We know you"ve seen it, those soul searching eyes of Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales staring back at you when you visit a Wiki page. Was it enough to make you donate? Probably not. However, it looks like Wikipedia is really feeling the financial crunch, as it"s now resorting to emailing people who have previously donated to ask for more money.
It"s respectable as Wikipedia has always been and appears to always plan to be advert free. As Jimmy Wales says himself, it"s a "temple of the mind." However, it appears it"s becoming unsustainable. The advertisements have been up for well over a month now, and they"re getting desperate. Perhaps the internet isn"t going to be thankful for Wikipedia until they actually disappear because they can"t afford to run anymore.
In the email, Wales points out that Wikipedia is the 5th most popular website and servers over 470 million unique users every month. Impressive. Not only that, they run with just 95 staff and a measly 679 servers, which is an impressive feat in itself considering we can"t remember the last time Wikipedia was actually offline.
"If everyone reading this donated $5, we would only have to fundraise for one day a year." Perhaps it"s time we all got out our wallets and helped support these guys, before its too late.
Thanks Paul for the screenshot.