Wikipedia Meets $16M Budget Goal

netbuzz writes "Thanks to some 630,000 individual contributions that averaged $22 apiece, Wikipedia has reached its fundraising goal of $16 million, founder Jimmy Wales announced over the weekend. Writes Wales, '... this year is a little more incredible than most because this year we celebrate Wikipedia's tenth anniversary. It's so important that we kick the year off just like this: by fully funding the Wikimedia Foundation's budget to support Wikipedia and all the sister projects as we head into the next decade of our work together.' The online encyclopedia now boasts of being the Internet's fifth largest site, which renews questioning by some as to whether it can afford over the long haul to stand by its policy of refusing advertising."

Comments

I don't normally say this, but...

[Pojut]

...I'd be fine with advertising on Wikipedia, so long as it's the silent, non-flyover non-flash on-topic kind. Actually, Google Adwords would go perfectly on there...it would remain unobtrusive, stay topical, and provide some income.

Begging

[Anonymous Coward]

Is begging for donations every year really a viable model for one of the most popular websites in the world?

Re:Begging

[nbauman]

Over the last 50 years, cigarette companies were the biggest advertisers in women's magazines. Half their ad pages might be cigarette ads.

Women's magazines warned about every cancer but one -- lung cancer. For 50 years, health coverage was a major topic for women's magazines, but they pointedly avoided any mention of the health effects of cigarettes. The editors of these magazines admitted it, and it's been proven in published academic studies. Or you can just go to the library and look at them.

Conversely, the few women's magazines and consumer magazines that didn't take cigarette advertising did run articles on smoking and health.

Cigarettes are the most obvious example, but you can find that same bias in the coverage of all the major advertisers in most news media -- alcohol, automobiles.

Public radio is now taking advertising. I've heard a lot of local news stories about their advertisers, particularly in the music and entertainment business.

Wikipedia is already getting all the money it needs. (TFA doesn't explain *why* they need more money -- more server farms?) There's a real risk advertising would compromise their objectivity. It has everywhere else.

Ad campaign = less viewership

[fotbr]

That begging campaign got so annoying that I haven't been to wikipedia in the last two months. I don't think I'll go back either, so consider that my contribution -- an infinitesimal decrease in server load and bandwidth required to keep the site running.

oh gee. alright.

[unity100]

so, because they begged, you are not going to wikipedia. before, you had no issues using the communal resource everyone came together and created, for FREE. however, when they asked you to give a hand for the costs, you have suddenly got irritated.

maybe its good that you are contributing to the effort, by not going.

Re:Pay to skip the ads

[Anthony Mouse]

I think we are increasingly moving toward a model where people will subscribe to sources of information/entertainment if they don't want to see the ads, or they will get a free version that includes ads (and possibly presents other limitations in format or content).

Wouldn't surprise me to see Wikipedia go this way.

Honestly, I would expect them to stay just the way they are, if they want to badly enough. Think about it: They're already the fifth most popular website. They are unlikely to become substantially more popular than that, which means that their operation costs are already close to their peak level. Now consider this:
1) The cost of bandwidth and servers, which has got to be some large fraction of their expenses, go down over time.
2) They made their financing goal for this year, a year in which by (1) their costs are likely to be higher than in future years.

Also, $16M in the scheme of things is not a lot of money. If that's their yearly budget then all it would take is one billionaire to provide them a $350M or so endowment in a will or something and they would be set forever just on the interest. (That is, once interest rates get back above 0% again.)

Realistically, the biggest threat to Wikipedia is ISPs violating network neutrality. If Wikipedia had to pay whatever tithe each ISP decided they were entitled to in order to reach their subjects, that could explode their costs pretty quickly and require them to seek other sources of funding.