There are many Wiki websites like WikiLeaks, wikiHow, wikitravel, wikibooks, Wikipedia which have been helping people for a long time. The most famous of them, Wikipedia, was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001. it has been for a long time an online encyclopaedia used by people all around the world. But recently we have seen that Wikipedia has been asking us for donations. This is new thing in India. But not in the UK or US where Wikipedia already asks for donation. On the other hand Wikipedia also receives funding from US and UK since 2013.
This funding is handled by wikimedia a non-profit organisation based in California, USA. It has stated that Wikipedia requires funding to maintain International infrastructure to pay salaries and for many other expenses. It is to be noted that in June 2019 Wikipedia had total assets of $165 million with $110 million in cash. And its expenses were around $151 million. So it is clear that Wikipedia has enough money to support itself. Thus it has no need of immediate money without which it would shut down.
In India it is Wikipedia’s first fundraising campaign where in it asks it users for a contribution of ₹150 as compared to $15 in UK/US which amounts to around ₹1100. The amount is said to be decided to be less in India because of less spending power of Asian countries. Wikipedia necessarily doesn’t need the donations because it has enough money to sustain itself. Rather it should work more on increasing the neutrality and credibility of its website. Not all its pages are properly moderated which leads to people changing many facts which are misleading and out of context.
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