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I’m one of the volunteers who created Wikipedia.

There are thousands of us. We write and update these articles you read everyday. And we decided a long time ago that sharing information and educating people is more important than making money.

But the non-profit that hosts Wikipedia does need money to keep the servers running and pay a small staff. Instead of having advertisers and financial influence skewing what we do, every year we simply ask our readers to vote with their dollars to support a real community of people who represent something different on the Internet.

I would feel exploited if I saw an ad for McDonald’s at the top of one of the articles I helped create -- and I don’t think you would like it either. So please pitch in $5, $10, $20 or whatever you can to keep Wikipedia on the web, for free, and free of ads.

No other top-10 website could survive on donations. But at Wikipedia, every donation is multiplied many times over. When your $10 goes to help pay one developer’s salary -- who then develops a tool that lets 1,000 volunteers do something great -- then all of a sudden your $10 has facilitated a lot more than it can in any other non-profit.

Wikipedia is something special. It is a unique human project, the first of its kind in history. Our vision has always been to bring a great encyclopedia to every single person on the planet -- for free and free of ads.

Please help thousands of volunteers like me make that vision come true.

Thanks,

Ryan Kaldari Wikipedia Author