Wikipedia’s Legacy: From 2001 to Today
Wikipedia is considered an ‘old man’ on the internet, having been around since 2001. However, its contribution to our understanding of the world is still astounding. Search engine summaries, voice assistants, pub trivia questions, and high school term papers all use content from the free online encyclopedia. It is widely used by programs like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews, yet they hardly ever give the website credit for their answers.
AI’s Role in Wikipedia’s Visibility Problem
And therein lies the issue: as Wikipedia becomes less visible and more like training material for AI apps, readers and potential contributors begin to perceive it as less important. Someone may be inspired to edit it when they come across a poorly explained topic. However, when the error is revealed by an AI summary and the information’s source is unclear, this positive attitude fades.
How Generation Z’s Contribution Can Revitalize Wikipedia
During the annual Wikimania conference held in Katowice, Poland, last month, several presenters emphasized the existential threat that it faces from slipping into obscurity or disrepair. Wikimania is an international summit of librarians mixed with Comic-Con. However, there was also discussion on a potential remedy that would help ensure Wikipedia’s survival, or at the very least stop it from dying too soon: hiring more editors from Generation Z who are younger and educating them about the extent to which its content is used online.
It is run by independent, unpaid volunteers who are dutiful for creating, updating, and maintaining the content. Even though some casual editors spend a lot of time crafting comprehensive articles, others may only make little style changes to a page. A 2022 poll found that around 20% of its editors are between the ages of 18 and 24, which hints that a sizable portion of the site’s contributors are already members of Generation Z. Yet this closely shows the world’s population, there is a strong desire to raise this proportion.
Challenges Generation Z Faces in Editing Wikipedia
According to a tech writer, he has frequently encountered the same few problems that deter the younger generation from supporting the cause when researching Wikipedia for his book The Editors. At first, smartphones are the preferred internet access device for Generation Z; yet, editing Wikipedia on them is a hard task. Editing an encyclopedia on a small screen frustrates even the most tech-savvy digital natives.
Innovative Solutions: The Role of Mobile Editing for Generation Z
There are some exclusions. At Wikimania last month, 22-year-old Canadian Hannah Clover turned out to be the youngest-ever winner of “Wikimedian of the Year.” Further, she is a unique kind of Wikipedian, having edited more than 75% of the site on a mobile device. Many of those edits were done while she was on the bus or in between shifts at her previous McDonald’s employment.
Contributing to the world encyclopedia gave Clover a feeling of direction. “Serving people ice cream isn’t that much of an endeavor to change the world,” she said. The Wikipedia mobile app should have features like the ability to add new entries and a visual editor that doesn’t require coding knowledge, which is in line with Clover’s advice.
It is no surprise that it is more established now, which is another hurdle to drawing in authors from Generation Z. With more than 5 million modifications to the English Wikipedia, Steven Pruitt is a Wikipedia legend. Pruitt, who is currently 40 years old, recalled how, when he began editing the project 20 years ago, it felt like unexplored territory because he had a lot of creative leeway to produce new articles. There are fewer options to create new information these days because there are already so many pages online. This means that in place of viewing it as an exciting wild west, Generation Z should view it as an institution that they can bit by bit develop.
Yet, it’s more difficult for new editors to get accepted. Small modifications, such as correcting typos or identifying vandalism, were time and again the first steps taken by previous generations, but these days, many of these jobs are completed by automated technologies. In the absence of distinct entry points, novice editors might take on editing more controversial articles, where a single error could result in critical criticism.
Wikipedians with experience aren’t known for being softies. If an old hand gives a newbie harsh criticism on their talk page, where editors discuss how to improve an article, the criticism’s public nature may be embarrassing enough to deter the newbie from volunteering regularly.
The Importance of Social Engagement in Wikipedia’s Future
Clover, like many of her generation, was born after Wikipedia was established, so it has had a greater influence on her conception of an encyclopedia than leather-bound volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The conventions of communication also differ between generations. While some older Wikipedians prefer to keep discussions on Wikipedia talk pages, where talks are more focused and less social, Clover and her peers frequently participate in chat rooms like Discord.
More social engagement possibilities, in Clover’s opinion, are key to taking in a feeling of belonging and a common goal among young editors. “When you’re young, you can feel like everything you’re doing is going into a massive void,” the speaker stated.
Can AI Replace Human Editors on Wikipedia?
Even if many generations may in the end come to an understanding, it’s unclear how AI and human editors will interact in the future. Will human volunteers someday be replaced by AI? Surely not. Since humans are in on with the social context, they are ideally suited to make the judgments involved in compiling an encyclopedia.
Empowering Generation Z to Preserve Wikipedia’s Legacy
Thankfully, it doesn’t look like Generation Z will hand over control of Wikipedia to AI right away. A few youthful participants cautioned against using chatbot-generated content in Wikipedia edits during an online discussion last year, pointing out that big language models frequently make mistakes and don’t properly credit sources.
Apart from AI’s drawbacks, young people’s growing involvement in the most rich knowledge platform in the world has a positive human impact. Giving to Wikipedia facilitates a generation that, on the whole, is highly dubious of institutions and the media to turn their distrust into something positive. Even while Gen Z still has a lot to say about old organizations like Wikipedia, at least they will take part in it.