Wikipedia only works because of the massive user contributions and moderation.
Losing even a small proportion of contributors could seriously affect the future development of Wikipedia.
Losing even a small proportion of contributors could seriously affect the future development of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has been slowly losing editors for ~12 years[0].
[0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_editors_on_En...
The sale or takeover would start with promises that nothing would change, and then would change slowly enough that each editor would have a different breaking point and thus be too fragmented to move over at a specific point.