I received this in my email today and thought I would pass it on to AFTIC readers as I think Wikipedia is one of the greatest things on the web.
Dear Coby,
Here's how the Wikipedia fundraiser works: Every year we raise just the funds that we need, and then we stop.
Because you and so many other Wikipedia readers donated over the past weeks, we are very close to raising our goal for this year by December 31 -- but we're not quite there yet.
You've already done your part this year. Thank you so much. But you can help us again by forwarding this email to a friend who you know relies on Wikipedia and asking that person to help us reach our goal today by clicking here and making a donation.
If everyone reading this email forwarded it to just one friend, we think that would be enough to let us end the fundraiser today.
Of course, we wouldn't turn you down if you wanted to make a second donation..
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 470 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, 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.
Thanks again for your support this year. Please help spread the word by forwarding this email to someone you know.
Thanks,
Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia FounderYou are receiving this email as a valued donor of the Wikimedia Foundation. If you do not wish to receive any future emails from the Wikimedia Foundation, unsubscribe instantly.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
P.O. Box 98204
Washington, DC 20090-8204
United States of America
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I don't know if they got the invasion of climate deniers completely parried, but yes it's a fine site, though the accuracy on some subjects should be verified elsewhere. Their trusted sources policy makes some science articles pretty hard to read as the writers have to refer to the actual scientific articles. I considered at one time proposing all of chemistry, spectroscopy, meteorology and oceanography articles protected. I bet Stoat has more stories of this.
I think Wikipedia is one of the shining examples of how great things can be accomplished via collaboration.
Have you seen the TED bit on how they are now using the Captcha window to help translate books from text to digital?
link:
http://blog.ted.com/2011/12/06/massive-scale-online-collaboration-luis-…
I have already donated, and passed it on to most of my colleagues. A great Foundation