How did we research without it? Wikipedia turns 10

Wikipedia turned 10 years old on Saturday. Although Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales once cautioned that the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia shouldn't be used for things such as college papers and theses, you know that recommendation never took. Because of its huge knowledge base, many use Wikipedia as the first source they check.

After all, before Wikipedia it was a lot harder to find up-to-date information, rapidly changed, that keeps up with the latest news. Of course, there's a negative as well: sometimes pages are maliciously changed, or even comically changed (Stephen Colbert and Wikiality comes to mind).

Still, despite the negatives, the positives are great. Where else could you accidentally find out that "Medium" had been cancelled in late December when you were actually trying to look something else up? Where else could you find out, in great detail, everything you wanted to know about "Space Ghost" (the original series, not the satire)?

Since Wikipedia's founding, Microsoft has even stopped issuing updates to its Encarta encyclopedia product. Microsoft didn't explicitly name Wikipedia as the reason, but did admit that

[...] the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.

The first 10,000 entries in Wikipedia are even archived here.

We can't really recall the first time we used Wikipedia. We also can't recall the first time we edited an article. What about you? What are your Wikipedia memories?

Wikimedia Foundation reaches $16 million fundraising goal in record time

If you've used Wikipedia at all during its latest pledge drive, you've noticed the donation plea at the top of each page. As of today, that's been replaced with a thank you, as the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation has reached its donation goal.

The goal of $16 million goal was reached in record time, the Wikimedia Foundation said. In 2009, the Foundation amassed $7.5 million during its pledge drive, so 2010's drive accrued more than double that of the prior year.

According to the Foundation's blog post, not only was the fundraiser the shortest on record, but

• There were ver 500,000 donations to the Wikimedia Foundation (230,000 were made in 2009).
• Nearly 130,000 donations were made to local Wikimedia chapters world-wide.
• Two of the days set records as the largest fundraising days in Wikipedia history.
• The average donation size: about $22.

The speed of the fundraising process, the amount raised, and the rise in the sheer number of donations seems to show that people are starting to "get it," that Wikipedia is an endless sources of (mostly correct) information.

The post also notes that on Jan. 15, 2011, Wikipedia will turn 10. It's not too late to donate, except in terms of your 2010 tax return.