Readers/Newsletter updates

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August 2025: Newsletter #1

Hello from the new Readers teams!

It’s been a while since we’ve been in touch, and a lot has happened that we want to share with you. In July, the Web team was formally disbanded to seed two new teams: Reader Growth and Reader Experience.

• Reader Experience focuses on features designed for existing active readers, while Reader Growth focuses on new and casual readers.
• Both teams work on desktop and mobile platforms.

From now on, we’ll be using this newsletter to share out updates on the work of both Readers teams.

Why did we create these teams?

Wikipedia’s pageviews have either stayed flat or declined in the past few years, while global internet usage has increased. This means that the percentage of internet users that find, use, and appreciate Wikipedia is decreasing significantly. We’re also seeing decreases in unique devices from regions where we previously saw growth, like North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia.

Account creations have been decreasing steadily since 2020, going from about 120,000 accounts created per month, down to about 80,000 accounts created.

Fewer readers means fewer future editors. We’re already seeing a dropoff in new editors, reflected in the drastic decreases to account creation since 2020.

Pageviews across Wikipedias from 2019–2025. After an increase during the pandemic, pageviews have remained relatively flat. During this time, internet usage globally has only continued to increase.

To ensure the longevity of Wikipedia, we need to show new readers how Wikipedia can be useful to them and to deepen existing readers’ connections to the platform. That’s where the work of the Readers teams comes in: we want to make sure Wikipedia knowledge can reach and engage readers, taking into consideration different learning styles and preferences.

For all of this work, we want to hear from you! For example...

• What are ways you think we can be more useful on a person’s first ever visit to Wikipedia, whether they’re 20 or 85?
• How do you think we can help more experienced readers go from simply reading to actively learning?
• Where do you see opportunities for supporting visual and auditory learners?

What we’ve been up to

We got a lot of great questions from the audience and insights from editors from various Wikipedias.

Earlier this month, we held a panel at Wikimania Nairobi with Justin and Nat from Readers, PMG from Polish Wikipedia, Sdkb from English Wikipedia, and Youngjin from Korean Wikipedia.

We discussed how community members and WMF can best work together on improving the reading experience, what metrics and data about readers are useful to editors, and how editors take into account different reader needs in their contributions.

Some key points made:

• The Foundation should share useful data with editors about readers, like what parts of a page readers spend the most time on, and what proportions of readers are mobile or app users.
• There should be more points of connection between the Foundation and editors to learn what they are already doing on their wikis for readers.
• Editors are addressing readers with different needs and learning styles in many ways, from AI gadgets to improve translation quality, to standard pixel size for images on different devices.

Watch the recording.

Next steps

We will soon invite feedback on some upcoming experiments, but don’t hesitate to reach out beforehand with questions, concerns, ideas, or suggestions! We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to email me at eblackorby@wikimedia.org, ping me at EBlackorby-WMF, or join the conversation here.