This session will give an overview on the impact of high volume bot traffic on Wikimedia’s infrastructure and the work that is underway to establish sustainable pathways for content reuse and to improve the overall developer experience.

Since 2024 we’re observing a significant rise in demand for Wikimedia’s content, via mechanisms including scraping, APIs, and bulk downloads. Most of the increase in traffic to our sites is coming from scraping bots collecting training data for large language models (LLMs), which in return enables products such as chat-based search engines or virtual assistants. This expansion caused a high load on our infrastructure, which is taking time and resources away that we need to support the Wikimedia projects, contributors and readers. At the same time, this happens largely without sufficient attribution, which is key to drive new users to participate in the movement.

The goal of this session is to provide insights in challenges and opportunities in the field of automated access, explore what is required to establish a sustainable model for knowledge as a service, and share how we are approaching this work in the upcoming months (see objective WE5 in the 2025/26 annual plan of the Wikimedia Foundation: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2025-2026/Product_%26_Technology_OKRs#Responsible_Use_of_Infrastructure_(WE5)).

This overview is designed for both technical and non-technical audiences. Everyone is welcome to join!