Donations rarely work.  They certainly fail any game theoretic model.<p>A rationally self-interested person would not donate, because in most cases, their donation would not give them as much benefit as the cost.<p>The way you&#x27;d measure benefit is the value received from the site, times times the chance that their donation makes the difference between the site existing and not existing.  That chance is typically a very small number.<p>Naive articles like this don&#x27;t bother factoring in what the chance is that your donation will make a difference....in other words they ignore the fact that most people would rather be a freeloader than a sucker.