If you use Wikipedia on a regular basis and have visited recently, you will know that the Wiki team are requesting donations to keep the service going. If you go to the Wikipedia.com site, you will see this at the top of the screen:

 

 

AVSIM has donated tonight, and we encourage you to do so too. Help keep this valuable resource alive and well for all of us.

 

Here is the email that you received when you contribute:

 

 

Thank you for donating to the Wikimedia Foundation. You are wonderful!

 

It's easy to ignore our fundraising banners, and I'm really glad you didn't. This is how Wikipedia pays its bills --- people like you giving us money, so we can keep the site freely available for everyone around the world.

 

People tell me they donate to Wikipedia because they find it useful, and they trust it because even though it's not perfect, they know it's written for them. Wikipedia isn’t meant to advance somebody's PR agenda or push a particular ideology, or to persuade you to believe something that's not true. We aim to tell the truth, and we can do that because of you. The fact that you fund the site keeps us independent and able to deliver what you need and want from Wikipedia. Exactly as it should be.

 

You should know: your donation isn’t just covering your own costs. The average donor is paying for his or her own use of Wikipedia, plus the costs of hundreds of other people. Your donation keeps Wikipedia available for an ambitious kid in Bangalore who’s teaching herself computer programming. A middle-aged homemaker in Vienna who’s just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. A novelist researching 1850s Britain. A 10-year-old in San Salvador who’s just discovered Carl Sagan.

 

On behalf of those people, and the half-billion other readers of Wikipedia and its sister sites and projects, I thank you for joining us in our effort to make the sum of all human knowledge available for everyone. Your donation makes the world a better place. Thank you.

Most people don't know Wikipedia's run by a non-profit. Please consider sharing this e-mail with a few of your friends to encourage them to donate too. And if you're interested, you should try adding some new information to Wikipedia. If you see a typo or other small mistake, please fix it, and if you find something missing, please add it. There are resources here that can help you get started. Don't worry about making a mistake: that's normal when people first start editing and if it happens, other Wikipedians will be happy to fix it for you.

 

I appreciate your trust in us, and I promise you we'll use your money well.

 

Thanks,
Sue

Sue Gardner
Executive Director,
Wikimedia Foundation

This post has been promoted to an article

Good call. You can visit your own local Wikipedia homepage (mine is in Germany) so you can donate in your local currency. So I'll be off to do that tomorrow.

 

A

 

 

Andrew Entwistle

While on the subject, there is an AVSIM entry in Wikipedia. If you would like to contribute to the entry, you can do so here:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avsim

 

EDIT: I forgot to add... BE NICE!