Template:2010/JimmyLetterE/en

It wasn’t fair.

It truly wasn’t fair that until ten years ago, it cost thousands of dollars to own a set of encyclopedias. It wasn’t fair that the information locked in textbooks and expensive scientific journals was out of reach to most of the world.

And because it wasn’t fair, some of us got together ten years ago to create Wikipedia. Our vision was a world in which every single human being could freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

We never thought Wikipedia would get this big: 17 million articles in 270 languages. We certainly never dared to hope it would become the fifth most visited website in the world.

Wikipedia’s infrastructure was cobbled together quickly to meet exploding demand. It’s a testament to the volunteers who did it -- and the bare bones staff who came later -- that we’ve kept it working this long.

For years, our main servers have been in Florida, directly in the path of hurricanes. We’re one bad storm away from a major outage. So this year we’re adding a badly-needed backup and hiring long overdue staff. It’s going to cost some money.

I don’t get paid by Wikipedia. I’m just a volunteer like thousands of others. I’m asking here on behalf of others. I can think of no other organization that does so much with so few people. A donation to the Wikimedia Foundation is an amazing investment in the future.

Please make a donation of $20, $35, $50 or whatever you can afford. It’s about making sure that knowledge is free and available to everyone who needs it.

All the best,

Jimmy Wales Wikipedia Founder