Wikimedia Foundation reached a positive balance on its latest campaign to send donations. In the past eight weeks, the charitable foundation received a total of over 8 million dollars (5.5 million). The same organization who directs a free online encyclopedia Wikipedia and several sister projects, managed to exceed the expected level of donations at $ 7.5 million.

Donations sent 230 thousand people, ie 125 thousand more than last year. "Most donors are not among the wealthy people," explained Sue Gardner, executive director of the Foundation. "These are students, teachers and parents - people who use the Wikipedia every day and are ready to pay for the maintenance of this project." Only through the generosity of the Wikipedia can be maintained alive and the abandonment of placing ads in it.

After a somewhat conservative start the campaign has provided a significant increase in annual revenues appeal founder Jimmy Wales: December 16 Foundation only collected 432 thousand U.S. dollars. Belonging to eBay founder Pierre Omidyar Network Omidyar platform donations doubled between 100 and 10 000 dollars and thus paid into the account the Wikipedia half a million.

BudżetowyPDF a plan for the current year billing foresees expenditure of 9.4 million dollars. The largest part of the area they relate to technology that has swallowed up 3.3 million dollars. In turn, $ 1.1 million the foundation intends to spend on advertising to potential new donors. Further 3.9 million dollars will be directed to other projects, such as the Bookshelf, whose task is to create valuable educational materials about using Wikipedia.

Another major project Wikimedia Foundation focuses on improving the usefulness of Wikipedia and sister projects. In this case, progress is quite slow. Some authors complain, for example, the slow introduction of a mechanism flagged articles in the English version of Wikipedia. Also discussed the new system - LiquidThreads - is tried only minor wiki pages. In order to focus on the future of Wikimedia długoplanowe tracks, the foundation has established the wiki page on the strategy of development - but so far response from the community is quite modest.