I'll go out on a limb and say we _need_ Wikipedia and it's okay that traffic falls. Physical print encyclopedias got replaced by Wikipedia, but AI isn't a replacement (can't ever see how either). While AI is a method of easier access for the end user, the purpose of Wikipedia stands on its own. I've always scoffed at the Wikimedia Foundation's warchest and continuously increasing annual spending. I say now is the tim…
There should be many offline copies of Wikipedia since it makes data dumps publicly available Perhaps Wikimedia is only mentioning a drop in traffic as it suggests how www users may be gathering information, not because it is commercially significant, e.g., decline in audience for advertising Indeed, it is okay for traffic to fall when a website is not trying sell out www users to advertisers. It does not mean the in…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_information
In the world of so-called "tech" companies, who use public information found on the www as "bait" to attract potential ad targets for data collection, surveillance and sometimes programmatic, targeted advertising, the information may have a value to those companies, for that purpose. They might measure that value by how popular the information is amongst www users
But I'm referring to the value of information published on Wikipedia to www users, not so-called "tech" companies who seek to intermediate access to free, public information that they did not themselves produce