It used to be that Wikimedia projects had lots of volunteers willing to maintain the projects, but the WMF didn’t have a lot of money. Now the WMF is swimming in money (which it uses to do more and more “office actions” bypassing community processes), but editor numbers are staying constant or even shrinking. People nowadays like to spend time a lot more pretty much everywhere else on the Internet than on Wikimedia projects.
It is time for free knowledge to transition to a concept where people get paid, not the wiki concept that worked fine to start out in the beginning, but whose limits have now become clear.
It used to be that Wikimedia projects had lots of volunteers willing to maintain the projects, but the WMF didn’t have a lot of money. Now the WMF is swimming in money (which it uses to do more and more “office actions” bypassing community processes), but editor numbers are staying constant or even shrinking. People nowadays like to spend time a lot more pretty much everywhere else on the Internet than on Wikimedia projects.
It is time for free knowledge to transition to a concept where people get paid, not the wiki concept that worked fine to start out in the beginning, but whose limits have now become clear.