Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia

Generative AI products that surface immediate answers - often without users following source links - are siphoning readers away from Wikipedia and other open knowledge systems. That loss of readership jeopardizes the volunteer ecosystem that writes, updates, and polices content: fewer readers mean fewer volunteers, fewer corrections, and a declining encyclopedia even as AI firms continue to depend on Wikipedia’s text to train their models. Some companies scrape content without permission while others (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta) pay for high-speed API access; machine-generated competitors like Grokipedia and past commercial projects such as Encarta illustrate different threats to volunteer-led knowledge. The result is an existential risk to a self-governing, noncommercial knowledge commons whose contributions have global reach.

Academics, by virtue of their role in producing, validating and teaching knowledge, have an ethical obligation to defend these systems. Drawing on a social-connection account of responsibility, the case is made that scholars should contribute subject expertise directly to pages, cite Wikipedia when used, and integrate student editing assignments into curricula. Programmes like Wiki Education have already channeled student labor - over 152,000 students at 8,000+ institutions producing 125 million words - and account for roughly 19% of new active editors. To fulfill this duty at scale, universities must recognise and resource public-service work such as Wikipedia engagement in hiring, promotion, and teaching support.