6 ms·

The Wikimedia Foundation is unlikely to last for 1000 years as an organisation because it doesn't exist within a social / economic system that will last for 100

The Wikimedia Foundation is unlikely to last for 1000 years as an organisation because it doesn't exist within a social / economic system that will last for 1000 years. The US government is already actively plotting against it. Sure, they can try hopping from one country to another, but it won't be sustainable for that long. It's not even certain if Wikipedia itself can exist for such a long period, given fragility of technological civilisation and data storage. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/27/wikipedia-under-investigation-by-republicans/85855314007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/27/wiki...

eru 1y ago
> The US government is already actively plotting against it. Surely, they can set up shop elsewhere on the globe?
bee_rider 1y ago
Wikipedia seems like a pretty good candidate for a seed vault style “let’s make sure this gets really backed up” type project.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  There are a million backups of wikipedia. That's not the main issue, it's the future of the project. If the main org goes down, there will be a million forks of it where none of them have the same legitimacy of the original, edits will die off, views will die off, and the content will become increasingly stale and vandalised.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    I see that as an argument for serious research effort into systems of decentralized governance. A project like Wikipedia shouldn't need a centralized community or a singular centralized host. Unfortunately "web of trust" doesn't seem like it will be resolved in a robust manner anytime soon.
    - monissiddiqui 1y ago
      You are on the way to the religion pill
  - vee-kay 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - sznio 1y ago
    in my opinion, such a scenario would end up with a few weeks/months of chaos, before converging on two-three main forks.
parineum 1y ago
> The US government is already actively plotting against it. If we're going to take the actions of a couple of low level dope legislatures as, "the US government" and a toothless investigation as "actively plotting against", sure.
- incompatible 1y ago
  Even if this current plotting comes to nothing, there are plenty of ways for investments to fail over 1000 years. Even if we assume that the system continues intact so that the accumulated wealth retains its meaning and is protected, and it isn't directly targeted by the government at any time. Investments can fail, such as bank deposits (bank collapses), shares (company goes bankrupt), government bonds (government defaults), commodities (price fluctuations as they go in or out of favour.) Theft can also occur, including by corrupt insiders (sometimes even legally, just by inflating their salaries to ridiculous levels.) The chance of remaining intact for 1000 years seems very low.
  - clbrmbr 1y ago
    Do we have any institutions to point to, other than the Roman Catholic Church, that have survived this long?
    - gglitch 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies
tim-- 1y ago
The Wikimedia Endowment [0] has been created for this. From it's Financials [1] it mentions that > ... [its mission is...] to act as a permanent fund that can support in perpetuity the operations and activities of current and future Wikimedia projects, which are projects that are approved by and advance the purposes of the Foundation or its successor if the Foundation ceases to exist [0] https://wikimediaendowment.org/ https://wikimediaendowment.org/ [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f6/Wikimedia_Foundation_2024_Audited_Financial_Statements.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f6/Wikim...
- realharo 1y ago
  But Wikipedia only really exists as long as there are editors of a certain quality and dedication. Without those, what good is the foundation?
  - tim-- 1y ago
    The Wikimedia Endowment (which is sorta-kinda separate) is to drive solutions to that exact problem. By having a separate fund that the Wikimedia Foundation can access to help Wikipedia to have the technical expertise and knowledge workers required to continue the work of the Wikimedia Foundation. Should the Wikimedia Foundation cease to exist, the funds in the endowment can be redirected to a successor. EDIT: this is similar in style to the UK's Guardian Foundation, who provides funding to The Guardian newspaper. https://theguardianfoundation.org/ https://theguardianfoundation.org/
    - tsimionescu 1y ago
      The point is that without Wikipedians adding and improving articles, Wikipedia will die, even if the site could be kept up indefinitely. So it has to remain a relatively wide social phenomenon, an obscure Wikipedia that no students know about and care to use will knowledge rot, even if it doesn't but rot.
jader201 1y ago
The WF is not even 25 years old. It’s crazy to think it will exist another 100 years, let alone 1000. Even the US isn’t 1000 years old. Who’s to say it will even exist in a remotely recognizable form in 1000 years. The last 1000 years changed at a snails pace compared to the last 25 years.
- brabel 1y ago
  In 1000 years Sweden went from a Viking culture to an egalitarian, tolerant, multicultural society. Just imagine how much change you can have in the next 1000 years. 50 years ago you guys had basically an apartheid and women’s place was the kitchen.
  - DocTomoe 1y ago
    The problems with that argument are that first, the Viking culture was mostly rural and agricultural, the raiding and pillaging was a tiny side-effect that mostly happened during times of economic hardship, not as a way of life ... and that today's Sweden is rapidly recessing back to a less-tolerant, anti-multicultural society for many reasons. You also conveniently ignore the much more bloody 'military superpower' phase in the 1600s. It’s not Ragnar Lodbrok turning into ABBA. It’s a mostly peaceful peasant society getting tossed around by history until it became a mostly peaceful service economy - and the shaking never really stopped. History is not a straight progress line. Ask the Romans.
    - miningape 1y ago
      Yes! It annoys me to no end when people pretend that time is developing us into a perfect image - we're just the latest generation in a long string of improvements. Making it seem like development is predetermined. Ask a medieval peasant and he wouldnt even be able to describe how his life is different from his father's.
    - brabel 1y ago
      If you really want to be accurate about history in what is now Sweden, let’s also mention the horrific mass graves discovered in Birka and surroundings which seems to imply that massacring whole villages, women and children included , was commonplace even before Viking times. The later imperialist period seems less brutal to me.
jjtheblunt 1y ago
> The US government is already actively plotting against it. the article you linked in no way supports that sentence. (there's just a committee looking into claims that edits are used for propaganda in general.)

eru 1y ago

> The US government is already actively plotting against it. Surely, they can set up shop elsewhere on the globe?

bee_rider 1y ago

Wikipedia seems like a pretty good candidate for a seed vault style “let’s make sure this gets really backed up” type project.

SchemaLoad 1y ago
There are a million backups of wikipedia. That's not the main issue, it's the future of the project. If the main org goes down, there will be a million forks of it where none of them have the same legitimacy of the original, edits will die off, views will die off, and the content will become increasingly stale and vandalised.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  I see that as an argument for serious research effort into systems of decentralized governance. A project like Wikipedia shouldn't need a centralized community or a singular centralized host. Unfortunately "web of trust" doesn't seem like it will be resolved in a robust manner anytime soon.
  - monissiddiqui 1y ago
    You are on the way to the religion pill
- vee-kay 1y ago
  [flagged]
- sznio 1y ago
  in my opinion, such a scenario would end up with a few weeks/months of chaos, before converging on two-three main forks.

parineum 1y ago

> The US government is already actively plotting against it. If we're going to take the actions of a couple of low level dope legislatures as, "the US government" and a toothless investigation as "actively plotting against", sure.

incompatible 1y ago
Even if this current plotting comes to nothing, there are plenty of ways for investments to fail over 1000 years. Even if we assume that the system continues intact so that the accumulated wealth retains its meaning and is protected, and it isn't directly targeted by the government at any time. Investments can fail, such as bank deposits (bank collapses), shares (company goes bankrupt), government bonds (government defaults), commodities (price fluctuations as they go in or out of favour.) Theft can also occur, including by corrupt insiders (sometimes even legally, just by inflating their salaries to ridiculous levels.) The chance of remaining intact for 1000 years seems very low.
- clbrmbr 1y ago
  Do we have any institutions to point to, other than the Roman Catholic Church, that have survived this long?
  - gglitch 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

tim-- 1y ago

The Wikimedia Endowment [0] has been created for this. From it's Financials [1] it mentions that > ... [its mission is...] to act as a permanent fund that can support in perpetuity the operations and activities of current and future Wikimedia projects, which are projects that are approved by and advance the purposes of the Foundation or its successor if the Foundation ceases to exist [0] https://wikimediaendowment.org/ https://wikimediaendowment.org/ [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f6/Wikimedia_Foundation_2024_Audited_Financial_Statements.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f6/Wikim...

realharo 1y ago
But Wikipedia only really exists as long as there are editors of a certain quality and dedication. Without those, what good is the foundation?
- tim-- 1y ago
  The Wikimedia Endowment (which is sorta-kinda separate) is to drive solutions to that exact problem. By having a separate fund that the Wikimedia Foundation can access to help Wikipedia to have the technical expertise and knowledge workers required to continue the work of the Wikimedia Foundation. Should the Wikimedia Foundation cease to exist, the funds in the endowment can be redirected to a successor. EDIT: this is similar in style to the UK's Guardian Foundation, who provides funding to The Guardian newspaper. https://theguardianfoundation.org/ https://theguardianfoundation.org/
  - tsimionescu 1y ago
    The point is that without Wikipedians adding and improving articles, Wikipedia will die, even if the site could be kept up indefinitely. So it has to remain a relatively wide social phenomenon, an obscure Wikipedia that no students know about and care to use will knowledge rot, even if it doesn't but rot.

jader201 1y ago

The WF is not even 25 years old. It’s crazy to think it will exist another 100 years, let alone 1000. Even the US isn’t 1000 years old. Who’s to say it will even exist in a remotely recognizable form in 1000 years. The last 1000 years changed at a snails pace compared to the last 25 years.

brabel 1y ago
In 1000 years Sweden went from a Viking culture to an egalitarian, tolerant, multicultural society. Just imagine how much change you can have in the next 1000 years. 50 years ago you guys had basically an apartheid and women’s place was the kitchen.
- DocTomoe 1y ago
  The problems with that argument are that first, the Viking culture was mostly rural and agricultural, the raiding and pillaging was a tiny side-effect that mostly happened during times of economic hardship, not as a way of life ... and that today's Sweden is rapidly recessing back to a less-tolerant, anti-multicultural society for many reasons. You also conveniently ignore the much more bloody 'military superpower' phase in the 1600s. It’s not Ragnar Lodbrok turning into ABBA. It’s a mostly peaceful peasant society getting tossed around by history until it became a mostly peaceful service economy - and the shaking never really stopped. History is not a straight progress line. Ask the Romans.
  - miningape 1y ago
    Yes! It annoys me to no end when people pretend that time is developing us into a perfect image - we're just the latest generation in a long string of improvements. Making it seem like development is predetermined. Ask a medieval peasant and he wouldnt even be able to describe how his life is different from his father's.
  - brabel 1y ago
    If you really want to be accurate about history in what is now Sweden, let’s also mention the horrific mass graves discovered in Birka and surroundings which seems to imply that massacring whole villages, women and children included , was commonplace even before Viking times. The later imperialist period seems less brutal to me.

jjtheblunt 1y ago

> The US government is already actively plotting against it. the article you linked in no way supports that sentence. (there's just a committee looking into claims that edits are used for propaganda in general.)