Source: NYT > Business (paywall)
Wikipedia's unpaid editors face dual threats: AI companies train on their work without compensation, and state actors alter historical records. The platform must now balance open access with protecting its integrity as a knowledge commons. A new leadership appointment signals a shift from passive openness to active defense—treating Wikipedia not as a neutral repository but as contested ground where geopolitical and corporate interests directly threaten crowdsourced authority. Free knowledge infrastructure built on goodwill cannot sustain itself when openness becomes both economically extractable and politically weaponizable.