Wikipedia, the world’s 5th largest website, is completely free, with no advertisements or sponsorships. It's a Wikimedia Foundation project to build free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Virtually anyone with Internet access is free to contribute, by contributing neutral, cited information. As of March 2008 Wikipedia is offered in 250 languages. Wikipedia needs donations to keep running, it needs a decent amount of cash to stay free.

Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, an entrepreneur best known for founding Wikipedia, has appealed for the donation. Click here if you consider making a donation.

From Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

Google might have close to a million servers. Yahoo has something like 13,000 staff. We have 679 servers and 95 staff.

Wikipedia is the #5 site on the web and serves 450 million different people every month – with billions of page views.

Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn't belong here. Not in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others.

When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but I decided to do something different. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep it lean and tight. We fulfill our mission, and leave waste to others.

If everyone reading this donated $5, we would only have to fundraise for one day a year. But not everyone can or will donate. And that's fine. Each year just enough people decide to give.

This year, please consider making a donation of $5, €10, ¥1000 or whatever you can to protect and sustain Wikipedia.

Thanks,

Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia Founder

 

Where your donation goes:

Technology: Servers, bandwidth, maintenance, development. Wikipedia is the #5 website in the world, and it runs on a fraction of what other top websites spend.

People: The other top 10 websites have thousands of employees. We have fewer than 100 employees, making your donation a great investment in a highly-efficient not-for-profit organization.

I think it's time to say YES to the advertisement banner and affiliation programs rather than every year appealing for donation to their users. He can make his own advertisement plan by creating a hub for publishers and advertisers like google, yahoo and facebook are doing.