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The rest of the Internet used to be really cool.

I remember, in the mid-90’s, anyone could publish anything they wanted. There was so much diversity on the Internet back in the old days that it felt more like a community of interesting people rather than -- you know -- just glorified television, which is basically what it feels like now.

I’m part of the huge community of volunteers who created Wikipedia. We could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but we decided that sharing information and educating people is more important than making money.

Now I’m a programmer at the non-profit that hosts Wikipedia -- and we do need money to keep the servers running and pay our small staff. But 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.

Please pitch in $5, $10, $20 or whatever you can to keep Wikipedia on the web -- and free of ads.

When you contribute $10 to Wikipedia, it’s multiplied many times over. If that $10 helps pay one developer’s salary, who then develops a tool that lets 1,000 volunteers do something great on Wikipedia.

Then all of a sudden your $10 has facilitated a lot more than it can in any other non-profit.

Your donation will help us keep making Wikipedia better -- and to make sure that at least this part of the Internet stays cool.

Thanks,

Ryan Kaldari

Wikipedia Programmer