Why does it cost money to have a website?

TheQuailman

TheQuailman

Active member
Can anyone explain to me why wikipedia needs donations. Why do you need money to pay for a website? Please, in layman's terms explain this. Who controls the internet? Where does the money go? Can you have a website for free?
 
Wikipedia get's so much traffic they have dedicated servers, T1 lines, probably 24/7 staff not to mention the business side of it.
 
the cost of hosting a website that large is astronomical. They have to have an entire warehouse of dedicated servers to host all of that information. Then they have a large staff that they need to pay, lawyers to make sure they don't have any libelous information or other hijinks, etc. costs add up. even a site like NS costs thousands a month to run. NS could even be in the 10s of thousands a month level. wikipedia has to cost millions of dollars a year to keep afloat.
 
lots of hosting fees like everyone else has said, programmers, lawyers, moderators, a hot secretary, company stripper parties, blow, it all adds up
 
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what if I wanted to create my own site- who patrols domain names?- for instance- If I had my own servers etc and wanted to create NSGTYFRU.com- whats stopping me provided there isnt another site
 
You can host a site yourself if you want, but it costs you money one way or another. You're going to have to psy for your server, router, internet connection and to a lesser extent power to run your equipment 24/7 and rent for the space it takes up.

When you pay someone else to host your site the fee covers all of the above points plus the staff who keep all running.
 
If I donate to Wikimedia, where does my money go?

To people and technology. Even though Wikipedia and its sister projects together reach 398 million people every month, we employ only 54 people; see our staff overview. Roughly half work on technology, a small team supports our public outreach and volunteer cultivation activities, and the remaining staff work in fundraising and administration. In addition, your support helps to pay for the technology infrastructure (servers and bandwidth) that keeps Wikipedia running and growing.

Fundamentally, the Wikimedia Foundation exists to support and grow the enormous network of volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia and its sister projects -- more than 100,000 people around the world.

In a nutshell, what is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is the world's largest and most popular encyclopedia. It's online, free to use for any purpose, and free of advertising. Wikipedia contains more than 17 million volunteer-authored articles in over 265 languages, and is visited by more than 398 million people every month, making it the fifth most-popular site in the world.

It is a collaborative creation that has been added to and edited by millions of people during the past nine years: anyone can edit it, at any time. Wikipedia is the largest collection of shared knowledge in human history, and the people who support it are united by their love of learning, their intellectual curiosity, and their awareness that we know much more together, than any of us does alone.

Where can I find more financial information?

2008–2009 Annual Report

The 2008–2009 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report covers the previous fiscal year (July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009) with a look-ahead to the next. This is our second annual report. The Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report is a summary of the organization's financials, program activities, milestones and accomplishments.

Highlights include:

* Launch of Wikimedia's Usability Initiative

* Wikimedia joins the Creative Commons

* Wikimania conference in Alexandria, Egypt

* Wikimedia's open strategy planning process begins

* Successful fundraising and expansion of core operations

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a4/WMF_Annual_Report_20082009_online.pdf
 
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