Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853 – 1890 ), Flower Beds in Holland, c. 1883, oil on canvas on wood, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
（维基百科: Today’s featured picture)
每年到这时候，维基百科就开始募款。这是募款信。
Dear Cong,
A year ago, you donated $10 to keep Wikipedia online for hundreds of millions of readers. I’m surprised by and deeply grateful for your continued support. We need your help again this year.
I ask you, humbly: please renew your donation today.
When people like you step up, it means that we don’t need to solicit advertising partners and sponsorships. We could sell Wikipedia to the highest bidder, sure, but you know as well as we do that it wouldn’t be the same.
As the Internet is increasingly sold to the highest bidder through paywalls and advertisers, Wikipedia remains independent. We are proud of our status as a non-profit and are grateful to readers like you for maintaining our independence over the years. Let’s not change that. Please give today.
If all our past donors gave again today, our fundraiser would be over within an hour. We’re not there yet. Please help us end the fundraiser and improve Wikipedia.
We believe in the power of facts–nonpartisan, not beholden to any single agenda. We are firm believers in open-source knowledge. We can only uphold this belief if we are completely independent, and in this age of partisan media, that’s never been more important. （我们相信无偏见，无任何立场的事实的力量。我们是知识开源的坚定践行者。唯有我们保持完全独立，才能实现这个信念。在这个充斥着偏见的媒体时代，这一点比以往任何时代都更加重要。）
Yes, it’s ironic that we say “knowledge must be free” and then ask you to pay for it. But the alternative is that if you–the millions of readers, editors, and contributors to Wikipedia–do not give, then the open-source principle we value so much is placed at great risk.
Now is the time we ask. If Wikipedia is useful to you, please take one minute to keep it online, ad-free, and growing another year.
Thanks,
Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia Founder
当然，我每年都会捐款支持维基百科，因为这是我所依赖的知识库。
限于时间关系，我很少在维基百科上贡献知识，记得曾经修改过一点信度网的词条，那是多年以前读书时的事情了。
曾经有几学期我教“计算机英语”，为了应付教材科的硬性规定，指定了一本低于5元的职高计算机英语教材，抱歉地对学生说，大家看看吧，里面的完形填空还是不错的。然后，就用维基百科的词条来上课。
我告诉学生们，维基百科就是最职业最标准最浅显易懂最前沿的计算机英语了，你们读懂维基百科，就可以读懂其他软件指南和专业图书了。我们用了“Database”，“Network”，“Internet”，“Hacker”，“AI”等词条，度过了一个愉快的学期。至少，我的学生中没有人会看到计算机专业文献，把“program”翻译成“节目”了。
为知识付费，保持知识的独立性，给wikipedia捐款，估计是我们能做的最有价值的事情之一了。