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> How exactly do you expect wikipedia to survive if no one ever has to actually go there

Did they start running ads or something?

They've been requesting for donations on their website, the main source of their income.

That doesn't mean you can't use Wikipedia's content in other ways, nor does it make it immoral to do so.

I found this page which gives an overview of what's ok to do with their content. Mirroring is literally the first example they give.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

It doesn't mean that everyone that visits Wikipedia is going to donate.

It means that they save a TON of bandwidth from people that would access Wikipedia for a specific information and bounce, it doesn't alienate the important part of Wikipedia's maintenance: editors and collaborators.

So all-in-all the lost revenue from donations is more than covered by the savings in bandwidth.

If we extrapolate what you're saying, no one visiting their website would mean all the bandwidth saving, but no income at all. So it doesn't hold good.

Yes, they essentially run ads asking for donations. Sometimes entire above-the-fold ads. They can get pretty hardcore like those personal appeals from Jimmy Wales.

Pretty much what it takes to get people to donate money to one of the most important and popular websites online.

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