Wikipedia, the world’s most popular online encyclopedia, announced on Friday it managed to collect $6 million, the company’s fundraising target to cover operational costs for this current fiscal year.
In July 2008, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales appealed for funds to cover for the site’s operating expenses, prompting more than 125,000 individuals to donate a total of $4 million.
The remaining $2 million was donated by major foundations and companies, according to Wales “thank you letter” posted on the site.
Wales also said that the collected funds will be used to further improve services and projects of this online encyclopedia, providing people with free access to information and news.
Facts About Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free multilingual project by non-profit Wikimedia Foundation which is based on San Francisco California. Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, this site is the most popular online reference on the Internet and ranks among top 10 most visited websites.
This site allows anyone to edit articles and put entries. However, this feature is often criticized by some experts because of its susceptibility to inaccuracies and vandalism.
Despite its being the largest online reference site, Wikipedia only employs a total of 23 people since it mostly relies on site visitors to put entries, edit contents, and add articles. In its latest assessment, the online encyclopedia has more than 150,000 volunteers who contributed approximately 11 million articles translated in 265 languages.
According to a recent report, this online encyclopedia attracts more than 275 million people every month.
Being a non-profit site, Wikipedia does not allow paid advertising on its web page and solely relies on donations and fundraising.
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