing Personal at the Mozilla Foundation Gerard Crichlow, Global Social Strategy Director at McCann World Group (one of largest ads agency) Jonathan Flesher, VP Business Development at Reddit (and experience at Discord) Michael Sun, culture editor and writer at The Guardian

Bourree Lam: most common cause for churn is death of reader... secret sauce: change is hard, but you need to let go of some baggages providing utility and a clear ROI, for instance, we are going to give one reason for millennials to read us (eg. "to get rich") things to avoid: don't worry about alienating you current audience (cf. less baggage), <lot of reaction from the public> product is precious but outside no-one cares

Gerard Crichlow: don't beat a dead horse, this is insanity. think about what we did in the past, how people find things is changing, we need to change as well I'm like a therapist for brand, really discover their soul and use it in an interresting way. Tells story about (fake) Kate Moss Aldi publicity stunt: https://www.marketingweek.com/aldi-stole-news-agenda-kate-moss/ bottomline: don't forget your soul

Jonathan Flescher

(please take note, I'm getting a bit tired, sorry)

Michael Sun

mention of "depths of Wikipedia"

https://catfishing.net/

Questions : Valentin: all of you are related to profit organisation, what about Wikimedia being non-profit? Profit or non-profit doesn't import much, you can monetize a community without taking advantage of them. Talks about the licenses. Claudia : from each of view, give a one marketing line for Wikipedia. Gerard: "get weird" Jonathan: "learn everything" Bouree: "All the world's knowledge" Michael: "wikipedia is weird" Nadzik: wikimedia strength is our community, how to change enough but not too much to loose our community I don't think people are so adverse to change (personal note: have you met wikimedian?), people can be embracing positive change. Change is often seen as a cost but it also comes with rewards. Jonathan: so many thoughts... have been through a lot of changes also (policy, bot block and such), there is indeed a vocal minority, you need to look into it and have the courage to change, in the end it's a benefit, don't be afraid to change. Gerard: mention of Anna Wintour and the "september issue" about she changed the magazine, it's hard. Anna Wintour: "Be incredibly clear about where you are going so you can let go of the past" Your next issue is going to be better than the last. Let go of your baggage so you can carry more shit.

Youngjin (Korea) : some question about generations.. newer and. older people people are not going to stop reading (tv didn't kill the radio), reading survived major change, a lot of human things are integenerational, "correcting someone who is wrong on the internet" will always be a powerful motivation Michael: about the generational divide, a lot of things are universal, we all use Wikipedia to get info when watching a show "who is this actor?" everyone does that

Mathias : the reason why they joined in the first place, remaing accessible, could you elaborate on the obstacle you encounter, what about the content staying free (?) Jonathan : forget the legal construct, you can walk the fine line where it's still free, true non profit, usable for research, and at the same time use them commercially...

- BREAKOUT SESSIONS**

Small group discussions on consumers + re-use insights and implications for Wikimedia. How are these consumer trends showing up in your region, project, or local context? What might the implications of this shift be for the Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia movement?

Breakout 3: Michael Sun Barriers - English Wikipedia on wiki politics can be dissuading, people are making their own merch

What are the possible consequences of these trends for your work and WP as a whole?

Three consequences -

Hypothesis Workshop: