Wikipedia Is Battling for the Soul of the Internet

Wikipedia is in peril.In a world where trust in truth is crumbling, the grande dame of collective online fact-gathering is under threat on every front.The MAGA right, with Elon Musk at the fore, is slinging accusations of political bias and antisemitism and has even questioned the site’s nonprofit status.

Artificial intelligence is raiding the encyclopedia’s resources and draining attention.Repressive governments have hauled its volunteer editors into penal colonies.In Wikipedia’s 25-year history, it has never had to fight this hard.The organization that supports the site, the Wikimedia Foundation, is increasing its lobbying budget and advertising in Times Square.

It is charging companies like Google and Meta that gobble up the encyclopedia’s 65 million articles, and throttling access for certain scrapers.And it is expanding its human rights team to better protect volunteers against rising harassment, surveillance and retaliation.For an organization that holds neutrality as a cardinal rule, it is a lot of conflict, requiring Wikimedia to go on the offensive — diplomatically, of course.So it found a diplomat: Bernadette Meehan, 50, became Wikimedia’s chief executive in January, after stints as the U.S.

ambassador to Chile and at the Obama Foundation, at the State Department, at the National Security Council and on Wall Street.In a career full of high-wire acts — helping to negotiate nuclear deals with Iran, facilitating talks with Cuba — being the custodian of one of the world’s 10 most visited websites could be Ms.Meehan’s trickiest task.

The trilingual former public servant is the first with her background in the Wikimedia job, succeeding mostly women from fields like law, journalism and Planned Parenthood.Ms.Meehan will not say Wikipedia is at war — not after she spent much of 2007 in Iraq, in an actual war zone where she witnessed “the supreme cruelty of human beings.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enabl...