Wikipedia Human Pageviews Down 8% After Reclassification

The Wikimedia Foundation says human pageviews to Wikipedia fell about 8% year‑on‑year after it updated bot‑detection to reclassify sophisticated scraping bots, including a May spike from Brazil. The foundation says the decline strains resources and increases hosting costs. It attributes the drop largely to generative AI and search engines surfacing AI summaries that answer queries without linking to source pages, and to younger users getting information on short‑form social video platforms. Wikimedia warned the shift could reduce volunteer editors and donor support, threatening Wikipedia’s standards of verifiability, neutrality and transparency, and has paused an internal AI‑summary experiment after community backlash. The foundation noted Wikipedia remains a major training source for large language models, creating an ironic feedback loop, and is calling on AI companies, search engines and social platforms to disclose sources, provide attribution and help drive users back to articles. The decline mirrors wider publisher complaints about lost clicks and revenue from AI summaries and comes amid growing public unease about AI’s broader impacts.