Have you ever used Wikipedia?

[xairbusdriver]

I'm betting 99.9% of anyone who has ever used Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. will have seen, if not followed a link to Wikipedia! Do you know who pays for the servers, software/hardware maintenance, and salaries of the group? It's not ads! They never have any (just like Trixology!).

In another thread I mentioned costs involved in providing anything on the web. If you have your own site, we all know who pays for that. If your company has a site, you can bet it's an expense item in their financial reports. So, who pays for Wikipedia?

Mostly, it's people like you and me who find it useful enough to support it financially. Wikipedia is but one part of a 501(c)(3) foundation that supports a dozen projects including the Free encyclopedia (Wikipedia), Free textbooks and manuals (Wikibooks), Free learning tools (Wikiversity), Free Dictionary and thesaurus (Wiktionary)... you can find the others yourself! They are all listed at Wikimedia Foundation. Can you see the key word in this partial list of projects? That's why I'm suggesting that you consider making a donation to the Foundation. As with any contribution, read, investigate their priorities, plans, financial statements, IRS reports, etc.

One thing I learned today was the work they are doing in many third-world countries to allow the use of Wikipedia projects to not be charged mobile phone data fees.

[Bull Winkus]

Already have donated, and I will occasionally edit documents for correctness, spelling or syntax. 

I use the reference Wikipedia almost daily. If I'm researching something I know little about, whatever I find elsewhere, I consult Wikipedia before I'm done. It is a highly reliable source. Sometimes the coverage of a topic is very deep. Sometimes it's quite lacking. But, it's always worth checking.