Wikipedia, often hailed as “the last good website” amid a sea of toxic social media and AI-driven content, is seeing a decline in human pageviews. According to a recent blog post by Marshall Miller of the Wikimedia Foundation, traffic from humans fell 8% year-over-year.
The drop became more noticeable after an update to Wikipedia’s bot detection system revealed that much of the unusually high traffic in May and June came from bots designed to evade detection.
Wikipedia Traffic Declines as AI Summaries and Social Video Change How People Access Information
Miller points to broader shifts in how people seek information. Generative AI and social media are changing user behavior: search engines are increasingly delivering direct answers instead of linking to sites like Wikipedia, and younger generations are turning to social video platforms rather than the open web. (Google has disputed the claim that AI summaries reduce traffic from search.)
Despite the drop, Miller emphasizes that Wikipedia remains a vital source of knowledge. Even if fewer people are visiting the site, its content continues to reach readers across the internet. The foundation experimented with AI summaries of its own but paused after editors raised concerns.
However, the decline does present risks. Fewer visitors could mean fewer volunteers to create and update content, and potentially fewer individual donors supporting the encyclopedia’s work. Miller notes that some Wikipedia volunteers are extraordinary one group reportedly even helped disarm a gunman at a recent editors’ conference.
To address these challenges, Wikipedia is taking proactive steps. The foundation is developing a new framework to properly attribute its content, has two teams focused on reaching new readers, and is actively seeking volunteers.
Miller encourages everyone to support Wikipedia and the broader ecosystem of trusted, human-curated knowledge. He advises users to check citations, click through to original sources, and raise awareness about the value of content created by real people who deserve recognition and support.
