Projekt:Podcast/Avsnitt 349
Avsnitt 349
Inspelningsdatum: 1 februari 2026
Publiceringsdatum: 9 februari 2026
Lyssna:
Extern länk: https://wikipediapodden.se/wikimedia-futures-lab-frank-schulenburg-349/
Programanteckningar
Programledare är Jan Ainali.
Special episode
This is the eighth episode in a series of ten short interviews recorded at the Wikimedia Futures Lab in Frankfurt. In this episode, recorded on day three, we meet the Executive Director of the Wiki Education Foundation, Frank Schulenburg.
Transcript
Welcome to Wikipediapodden and this series of interviews from the Wikimedia Futures Lab in Frankfurt, the last weekend of January 2026. My name is Jan Ainali. Here we will meet participants, panelists and organizers to give you an idea of what happened at the lab. The interviews took place over three days, with the first one just before it started and the last just after the closing ceremony. So you will get to gauge where the attendees were at each point in time. This is the eighth interview out of ten recorded on day three.
So my name is Frank Schulenburg and I've been a contributor to the German language Wikipedia for now more than 20 years. In 2008 I moved to California because the Wikimedia Foundation hired me and then in 2014 I started an organization called the Wiki Education Foundation. I'm still their executive director and I've been in that role for more than 11 years now.
We're here at day three of the Wikimedia Futures Lab. What made you come here to join and talk about the future?
Well, I think Wikipedia is at an inflection point right now. And looking back at all my years that I've been part of this project I would say it's the biggest inflection point ever that I can remember. There are so many things in our external environment that are changing right now. Be it AI, AI assisted editing that is kind of a big topic in our communities right now. And also like the younger generation looking at the internet in a different way than we did back then or than we do now. Because I think there are certain patterns that we're seeing. I'm very used to getting my information directly from Wikipedia. Whereas I think younger generation today says hey we're getting our information from TikTok, from YouTube. And that would never come to my mind to go to TikTok or YouTube if I have a question about life or whatever. And I think that we need to think about what we do with all of that, with those external trends. And that's why we're here.
The trends we've heard from people talking from within the movement. We have had the external experts talking about the trends in content, in consumers, in the contributors. Is there anything specific that you heard here that also resonates what you have met in your day to day work around the Wiki Education Foundation work?
Yeah, I think one of the most obvious things that we have to deal with is AI. And that means like my organization supports instructors who are using Wikipedia as a teaching tool. So the concept is relatively easy. The students write a Wikipedia article instead of writing a traditional term paper. And what we figured out over the last couple of years, I mean when did the big AI revolution start? I think it was like October 2022 or something. And we're seeing an increasing number of students who are using tools like ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever it is. I think it's mostly ChatGPT for those Wikipedia assignments. Right. And I personally think that I personally use AI tools a lot in my personal life, but also for work. And I think there are certain scenarios where these tools can help you and make things more efficient or be a good thought partner or just I'm not a native English speaker. And sometimes it's nicer to make my emails not sound very German anymore and de-Germanize them a little bit and make them sound more English. So there are some positive things and I think there is some positive use cases where AI could perhaps help you in your editing process. But what we're seeing with the students is that they copy and paste. They ask ChatGPT a question, they copy it directly from ChatGPT and then they use that output and put it onto Wikipedia. And what we've seen is that is damaging Wikipedia. That is not good. We don't want that behavior. Because what we found out, in particular in 2025 when we started digging a little bit deeper, is that then you are in a situation where the claim that's in the article is not backed up by the source. And in the beginning, in the early versions of ChatGPT, it was that like ChatGPT would hallucinate sources and now it has moved on. And what we're seeing now is the source exists. So it's a real source. It's not a made up source. But the claim is not backed up by the source. And that is really, really difficult to deal with. And what we have done as an organization, we have created a lot of training materials and we can see if you guide users. It's not just about students, right? It's all about new users who start their Wikipedia journey. If you give them some hand-holding and if you give them good training materials, they understand they don't want to damage Wikipedia, right? And they understand how to use it in a more responsible way. So as with many things in the Wikipedia world, I think there is a solution to it. And I think like good training and onboarding of new editors is key. And so that's one of the topics that I brought to this conference. And in general, I think there are a lot of other topics that we discussed here that are highly relevant for Wikipedia right now. And I wish we would, I would say we got a really good energy here in the room the last couple of days. We're on day three today. And I hope we can take that with us when we leave Frankfurt here and create something new and create a new spirit and maybe also rethink a couple of things that we've done in the past.
Yeah. And the general arc of the conference has been day one was learning, day two was thinking, today is doing. And it was sort of like, well, we were giving some insights or got the chance to draw some insights inspired by talks. And then we formed some hypothesis. And today we're designing experiments. Of everything you've seen, because there's a lot of things going on, is there anything that sort of gives you, oh, I really want to see this one going on or this one I want to try myself or I hope someone runs with this idea?
There are many things that I liked hearing about. And I don't think I have something very particular. I think is most important that we act quickly because we're seeing that our reader numbers are plummeting. We're seeing that the Internet is moving more towards like a one click. That's one of the terms that I took away from this conference for one click experience. People search for something on Google and then Google has this AI generated answer and people don't click through. Right. And that has a lot of implications for Wikipedia. And I don't just mean people don't see our fundraising banners anymore. But like the one thing that I'm concerned about most is where do our new contributors come from? We have in the past some effect of people reading a Wikipedia article, getting interested in, well, maybe I can contribute something. And it seems like that virtuous cycle is broken now. And so I'm mostly interested in personally, as a Wikipedia myself, I'm mostly interested in how can we bring new editors into the fold? Right. Like how can we show them that editing Wikipedia is the most exciting thing? Right. Like share that joy and fun of like creating something, creating an article, creating a photo. Right. And so I wish that were not the last generation of editors and photographers for Wikipedia or curators. Right. And we need to rethink what was true yesterday is not true today anymore. And Jimmy Wales, when when he gave presentations in the early days of Wikipedia, he always started with a quote that was about like an encyclopedia needs to be radical. And I think that we've lost a little bit of that spirit. And going back to that idea of we need to maybe be more radical as we were in the beginning. I think that could be something that we take away from this conference.
I really like that. And I think I also agree with you on that might be missing. So with that as maybe a general takeaway for everybody here. But also, is there something you want to say to people who cannot be here and haven't seen the process of all the ideas we generated? Because this has not been a decision making. It's more like a proposal making. And now we sort of need to invite everyone else in the communities to do you want to go along on this ride? Is there something you want to send along with them?
I think I have messages for two distinct group of people. The first group is those that are the builders in our community, those that are comfortable in this lab setting that we've seen here today. That doing experiments is necessary in this situation. And we need to kind of be open to new ideas. And that's where I go to the second group of people who I think in the overall community, we could say there are many people who are kind of a little bit standoffish when it comes to doing new things and changing the way we've done things in the past. And for those people, my message would be, be open. We cannot continue like this. We're already seeing it in the numbers. We're in a very difficult situation as Wikipedia. And I know we all together, we care deeply about the sum of all human knowledge. We care deeply about this project that we've been contributing to for years and years. We don't want it to decline. We don't want it to die. And that requires those two groups. The one, the experimenters who like to do new things. This is your hour. This is your moment. Do something. Come up with new ideas, right? Think about the problems that we're facing right now and get into action. And the second group, I say, be more open to when people come up with new ideas and embrace those ideas or at least be open to it and don't reject everything outright. Because if we have people who experiment and we have the others who are open, more open to those experiments, then we move forward. And that's what we need. This is the moment of changing things and adapting to what is happening to preserve what we all care so much about.
Thank you, Frank, for joining the podcast and enjoy the rest of day three.
Thank you very much.
This was the eighth interview out of ten. When all are published, you will find them on Wikimedia Commons, both in the Wikimedia Futures Lab and Wikipediapodden categories. And, of course, on Wikipediapodden.se under the Wikimedia Futures Lab tag. There you can also find other episodes in English.