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 information offered by the website is any less valuable
Wikipedia, while not being reliant on ads, nor even on donations that much (given how much they have amassed) is still 100% dependent on having active users. People who get a ChatGPT answer will not go on to edit Wikipedia if that answer happens to be wrong. They won't curate articles to notice when someone is vandalizing them and put the right info back.
"Popular" information, evidenced by web traffic for example, may be important for so-called "tech" companies seeking to profit from intermediating access to free, public information, i.e., acting as a middleman. The information may be valuable to the so-called "tech" company middleman for purposes of supporting data collection, surveillance and online advertising services
However, the so-called "tech" company does not determine the value of the information to others. For example, a small group of people may find information on a web page to be valuable for their individual purposes. The web page may receive little traffic. The amount of traffic does not determine the value of the information to the small group
I think number of "active Wikipedia editors" is more important than number of "active Wikipedia users"
"AI search" might cause a decline in active users, but I cannot see how "AI search" would cause a decline in Wikipedia editors
Many Wikipedia editors are responsible for low traffic pages. I would imagine they are motivated to maintain these pages due to interest in the subject matter not interest in web traffic
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
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 information offered by the website is any less valuable