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At Wikipedia, our mission is not to turn a profit. It’s to make knowledge free.

Many people don’t realize this, but despite being the 5th most popular website in the world, Wikipedia has never sold a single advertisement. And we never will.

This is possible because of donations from our readers. Will you help protect Wikipedia by donating $5, $10, $20 or whatever you can afford?

When you put an ad on a page you’ve applied a bias to it. Instead of knowledge, it becomes propaganda. And Wikipedia is not a propaganda device, it's an encyclopedia.

Can you imagine an article on the Gulf oil spill brought to you by BP? That's not going to work. It would become a nightmare. No one would ever trust the information there. In order to maintain trust, it is absolutely vital that Wikipedia never run ads.

By giving to Wikipedia, you ensure that it remains independent, unbiased and free.

Access to free knowledge liberates people. It makes them bigger on the inside. The moment you understand that there’s more than one point of view, you begin to question your own biases. When you start looking beyond what you already know, you become a better person. When people have free and unbiased access to knowledge, they cannot be oppressed.

I don’t think there’s ever going to be anything that I will do in my life that is this important. I do this job because at the end of the day, everything in my soul tells me it's the right thing to do.

Truth doesn’t have an agenda. Agendas are superficial. What we’re doing at Wikipedia is not superficial. Wikipedia’s goal is to be great.

Help us achieve that goal. Please donate to Wikipedia today.

Thank you,

Brandon Harris Programmer, Wikimedia Foundation