logoalt Hacker News

lich_kingyesterday at 10:46 PM1 replyview on HN

Nah. Wikipedia is popular because it is the #1 search result for a lot of stuff. Most of people going there just want to look up something for a homework assignment, online argument, or whatever. If Grokipedia has an error rate 5%, compared to 1% for Wikipedia, it's probably still fine.

If Wikipedia traffic shrinks down just to the true "encyclopedia reader" crowd, they will be in trouble, because I suspect that's less than 10% of their current donations. And Grokipedia is already starting to crop up in search results.


Replies

20after4today at 12:06 AM

Wikipedia has an endowment big enough to sustain the site's basic maintenance, essentially forever. If donations disappeared then they would have to severely cut spending, however, I don't think it would be an existential threat.