Monthly Archives: February 2007

Wikipedia might shut down in a few months

It seems that wikipedia doesnt have the funds to pay for bandwidth and maintainence for more than 3-4 months.

“At this point, Wikipedia has the financial ressources to run its servers for about 3 to 4 months. If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear”.
said Florence Devouard, Chairwoman of the Wikimedia foundation at the Lift07 conference. This comes right after the recent $1 million donation collection they did in january.

With the amount of traffic coming to wikipedia i am not amazed that they need atleast $5 million a year just to keep the site running. Wikipedia could set up ads ( though they have a pledge not to put up ads) or maybe bought over by google/yahoo. If google bought youtube for $1.5 billion and how much would wikipedia cost?

Donations anyone?

UPDATE:

Some blogs are reporting that the statment has been taken out of context and that Wikimedia spokesperson Sandy Ordonez has come forward with this statement.

“Ms. Devouard’s comment was taken out of context,” Ordonez claims, although it’s difficult to imagine the context in which “might disappear” could be taken differently. “Wikipedia will not be closing any time soon. Ms. Devouard was simply referring to the ongoing, pressing needs for funds that Wikipedia, like most nonprofit organizations, face. Ms. Devouard was attempting to showcase how, because of our global reach, Wikipedia needs to be much more creative in its fundraising efforts.”

So does that mean the threat is over or could his happen again.

source:
Via Digitalis
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rough type