Oh wells, Merry Christmas anyhow.

No, not Santa Claus, he has more than enough elves to help him. Rather, it’s a site that practically everyone takes for granted: Wikipedia. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia which practically anyone at all can edit and add information to. This practically makes it the fastest growing and most rapidly updated encyclopedia in the world with millions and millions of “editors”. Just look at how quickly the entry on the Virginia Tech massacre grew in just 12 hours from absolutely nothing, into a pretty informative article.

That said, one really has to take everything posted on Wikipedia with a pinch of salt. While it is known for being one of the most convenient sites on the net to turn to for in-depth information about a certain topic, it also has the reputation for being really inaccurate at times. That’s hard to avoid, considering how even the average Joe who has access the the internet can pretty much mess around with any entry on Wikipedia any way he likes.

Despite that fact, many have undoubtedly wiled away countless hours among the pages of Wikipedia, clicking one article after another just for the sake of reading up about random facts and information. I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this, considering how 275 million people visit the site every month. Most people don’t realise the significance of numbers this big, but if you break it down:

• 275,000,000 a month
• 9,150,000 a day
• 382,000 every hour
• 6000 every minute
• 100 every second

That’s right, on average, a hundred people visit Wikipedia every second, 24/7. While you were reading this very post, Wikipedia probably just received a few thousand hits. Despite being widely known as a pretty inaccurate source of news, it still remains one of the world’s most popular general reference work on the Internet.

Now, while Wikipedia has always been asking for donations through a “banner” of sorts at the top of every single page (which it never used to do in the past), a new banner has popped up in recent days in huge words which read “Please read: A Personal Appeal From Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales”. Upon clicking it, the user is directed to this article.

Wikipedia is different. It’s the largest encyclopedia in history, written by volunteers. Like a national park or a school, we don’t believe advertising should have a place in Wikipedia. We want to keep it free and strong, but we need the support of thousands of people like you.

I invite you to join us: Your donation will help keep Wikipedia free for the whole world.

This is the first time this has occured, which means Wikipedia really is suffering from the recent economic meltdown, a fact which really isn’t that impossible. Wikimedia, the organisation behind Wikipedia, is a non-profit organisation with only a handful of employees. However, their server costs must be astronomically high, considering how it has an Alexa traffic rank of 8. While that doesn’t directly translate into the site being the 8th most popular site, it sure comes close to that number.

With such high traffic and with every single user seeing Wikipedia’s plea at the top of every page, they have still been unable to reach their target of 6 million dollars in donations, falling roughly 1.7 million dollars short at the time of this writing. Just imagine, if every person who visits Wikipedia every month donates one cent, Wikipedia could easily reach its goal, with a million more dollars to spare.

I have no idea what better way to get word out about how important it is to contribute to this cause. Imagine if Wikipedia stops being free, or completely shuts down due to a lack of funds. Sure, it’s pretty inaccurate at times, but would anyone really want to see Wikipedia disappear forever?

Wikipedia is there when you need it – now it needs you.