@mpjgregoire I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think it's a case where stasis tends to go into a downward spiral.
So, could the project get along without *new* editors? Probably for a while. But editors move on and stop editing -- there's a pretty high churn on Wikipedia. It would be harder and harder for the editors to keep up.
It's also a loose-knit group with a lot of conflict that is resolved on-wiki. As people leave, it's harder to do that resolution.
Gradually, the content would suffer -- which would mean even fewer new editors.
@mpjgregoire I think the question you're asking is why Wikipedia can't just hit some point in time, park the content there, and call it a day, without attracting new editors?
Editors are needed all the time for two reasons. One is that the world keeps happening, and we need to include that new knowledge. Second is that Wikipedia is incomplete, and we want to make it better.
@evan It's true that she (and other people benefitting from Wikipedia) would be less likely to write an article about that interesting monument in Chittagong than she once was: editing is less at-hand for people who find Wikipedia information via a search engine or an LLM, and mobile devices are ill-suited to writing long, serious texts. The trend seems to be that Wikipedia will have fewer editors and fewer new articles, but like the barley farm, that could remain sustainable.
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@evan I was wondering why Wikipedia can't be a "little barley field and a little wood lot and a little university and you just chill and eat mushroom barley soup and write poetry by your wood fire". One of the links you posted ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Schiste/what-now ) gives some answers.
But on reflection, I'm not so sure. I see how the lack of articles in Bengali is a problem; but in 2026, if someone wants to read about Pytheas in Bengali, she can easily use machine translation to do so.
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btw this is a great story https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/05/best-free-restaurant-bread-america/686582/ and if you have Apple News, Share > Open in News
Speaking of Apple News for a moment, if you're a subscriber and come across a paywalled article in Safari, it's often worth a try to click the Share button and choose "Open in News."
That'll take you right to the unpaywalled Apple News version of the story, if you're a subscriber. F'rinstance someone sent me a link to a story on TheAtlantic.com and I couldn't read it all in Safari, but two clicks later, there it was in News.
wish I could automate this, hmmm
@shayman This is the thing that most makes me avoid Apple News. It’s just too much and not what I expect from Apple.