[dudurocha]

What make me sad about wikipedia is that year after year, they will have to make this 'begging'. And jokes about Jim Wales will appear all over the web, and some more begging, and people complaining about some rich dude who 'only' donate 500 larges.

Well, Wikipedia has to find a sustainable model, they do not want ads or propaganda, but some new model has to be found, books, classes, especial encyclopedias, I don't know. But they need to stop doing this every year.

[mousa]

It's not really that big a deal for them to this every year. It's just something you have to live with like NPR's fundraising drives, except much less grating. I don't hear people irl complain about it. I know it really irritates many of the entrepreneur types on here that one of the biggest sites on the web is asking for money, but it's perfectly fine for them to have fundraising drives every year.

[zerostar07]

I enjoy the ads (and begging if that's what u like to call it) and i donate every year (it also seems wikipedia sets a cookie when you donate cause i don't see Jimmy's pretty face anymore). Donations are not a good model for most stuff on the web but for wikipedia it's a very fitting model i think. The only alternative model would be government or UN-funded, but that would endanger its (non-)political identity.