AfterDawn: Tech news

Wikipedia raises $16 million, stays ad-free

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 03 Jan 2011 12:48 User comments (11)

Wikipedia raises $16 million, stays ad-free The Wikimedia Foundation, parent of online encyclopedia Wikipedia has said this weekend that they have raised $16 million, allowing the service to remain ad-free for another year.
Founder Jimmy Wales said the fundraiser was the "shortest" in the company's history, lasting just over 50 days.

Over 500,000 individuals made donations, doubling on 2009's count.

Donors from 140 countries donated an average of $22, and $13.7 million of the donations came via the Internet. The rest came from direct checks.

All the money will go to paying off Wikipedia's ever-increasing infrastructure costs, staffing, program support and grants.

Concluded Wales (via PCM):
This outpouring of support by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people from all walks of life is a testament to the spirit of the Wikimedia movement. Wikipedia is a public resource created and maintained by hundreds of thousands of volunteers, relied on by over 400 million people and paid for by half a million donors. It's truly user-created, supported and maintained.

Tags: Wikipedia
Previous Next  

11 user comments

13.1.2011 01:05

Stay strong Wiki, stay strong.

23.1.2011 06:11
me
Unverified new user

"The Wikipedia Foundation" parent of....--should be wikimedia foundation

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

33.1.2011 08:57

if only wikipedia was a reliable source of information.

43.1.2011 10:34

Nice to see my ten bucks made a difference.

53.1.2011 12:51

Originally posted by xboxdvl2:
if only wikipedia was a reliable source of information.
It's a pretty damn good source, though. If anything it's a great source for references, and then you can site the references instead of wikipedia.

63.1.2011 16:48

Originally posted by toked:
Originally posted by xboxdvl2:
if only wikipedia was a reliable source of information.
It's a pretty damn good source, though. If anything it's a great source for references, and then you can site the references instead of wikipedia.

This right here is how you do it.

73.1.2011 18:10

Originally posted by toked:
Originally posted by xboxdvl2:
if only wikipedia was a reliable source of information.
It's a pretty damn good source, though. If anything it's a great source for references, and then you can site the references instead of wikipedia.

Passed many a papers doing exactly this. It's stupid that college professors ban wikipedia.

84.1.2011 23:37

Originally posted by Azuran:
It's stupid that college professors ban wikipedia.
Because Wikipedia is only as good as it's best contributor on any given subject. That might be fine for some subjects, but hardly good for many others.

95.1.2011 16:32

I wouldn't use it to write a thesis or dissertation, but a crap GE course no gives a crap about?

107.1.2011 18:25

F#$k Wikipedia... I heard about a guy in Savannah that chronicled my entire career running the world's oldest and longest running internet based music magazine. It was on Wikipedia for about half a year to a year or so, and then the bastards took it down, citing "no relevancy" or some such bull. One of them even said there were no links, when I remembered seeing links on there to WREKage, the radio station I guest hosted at, and some other links to review sites or something... Whoever this guy was I would LOVE to thank him personally (and also wondering if I have some kinda stalker out there!) Anyway, if you wanna see what the wikipedia entry USED to look like, it's here:

http://wikibin.org/articles/vibrations-of-doom.html

I need to get in touch with them (hadn't thought about it until today) and figure out why they think there's no relevancy here... EVERY single available issue is up and on the site from 1992 till the present (I just released issue #50 on Christmas day 2010!)

Anyway, I'll jump off the soapbox now... I guess they're good for what they do, but I have ALSO heard that they are VERY elitist and have that god complex... You know, the kind of snobbery usually found in World Of Warcraft players...

117.1.2011 21:14

Quote:
Anyway, I'll jump off the soapbox now... I guess they're good for what they do, but I have ALSO heard that they are VERY elitist and have that god complex... You know, the kind of snobbery usually found in World Of Warcraft players...
Yeah thats very true.

Comments have been disabled for this article.

News archive