Please Read: A Personal Appeal TO Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

Editor's Note : This is a guest post by Hunter Walk who spends way too much time researching 1980s hair metal bands on Wikipedia. His obsession with Wikipedia is unrelated to his day job leading the consumer product team at YouTube . Wikipedia is the world's 5th largest website, runs no ads and, depressingly, seems to be perpetually on the fringe of solvency. Google for " Jimmy Wales personal appeal " ( Wales is Wikipedia’s founder) and you'll see that there are 32,000+ results, which gives you a sense of the fundraising requirements for this user-generated encyclopedia. The question of whether they'll ever run ads in order to break this cycle is an ongoing debate. In fact there's a Wikipedia page devoted to this topic with discussion about ads, opt-in ads, search ads, etc. At 400+ million users worldwide, any of these options could certainly raise considerable funds used to support the technical and philosophical mission of this non-profit. But to date, Wales has been reluctant to introduce any advertising. So where do we end up? After hitting its 10 year anniversary this January, the question is: can Wikipedia sustain itself for another 10 years without a significant change to its business model?