If you have been on Wikipedia in the past few days, you must have noticed an appeal from co-founder Jimmy Wales. It comes up every December, like clockwork. Like any website, Wikipedia has server costs, administration costs, staff costs, and more. For a website the size of Wikipedia, these costs are tremendous.

It claims nearly half a billion unique visitors and over 20 billion page views every month. The bulk of the expenditure goes towards better engineering and infrastructure. The new Wikipedia Android beta app read our review Android Finally Gets The Wikipedia It Deserves: Meet The New Wikipedia Beta Android Finally Gets The Wikipedia It Deserves: Meet The New Wikipedia Beta It's surprising that despite there being so many great Android apps out there, there has not been a decent Wikipedia app so far.

Well, all that changes with the new Wikipedia Beta! Read More is a great example of the end result of this work. The staff is also planned to increase from to Then there are initiatives like Wikipedia Zero, which serve Wikipedia at no cost to the user, especially useful in developing countries.

Wikipedia Zero has been quite successful, serving 65 million page views per month, far higher than the 35 million estimated by the organization. Wikipedia is transparent in saying it exceeded the planned revenue targets in previous years and expects to do the same this year.

Of course, this has meant Wikipedia has plenty of reserves already. What Wales says can create the picture that internet hosting is the major cost. You know what gets the same amount of money? On offer to the attending writers is just soda and pizza, Kohs says. The value in the Wikimedia projects is primarily created by individual editors: Gardner also called for more accountability of these movement entities who request funds, to clearly define success or failure. So why should you donate to Wikipedia when it could be cutting costs and tightening its belt?

At the time of writing there are over 4 million articles contained within the English language version, with more being added all the time. All of these pages are The most easily accessed.

But it could be cached. It could be left to stagnate, neglected and forgotten. Worse, it could become the rarefied domain of the monied elite, like so much information before it. So, fine, Jimmy Wales. I will do my part. NYMag also interviewed four people who donated to Wikipediato find out why they did it despite knowing they could still use the site. And then there are people like Jim Pacha, who donated his entire estate to the Wikimedia Foundation.

While Wikipedia is staunchly against advertising for the potential conflict of interest in the authenticity of its contentthere are other revenue models that could be explored. Not everyone is against the idea of ads, though. His logic, at its core, is compelling:. If Wikipedia fails to meet its monetary requirements, then the idea of Wikipedia and the information therein is all out there, just waiting for someone else to come along and do it all again in a different, more easily sustainable manner.

This is not a phenomenon that is just going to go away. Right now, Wikipedia is looking for donations at donate. Though that campaign is no longer active you can still mail So with the above information, will you be contributing to Wikipedia or not?

We would love to hear your reasons either way in the comments below. Your email address will not be published. I am fine with the people who do not want to donate but I don't particularly care for those who try to push their opinion, either way, on others.

No, they do not deserve any more money! Why don't you try fixing that, Jimmy, you lying, sleazy, money-grubber!! The operating cost figures stated here are minimal for an organisation of ubiquitous presense and paying significant travel and event costs are necessary for a future looking organisation. I think that it is the most useful resource on the Internet, but before giving a donation which I will on response to this post I would like to know what the salaries of key staff are to confirm it is non-profit.

It's my single source of reliable info, at three clicks away. Please continue the good work you do. As a disclaimer, I have been donating SEK about 12 - 13 USD per month for the past couple of years. It helped me immensely during my college days - assignments, exams, thesis and what not.

I could get a quick overview of any topic, any time, for free and without any annoying ads. This was in mid 's and there weren't as many resources as Wikipedia. It is like giving back something! Secondly, because I can afford it now. It is similar to games. I used to download all games from torrents when I was studying and couldn't afford any. Now, I buy each and every game, movie and video.

Probably a moral issue, but well! If my donation helps them to have something better to eat than pizza and soda during the workshops, then why not!? I don't expect them to live out of their basement and working in their pyjamas. Little bit of luxury is not a problem for the amount of effort they put in to share so much information!

At this current age of biased information overload, it feels safe to know that there is probably one site which still presents an 'almost' unbiased view of any topic in the world. A tool I rely on several times a week. I don't care too much what how they spend their money, its a thank you - the price of a good cup a coffee.

Fiona you are cool. This was the first comment I read and I was expecting something way different in the boards I like reading those too.

I worked at places that make a lot more than that I can't help but think Wiki probably is providing jobs for just a guess 40 or so families. Begging or panhandling is the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation.

Hi I once emailed the wiki people and suggested that they charge corporates, businesses and high profile individuals a small fee for being published on wikipedia. Well, it's not advertising if it's information, right?

If Wikipedia were to charge these corporates and use that as a revenue model, what's stopping these corporates from telling Wikipedia not to publish negative information about them?

If you go to any major corporation's Wikipedia page, there is usually an entry on controversies; some even have entire sub-wikis dedicated to controversies.

You can't have that if your money is coming from the same source. Ted, You are NOT alone! I do not see a reason to donate There is a very gray connection wiht Google. As google is well know for hiding results - you get what they want you to see - I would never trust a googl result. So google all it's various sites i can discover are blocked in my windows host file. I just do not trust wikipedia for their relationship with google.

I use ixquick and duckduckgo for results. Sometimes I use Ixquick's Startpage to widen the net. So if i were to pay anything, I would defiantely go to a well vetted true encyclopedia company like Brittanica.

I would trust their results to be factual, and no undercurrent of marketing bullshit. Could you back that up in some way?

When Google "donates" it involves yourself in your company, Google donations operate like International Aid, with strings attached. I guess I will be in the minority of the posts here and say I will NOT donate. Because it is not my go-to for information. I should qualify that: It is not my DIRECT go-to for information. I do not type "www. I do a search on DuckDuckGo and oftentimes, a link to a Wiki page is the first hit.

Did I request that? No, this is a function of the search engine and the webpage's metatags' efficacy. I sometimes go to that website, often I don't. This is different from, say, donation requests for national public radio stations.

I DO directly, by purposeful choice, select a radio station and listen to it. I did not get to the station by a radio search engine. This would be equivalent to me typing "www.

I even have a preset on my car radio for that public radio station. I do not have a bookmark for Wikipedia. Though Wikipedia has a lot of information and at times a lot of information on a particular subject sometimes it doesn'treliability, validity, and accuracy are in question.

But you may say, "That's true for anything you find on the web! IOW, if Wikipedia went away, I would survive. Heck, the world would survive. If you're putting out a "free" service for people to use, then don't ask money for it. This is actually one of the freshest perspectives I've heard about this debate.

Thanks for sharing, Ted! I do get your point.

Jimmy Wales - Encyc

To put it as an analogy, if you bought an encyclopaedia and referred to it, it's worth the money. If an encyclopaedia is available in the library and that's what someone points you to for research, then is it worth donating money to?

IMO, the question here then becomes about paying for a library membership. You're entitled to all the wealth of information in the library through that. What's the equivalent of that for the internet? This is a foolish outlook. Wikipedia is able to have a more neutral stance of the information that is published here. The ultimate issue with other information published on the internet is that money is always the motive.

Please correct me if you're wrong, but even non profits and other websites ultimately have shareholders and managing members to please. And not please like warm fuzzies, but through monetary gain. That is an absolute fact. Wikipedia has a wealth of information that is non biased because THE PEOPLE publish it.

If someone strays too far to one "side", there will be others to get it back in line with the neutral perspective. If you don't want to donate, that is absolutely fine. Go back to your radio that you choose to listen to.

But I gaurantee you, the information you hear on the radio has underlying motives. When millions are on the line and thin profit margins keep pushing our world economy, people sell out. You're being fed opinionated information, propoganda at it's finest when you listen to the radio stations.

It's silly and hypocritical for you to say that you go out of how do i get money in my offshore account hitman absolution way to use the DuckDuckGo search engine to somehow does wikipedia make money jimmy wales Google ha!

Your post holds no validity. Just don't want the rest of the sheep to read what you say and totally fall in line with it. It's a good cause. It's allowing them to further inform the people. After all, knowledge is power. Mihir Patkar, MakeUseOf should be proud of you as you are responding to all these comments.

I won't donate to Wikipedia until they figure out a way to make sure what's inputted is more accurate. I'm a political junkie and come voting season, there have been issues of people going in and changing the content on politicians. I don't care what political party anyone is but we need accuracy.

When I used to write, I would use Wikipedia but always as one source because when putting your name on something, Wikipedia is not the best content to depend on does wikipedia make money jimmy wales of the potential for errors.

I do believe they need to put the money into the people and grow that and not into posh headquarters and things like that. It's an anecdotal take based on my experiences, so I don't claim to be write, just passing on based on what I've seen. Correct me if I'm wrong please. I think the thought process behind the posh headquarters and other such indulgances is "you have to spend money to make money"--which works for several huge corporations like this, just that I don't see Wikipedia making money with this yet: If I am reading an article about quantum physics on wikipedia, it can show me related books in the end the page, perhaps because I am more interested in the topic then being an anti-advertising.

Affiliate commissions, you mean? Not sure that would get enough, especially since a lot of Wikipedia has citations to free resources and to scientific papers which many people won't want to read. I find Emily Dreyfuss' reason for donating quite adequate. You people who disagree obviously including binary options $5000 a week Mihit Patkar I guess you would prefer to have ads instead of fund raising.

Have you ever seen any serious encyclopedia having advertisements? If wikipedia had Nike Inc. So do you accuse that the people working there or the founder might earn significant amount of money? If you dont like index future trading strategy, the idea you're free to stop using this website.

You can turn to the old encyclopedia hardcopies or you can just google whatever you are interested in. Do you think it will yield the same results of informing you on the subject you re looking for? I will not donate to Wikipedia as it was caught publicly offering a "PR Service" coupled with the website's strong ties to the pharmaceutical companies. There are much better organizations in need of financial resources.

If any of this information is news to you, Sharyl Attkisson discusses it how do you make money on squidoo her book, "Stonewalled". I actually haven't seen anything about these strong ties to pharmaceutical companies causing a problem.

This is one of the articles I read about it: Is there anything in Stonewalled that is arti drawdown dalam forex this?

I doubt I'll actually read the book, so if you could inform me a bit, that's be great: You definitely work for wikipedia. Only workers have enough time to respond to almost every post that sides with giving them money.

Some people spend many hours a day on Facetube, twittering on about kittens and celebs while drowning in spam and adverts. For the non-brain dead among us there is Google search, Amazon, The BBCTED and Wikipedia. I donate about 20 dollars a year to Wikipedia. I consider it my subscription to the biggest repository of useful written stuffs on the internet.

I don't care how much money they have. I just want them to keep on Wiki -ing forever. Apple, MS and Google also have sturpendous piles of money. Some of it was mine.

I gave it to them because they gave me really wikipedia org wiki put option stuff. Wikipedia is no different. Google, Apple and MS are corporations whose aim is profits. Wikipedia is a non-profit organization. Does that factor into your decision, or do you think, "useful data is useful data, the intentions don't matter as much"? If we want products from a company like Microsoft, and we are not required to pay for those products, then we can be sure that Microsoft is, in some way, getting something from us, the users, when we use their products.

This is probably information. For-profit businesses are motivated to do stuff for us because when we use their products, we are doing something for them. We don't have much choice in this regard.

Wikipedia does not require value from it's users. Wikipedia puts out a product, and people use that product. For the most part, Wikipedia isn't really able to collect that much profitable information about the people using how do i earn cash on farmville product.

But Wikipedia is a huge company. Many many people use it's services. Remember that even people working for non-profit organizations at least have to make a living wage, or even a comfortable wage. Do you really want expert professionals to be worrying about whether they can afford rent payments? Despite all of this though, nobody is required to pay to use Wikipedia.

Be you a poor student with nothing to your name, studying hard to make something better for your future, or a billionaire CEO of a Fortune company, nobody is required to use Wikipedia. As others have said, if everybody who uses Wikipedia collectively decided to never again donate to Wikipedia, either it would die, or it would very quickly have to find a for-profit way to support itself.

Clearly, that hasn't happened yet, but it could happen. Even so, we the users are still not required to support Wikipedia. So if you want to give to Wikipedia, do so. If you don't, don't. It is really as simple as that. When I do internet research I usually start with Wikipedia to get an overview and more importantly, to get specific and accurate search terms to move on to more academic sites.

Wikipedia is a valuable resource to me and I can afford to donate a bit so it feels like a small donation is reasonable. I'm trying to get a perspective of how much money people are willing to donate, so if you don't mind sharing and you're under no compulsion to do so: What would be the maximum you donate? I'd be more willing to donate if they weren't burning so much money on physical Bay Area locations.

The Bay Area and the "Valley" of the Silicon variety are both overpriced and underwhelming; there's literally zero reason to base operations out of either of those places other than "lol evry1 els iz ther lol".

They probably wouldn't lose nri investment options in india 2012 whole lot by selling those expensive offices and picking up something in Sacramento which is only 2 hours away and much cheaper or Reno which is another 2 hours away and even cheaper ; Reno in particular is on the cusp of a massive tech boom, from what I can tell.

I'd also rather not be paying for "outreach" programs, either. Wikipedia is a household name at this point, and it's become one almost entirely due to word-of-mouth; more formal advocacy is just a waste of money. I've found Wikipedia far more valuable than any other encyclopedia hell, probably more valuable than all other encyclopedias - every volume, every edition - combined.

I'm not too sure about the real estate bit, but in terms of spreading the word, I think it's still important. Wikipedia is a swks stock options name, yes, but it needs to draw out contributors from local languages if it's truly going to be a global force.

To do that, these outreach programs would be necessary, I think. I find that quite a few of my internet searches end up at Wikipedia, so I don't mind donating.

It's like paying for services rendered. If there were ads, however, I'd use an adblocker and probably not donate anymore because it would look like they already turtle indicator stock market a sufficient revenue stream. And yeah, I'd think some of their entries would be biased in favor of the advertisers so not as trustworthy.

So you're happy with the system the way it is right now, yes? Just out of curiosity, how much do you donate? Some charities are more interested having a good time. After reading your article I will not donate. No need for fancy offices or even in San Francisco the highest Sq. Cost west of New York. People donate to advance Wikipedia not the people. I was actually not making forex spot rates chart case for donating or not donating: It was an attempt to just present facts and opinions of different people, and see what comes out of it.

I have donated to Wikipedia in the past and will continue to do so. Very few resources on citibank forex rates today Internet provide the information value that Wikipedia offers.

You can learn at least the basics and often more about anything day trading for beginners pdf Wikipedia in a straightforward format.

Its self-policing nature provides better accuracy and less bias than most other sources. Added to its ease of use and regular updating, I turn to Wikipedia first when I want to learn something. Then I go on to more specialized sources armed with enough background to make sense of them and winnow the bias, if necessary. Just like National Public Radio in the USAvalue should be given for quality service received. Wikipedia needs our ongoing support to continue to improve and maintain its unbiased approach to information access.

Everyone should contribute - if not monetarily, by spending time writing or editing articles. The "if I can't contribute info, I should contribute money" line of thinking is something many people tout. The common criticism is that with that philosophy, you are equating the money with the content. However, as we have seen, a majority of the money isn't used for the content makers.

I picked that number based on my use of Wikipedia. I rely on it for quick answers and a broad overview of my current topic of interest. It is not my main source for information, even if it is the first place I look most of the time.

Annual fundraising is nowhere near as annoying as daily ads would be. How could anyone think that ads would be a good idea? Rhonda, would you mind sharing how you landed on that number?

I donated a dollar a few years ago. Yes, just a dollar. Unemployed I didn't feel I could give a lot but something, anything, I thought was necessary since I use the site so much. Hey, I use the site a lot and they don't advertise so why not give them a few dollars.

They aren't hard up for money, but like I said, I use it a lot. When it comes to donations, I don't think the amount matters as much if it's coming from a good place: There's no reason to be apologetic about it "just being a dollar"--that's still a lot more than several millions on the internet.

Well, I try to make it revenue neutral. I sell something I don't need in order to donate to something I use, in this case, Wikipedia. That a good enough answer for you?

Wikipedia donors willing to pay – so long as they don’t see Jimmy Wales | Tech blog

I've donated to them for the last couple of years. They provide a valuable service and I don't want the ads. You get asked if you haven't donated in at least one year, otherwise the cookie turns the banner off if you donate regularly. Or as someone else pointed out above, you sign in and donate. If your account is among those who donated, no ads for you.

I want them to be rich. I don't see a problem with a model used elsewhere - you get ads with the free service but by paying a little you get an ad-free feed.

I'll not be donating again because I would expect an email to say "thanks" and then maybe an offer of an occasional newsletter. When I donated last year I got no acknowledgement. Surely they could manage a simple automated bit of courtesy. An occasional newsletter would make me feel I was somehow part of the circle of interested parties and supporters and would serve to make me more inclined to donate again.

That's actually really good feedback, robh. I'm with you, I would want acknowledgement and some sort of benefit; maybe even a receipt for tax purposes? The thank-you letter serving as a tax invoice is generated automatically and I have never missed one in any of my multiple donations. Therefore it is much productive to just check your spam folder or request a new one rather than complaining!

And Mr Mihir Patkar, you obviously never donated to Wikipedia no matter how much Wikipedia has in reserve. Otherwise, you would have received receipts and given better advice rather than making inaccurate accusation towards Wikipedia. I live in India, the donations aren't tax-deductible here: Also, I'm not making any points against or for Wikipedia. This is one of those issues I really don't have a strong opinion on, so I'm looking for as much information as possible.

Sorry if you thought I was being biased, that wasn't the intent. I think Wales runs the fundraiser every year simply because it's become a habit, rather than actually looking at cash reserves and actually deciding how much funds are needed.

It's easy to tell yourself that a catastrophe could happen and rationalize banking huge amounts of cash "just in case. That's exactly the argument that Wikipediocracy and other critics are citing. I have to say, I kind of agree. How do they protect themselves against one of those "just in case" scenarios though? I use the site, I benefit from the site, and I feel they have earned at least a few of my dollars. You're all right with donating even though most of the money isn't being spent on the content of the site itself, which is what I presume you benefit from?

They provide a great service. How they spend their money is up to them but, as long as the service is valuable and conflict-free, I'll support them. Hell, all of you spend a heck of a lot more on government corruption, fraud, and waste than what Wiki is asking for. By gov't standards, Wiki is one of the greatest deals going, not to mention, useful! I'm not a fan of bell-ringing begging, or interrupting my path to get my attention think street clipboard beggars.

But Ads on Wikipedia itself isn't a good idea. Now while I really don't care because I personally run ad blocking software, I still stand by the clean look. Now if a SERVICE provider, IE, host, etc wanted to donate and have a link at the top of the Wikipedia page, I don't think that would raise any conflict of interest.

ANYONE who gets a banner is a potential conflict of interest. If someone is an advertiser on the site, how do you know that their Wiki entry isn't getting some benefits? Wikipedia wants to skirt that. Have for a few years. Will probably continue to do so. Don't want ads there. It helps a lot with the historical context research as a beginning step for my genealogy research.

I pay for Ancestry. How much do you donate to Wikipedia, compared to Ancestry. I've always been tempted to donate to wikipedia, but never done so. In the past I've worked with charities to help them become more sustainable, with the ability to fund themselves through more commercial operations. Wikipedia has a springboard better than most could even imagine for this purpose- if they want some ideas, give me a shout. So, in my view, donations are just the 'easy' option for them, but not necessarily the best.

Keep in mind, they've specifically said they want to avoid advertising and any similar conflict of interest. Wikipedia's potential to generate revenue from advertising is the key reason why I refuse to donate. I ask because Adblock and other such extensions can be a big factor in not being able to make enough money from ads.

But the question is, does it really need it, when it claims to be a "by the people, for the people" institution? I contributed to Wikipedia. I use it more than the copy of Encyclopedia Brittanica, digital edtion which is also worth buying that I paid about 20 for on amazon, so I don't mind supporting a great cause. But the constant, never-ending appeals do annoy me greatly. I found out that if you use AdBlockPlus, you can block them by installing the Fanboy's Annoyance List filter.

I did this a week ago and haven't seen an ad since.

Wikipedia Has Millions In The Bank – Why Beg For More?

Regardless of how much money they have in their coffers, there is nothing wrong with contributing to them--they do provide a great service. I just wish they would give contributors a login that would allow them to view Wiki adfree. But now that I have AdBlockPlus working, I don't even need that. For anyone wondering, this is the link to the Fanboy's Annoyance List: Mihir Patkar is a freelance writer on technology and life hacks, who firmly believes chocolate is the answer to any question.

You can usually find him saying other such silly things on Twitter. Popular Topics The Internet Windows iPhone and iPad Android Mac Gaming. MakeUseOf 7 Essential Kodi Tips for New Users. Entertainment 7 Essential Kodi Tips for New Users Dan Price.

Smart Home 15 Weird Smart Home Gadgets No One Should Ever Want Dan Price. Wikipedia Has Millions In The Bank — Why Beg For More? Web Culture Wikipedia Has Millions In The Bank — Why Beg For More? Mihir Patkar December 18, 6 minutes. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stumbleupon Whatsapp Email. How To Use illridewithyou Next Post What Is The Sharing Economy, And What Does It Mean For You? I use this site many times a week. Why not throw a little green their way? Mihir, Asking for donations and charity is not equal to begging.

Best way to monetize and be useful for wikipedi is refering books. THAT IS THE POINT. When it comes to Wikipedia, the major difference, is choice. I get that they have costs. I also realize that the bulk of those costs are self-inflicted. That's a great answer! And actually, a solid plan for anyone else who wants to donate to charities.

Does knowing the above financial situation change your mind in any way? I use it all the time. How about a freemium service with cookie control. We all use it. Nothing is free, and knowledge is priceless.

In that context, it seems trivial to give a few bucks: The internet is already so flooded with ads, I'd rather donate a few bucks a month. You might be in the minority, my friend: Out of curiosity, how much would you donate per month? Just for argument's sake, what would those commercial options be for them? So you'd be okay with seeing ads in Wikipedia? That's actually a great tip, Paul! If you contribute, use Adblock to remove the annoying banners. Mihir Patkar articles.

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