2011 Fundraiser/UKBanners

This is a scratchpad for fundraising banner/appeal combinations. If you have an idea, please create a new section here, or add it on the Talk page, or email chris dot keating at wikimedia.org.uk

Chris Book of the Dead

Banner Concepts

Please read: A personal appeal from Chris, author of the article on the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead Please read: A personal appeal from Chris, author of 211 Wikipedia articles

Appeal

Knowledge used to be a powerful secret.

The Ancient Egyptians believed there were magic words you could say which meant your soul would live on after you died. But this knowledge was only for the rich. If you didn't have the money, you couldn't pay the temple scribes to write out a scroll with their secret, mystical formula on it. If you didn't get the magic words right, then the Egyptians believed your soul would be eaten by a horrible monster that was part-lion, part-alligator and part hippopotamus.

Knowledge has changed since those days. When I was a child, I used to spend my holidays wandering around the museums in London or reading books. Knowledge was open to the public. It lived in museums, universities, libraries.

Now Wikipedia is making the immense wealth of human knowledge available, for free, to everyone. Information that used to be buried on a bookshelf is now just a click away. Over three million articles in English, and over two hundred languages.

That's all because of people writing articles - for free, in their spare time. And it's only possible because of generous people like you who are willing to make donations to keep Wikipedia free.

The infrastructure that supports our work is about as barebones as it gets. Think of the other top-5 websites:

Google: 1,000,000 servers, 24,000 employees.

Facebook: 60,000 servers, 2,000 employees.

Microsoft: 220,000 servers, 90,000 employees.

Yahoo: 50,000 servers, 13,900 employees.

Wikipedia, the #5 site on the web, serves 411 million people per month -- with 370 servers and less than a hundred staff worldwide. A donation of a £3 a month from you will go a long, long way.

Please join us and make a donation today.

And I promise no-one's going to eat your soul.

Roger Index

Banner

Please read, a personal appeal from Roger Bamkin, author of 271 Wikipedia articles

Appeal text

When I was a child I read a book about a detective, it may have been Sherlock Holmes, who'd find answers to his problems in his "Index", a card index where he collected all the information he'd ever need. The idea inspired me. I spent many hours cutting up old books and my sister's "look and learn" comics to create my own version of “The Index”. I must have made thousands of cards, and arranged them all alphabetically so that I could know everything. But the problem was cross-referencing all the articles. So I gave up. I threw the last six or seven feet of it away a few years ago.

To me, Wikipedia is making that childhood dream a reality. It is bringing knowledge to everyone, for free, every day. My children and the students I teach can't think of a world without it. To them it’s water, it’s air, it's just brilliant. The tens of thousands of people who help write Wikipedia, and those who generously donate to support it, are making my dream come true. Please be one of them.

Please make sure this amazing encyclopedia can keep going, free to use and free of advertising. The infrastructure that supports our work is about as barebones as it gets. Think of the other top websites:

Google: 1,000,000 servers, 24,000 employees. Facebook: 60,000 servers, 2,000 employees. Microsoft: 220,000 servers, 90,000 employees. Yahoo: 50,000 servers, 13,900 employees.

Wikipedia, the #5 site on the web, serves 411 million people per month -- with 370 servers and less than a hundred staff worldwide. A donation of a £3 a month from you will go a long, long way.

Please donate now.

Yours sincerely,

Roger Bamkin Chair of Wikimedia UK