Facebook Donates $1 Million To Support Wikipedia

Technology giants rely heavily on Wikipedia's extensive database to source information for their platforms. So it's only fair that they show interest in the long-term sustainability of the online encyclopedia. This week, Facebook made its support official. From a report: The Wikimedia Foundation announced late Thursday that Facebook has contributed $1 million to Wikimedia Endowment, a fund to financially support the online encyclopedia and other Wikimedia projects. 'We are grateful to Facebook for this support, and hope this marks the beginning of a long-term collaboration to support Wikipedia's future,' Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said in a statement.

In an opinion piece published in June, Wikimedia Foundation executive director Katherine Maher urged companies to better support the service. 'As companies draw on Wikipedia for knowledge -- and as a bulwark against bad information -- we believe they too have an opportunity to be generous,' she wrote. 'At Wikimedia, we already love and deeply appreciate the millions of people around the world who make generous charitable contributions because they believe in our values. But we also believe that we deserve lasting, commensurate support from the organisations that derive significant and sustained financial value from our work.' Further reading: Wikimedia Endowment Gets New $1 Million Backing From Amazon.

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