It looks like those large "personal appeal" banners from Wikipedia's founders, staff, and contributors seemed to have finally "paid off", with the foundation achieving its US $20 million fundraising goal. Wikipedia is an ad-free service, but relies on donations to operate. While you can donate to Wikipedia any time of the year, the foundation starts fundraisers each time it's faced with a cash-crunch.

Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation thanked all donors "We've taken down our fundraising banners, because we've hit our target. Thanks to you. Over the past few months, more than one million people have come together from all over the world to keep Wikipedia and its sister sites alive and flourishing for another year." She continued: "Your support is how we pay our bills. People like you, giving five dollars, twenty dollars, a hundred dollars. Thank you for helping us. We're the #5 most-popular site in the world --- we operate on a tiny fraction of the resources of any other top site. We will use your money carefully and well, I promise you." So there you go, no more opening articles about, say, massacres or wars to find inappropriately-placed pictures of smiling contributors or Wikipedia staff asking you to drop a few quids.