User:Teratix/Wikipedia in 2041: Nineteen predictions for the next twenty years

Wikipedia has just passed an important milestone – reaching twenty years from its beginnings on 15 January 2001. In that time, the project has experienced profound change. Its scant handful of pages swelled into more than six million articles, through over one billion distinct contributions from more than forty million registered editors. What began as a single English Wikipedia spawned more than 300 separate editions in other languages. The project rose from obscurity to top almost every Google search and supplant the venerated Britannica; more recently, its reputation has benefitted from a firm commitment to neutrality and objectivity, as its fellow internet giants struggle with misinformation.

Wikipedia's fundamental principles remain the same: our purpose is still to produce a free, neutral, accessible and comprehensive encyclopedia. Anyone can still edit any article immediately, without the need to register an account or provide any personal information, excepting a small selection of the most prominent or vandalism-prone pages. But there have been a bevy of significant changes within the editing community: the foundation of an Arbitration Committee; the creation of the Articles for Deletion process; the institution of a policy protecting biographies of living persons; the development of bots, with functions ranging from fixing reference errors to reverting vandalism and spam; the creation of a WYSIWYG editing interface; and attempts to address Wikipedia's systemic bias through projects such as Women in Red.

Here are my nineteen predictions about Wikipedia in 2041, in no particular order. Prediction is difficult, especially about the future; I wouldn't be surprised if any or all of these turned out to be incorrect!

2. ...but will face a strong competitor.

Wiki X – the freer and better encyclopedia.

There have been a few sites touted as Wikipedia killers – anyone remember Google's Knol? – but none have seriously challenged Wikipedia's claim to being the dominant English-language encyclopedia. However, Wikipedia still has longstanding, well-known flaws, and it would be astonishing if another twenty years passed without a challenger making a determined attempt to address them.

This competitor – call it Wiki X – will differentiate itself from Wikipedia by addressing some or all of these weaknesses:

• Off-putting editing interface
• Insular, combative culture
• Susceptibility to vandalism
• Susceptibility to promotional editing
• Hostility to expertise
• Hostility to "non-notable" subjects (deletionism)
• Convoluted policies
• Unreliable reputation

Wiki X may also enjoy some structural advantages over Wikipedia: for example, Google could replace Wikipedia in its Knowledge Graph with Wiki X, developed in-house, or Siri take its information from an Apple-endorsed Wiki X. However, I expect Wiki X to retain the free, volunteer-driven model that Wikipedia pioneered, because it is hard to convince the public to pay for a resource they could access elsewhere for no cost.

3. There will have been another blackout.

History repeats itself.

On January 18, 2012, Wikipedia blacked out its articles in a successful protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, which were considered severe threats to the future viability of the encyclopedia.

5. Private dispute resolution will become more important.

It is difficult to quantify what "more important" would mean

6. Paid editing will be banned.

Although good-faith paid editors do exist, the . Limited exemptions will exist for a handful of trusted editors such as Wikipedians-in-residence.

8. ...and 10,000 will be featured.

As of 2021, around 1 in 1000 of Wikipedia articles are featured – about 6000. If prediction #7 is fulfilled, and the ratio remains true... this number will reach 10,000. Impressive, but a bit short of 100,000.

9. The number of active editors will remain stable.

After strong growth from around 2005 onwards, the number of active Wikipedia editors peaked in 2007 and fell into a steady decline

10. The decline in administrators will level off – or even reverse.

There has been much concern about the "remarkably linear decline" in the number of administrators (see graph), with fears that

11. More than a third of Wikipedia’s biographies will cover women.

Women in Red reports that only around 16% of Wikipedia's biography subjects were

13. An action of the WMF will provoke controversy and be seen as out-of-touch by much of the editing community.

This almost feels like cheating