Wikipedia

Wow! We’ve just closed the most successful fundraiser in the history of the Wikimedia Foundation thanks to our amazing donors. Over 230,000 people came together and showed their support for our project and mission: to provide free and open knowledge to everyone around the world. Thank you!

Again, we’re ending our annual fundraiser early due to the overwhelming and rapid support from everyone. We’ve hit and surpassed our fundraising goal of $7.5 million, raising over $8 million in just two months.

Even more, we’re humbled by the fact that during serious global economic stress, folks were still willing to help out and contribute. More than 230,000 donors have shown that they want Wikipedia to continue to be a place for free and open information. More than 230,000 have joined together to keep Wikipedia free of ads. We are extremely grateful for your generosity.

I cannot say enough about how amazing the steadfast support from everyone has been: our donors, our contributors, our chapters; everyone involved directly influenced the immense success of this year’s effort. Again, a huge thank you from me and everyone from the Wikimedia Foundation. We look forward to sharing some more detailed findings about this year’s fundraiser in the coming weeks.

Happy New Year,

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving

Wikimedia UK is celebrating “Public Domain Day,” this Friday, January 1, 2010. The first day of every year in the United Kingdom, copyright expires on published works by individuals who died 70 years prior–this year in 1939. Works by these individuals fall into the Public Domain in the UK. This year, the poetry of W. B. Yeats, the early works of Sigmund Freud, and Arthur Rackham’s classic children’s book illustrations will be released and made available.

You can read more about Wikimedia UK’s plans for Public Domain Day here.

Cary Bass, Volunteer Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation

We’re excited to report that this weekend, the German language edition of Wikipedia reached an exciting milestone: one million articles! The article was created by user: JFKCom at 11:33am UTC, December 27, 2009, covering the living biography of American horticulturist and author, Ernie Wasson. The new article has already been edited over 200 times by scores of contributors within the first few days of its existence. JFKCom, first name Jürgen, lives in Coburg, a town in Bavaria, and has a deep interest in botany which inspired him to create the article.

German language Wikipedia, the second largest Wikipedia in the world, debuted eight years ago with the inaugural entry created on May 12, 2001. Since then, German speaking contributors hit 500,000 entries in 2006 and 750,000 in 2008. With more than 1.4 billion page views a month, German language Wikipedia is also the second most viewed language edition. Wikipedians created a virtual quilt to celebrate the event.

Congratulations to all volunteers; your work and dedication has resulted in one of the most revered collections of knowledge on the Web. We thank you for your contributions!

Moka Pantages, Communications
Wikimedia Foundation