Wikipedia recently concluded its annual fundraiser, which was quite successful with the online encyclopedia collecting nearly $20mn dollars which will be used for the daily operations of the site. Jimmy Wales, founder of the site had appealed passionately to all users to donate to help keep the site free from advertisement. More recently the Wikipedia blackout to protest SOPA/PIPA was seen as a strong anti-censorship stand taken by the website, for which it was widely supported by readers and users alike.
We noticed that Indians are number ONE, when it comes to a desire to donate to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has revealed that only around half of its readers realize that Wikipedia is a non-profit. Ayush Khanna, A Data Analyst, Global Development at the Wikimedia foundation wrote in a detailed blogpost that
The high value of the dollar may also have an effect, with 68 percent of Japanese readers and 57 percent of Indian readers citing affordability as a reason. However, about 60 percent of UK readers also cite this reason.
What’s perhaps more surprising, however, is that 28% of its users who had actually edited a Wikipedia page were unaware that it was a non-profit. However, editors were overall much more likely to donate with 26%, compared to only around 3% of the non-editing readers.
Wikipedia has been putting out quite some information from this survey for nearly a month now on the Wikimedia global blog. Other key facts are that only 6 percent of its users have ever edited a Wikipedia page and most of the users are happy to just read the content.
To view the Survey by Wikipedia CLICK HERE
