The irony is that Wikimedia already pays for the cost of serving pages — it's just invisible to users because donors cover it. Micropayments via Lightning aren't about "charging for knowledge," they're about sustainable access models in the face of high-frequency bot loads (especially from AI). If AI crawlers are consuming massive resources, it's not unreasonable to explore accountability — not for readers, but for automated extractors.

And, even better, those micropayments could be shared with the volunteers. How about a big party for them, or gifts on Amazon for good behavior? How about a simple birthday card? There's a lot that can be done with resources like this!