This counter argument would be valid if wikipedia model had failed but it actually manage to fund the project for 10+ years.

The day the usual website will receive 12 to 20Billions views a month and occupy 10TB of disk space, then we could use wikipedia as a representative example. Until then wikipedia should not be used as an example of how well the usual ad-supported website would fare with an alternative revenue model.

IINM wikipedia has chosen a business model not based on ads which successfully funds the project for about 10+ years.

> The day the usual website will receive 12 to 20Billions views a month and occupy 10TB of disk space, then we could use wikipedia as a representative example. Until then wikipedia should not be used as an example of how well the usual ad-supported website would fare with an alternative revenue model.

Yes, that was my point — Wikipedia is probably the absolute best-case scenario for a free website that isn't supported by ads, and they're still panhandling. The usual ad-supported website would fare much, much worse, and would probably just stop providing its service to the world.

Wikipedia most definitely does NOT require the donations they ask for every december to continue day-to-day operations. In fact, they can survive quite comfortably on the standard donation rate they receive each month outside the December drive[1].

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_reports#Fun...