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Posted on 06/27/2026 11:45:45 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The world’s largest encyclopedia was overrun by bias and censorship—and pushed me out when I tried to fix it.
Twenty-five years ago, I co-founded Wikipedia, arguably the most important encyclopedia in human history. On Monday, I was indefinitely banned from the site. The story of what happened to me is, in many ways, the story of our censorious times, in which independent thinking is seen as a threat rather than a virtue, and punished as such.
Let me back up.
In early 2000, the internet was a very different place than it is today. It was much freer—tools of censorship weren’t nearly as advanced—but it was also harder to use, and finding information took much longer. The need to make the internet more user-friendly was clear to those of us who spent a lot of time online. We needed a free, fair storehouse of knowledge: an encyclopedia built by, and open to, the public.
It was exhilarating to build Wikipedia at that time. Never before had a global, volunteer-written encyclopedia been shown to work. We applied the principles of open-source software to knowledge: All users would have a seat at the table, everyone would edit each others’ work, and the results would be free for all.
By early 2002, Wikipedia had begun taking off in a big way. Entries already numbered 20,000, and with each new article, Google pushed more traffic our way. Atop each page read the message, “You can edit this page right now!” And people did. Users joined so quickly that the number of Wikipedia articles surpassed 100,000 articles by early 2003.
But as the disastrous effects of the 2000 dot-com bubble burst spread, the start-up that was paying me to organize the site ran out of funding. It was just as well. The site was increasingly...
(Excerpt) Read more at thefp.com ...
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Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
paywalled...no thanks.
I suspect AI is eating away at Wikipedia, so I asked AI......
has AI reduced the need for Wikipedia? what are the number of visits over the last 5 years?
Completed 3 steps
Yes—AI appears to be reducing the need for people to click through to Wikipedia, even if Wikipedia’s content is still heavily used behind the scenes by search engines and AI systems. The Wikimedia Foundation says it revised its traffic measurements and found human pageviews on Wikipedia were down by about 8% versus the same months in 2024, which it links partly to generative AI and social media changing how people look for information.
Visits over the last 5 years
Wikimedia’s public stats page shows 298 billion total page views over the last 12 months ending May 2026, with 24 billion page views in May 2026 alone. For a 5-year trend, the most defensible summary from the sources I found is that Wikipedia still receives enormous traffic, but the recent direction is weaker: Wikimedia reports about an 8% drop in human pageviews in recent months compared with the same period in 2024, after adjusting for bot traffic.
What that means
The main shift is not that Wikipedia has become irrelevant; it is that AI tools and AI-enhanced search are increasingly answering questions directly, which reduces visits to source sites. At the same time, Wikimedia says Wikipedia remains a core dataset for large language models and search systems, so its knowledge is still being consumed even when users do not open the site itself.
I just created a free account with a burner email. It’s not rocket science.
I’ve been using Grok to get around paywalls.
Just copy the link to Grok and ask Grok to print out the article.
Try it.
Wikipedia is the ultimate con. They ask for donations, but they have something like $500 million in reserves.
Thanks for the tip.
My mistake.
It only has $300 million in reserves, that we know about.
As of June 30, 2025 (end of Wikimedia Foundation’s FY 2024-2025), Wikipedia’s parent organization (the Wikimedia Foundation) had total net assets of approximately $296.55 million.
Key Breakdown (from the audited financial statements)
Net assets without donor restrictions (most relevant for operational “reserves”): $292.7 million.
Net assets with donor restrictions: ~$3.8 million.
Total assets: ~$310.8 million (includes ~$72 million in cash/cash equivalents + $213 million in short-term investments).
This reserve level equals about 17.1 months of operating expenses, which is within the Foundation’s target range of 12–18 months.
Context
The Wikimedia Foundation’s annual operating budget is in the $200–$210 million range (FY 2025-2026 plan: ~$208.5 million in expenses).
They maintain these reserves as a financial safety net for emergencies, revenue shortfalls, or unexpected needs (e.g., legal, technical, or global events).
Separately, there is the Wikimedia Endowment (a long-term investment fund for perpetual support), which stood at ~$169.4–$170 million in net assets as of the same date (mostly invested).
These figures come from the official audited reports. The Foundation is transparent about its finances and publishes annual audits, 990 forms, and plans on their site. Reserves have been stable in this range for recent years as they aim for long-term sustainability through donations.
The full article is behind a paywall on The Free Press (thefp.com), so I can't reproduce the complete text here. Here's what I could gather from publicly available excerpts, summaries, and reports:
Oh so it’s not a paywall...looks like it was with the word “Subscribe”. and no message of subscribe for free.
But still not worth signing up for one article.
You spent more time whining about it than it would have taken to bypass it.
Well, poop.
I’ve used this on sites requiring sign ins, but never one that required a paid subscription.
What a load of crap that a site calling itself the Free Press would not be free. But then the Free Press has always been a liberal load of crap.
AI has swallowed all of Wikipedia’s biases completely.
That’s great, but it also violates the FR consent decree.
Nah, it appears as a paid sub. They need to fix their site if they expect people to sign up.
Still whining.
No it does not.
Posting a link is fine. Posting the text found at the link is not.
For instance - posting even an excerpt from USA Today.com is forbidden. However if you wanted to post just the headline and LINK ONLY in the body of the comments, that is fine.
It’s been done.
I've been slapped down by the moderators for it.
Maybe you're special.
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