Just before Christmas, Wikipedia was begging for cash. On December 23, its founder Jimmy Wales had put out an announcement imploring people to donate money to keep the Wikipedia phenomenon going.

The site attracts more visitors than Amazon or eBay, partly because it's very often the first hit in a Google search and partly because it's always good to find stuff there, even if it's maybe not that well written. But Wikipedia's typos and moments of clumsiness also have a quality; they remind you that this enormous encyclopaedia is not a commercial venture. Which is also why Wales had to go begging.

Significantly, Wales said the site's expenses were less than $6 million.

Significant because Wikipedia has now announced that it's raised just over $6 million, with 50,000 contributions in eight days, totaling $2 million.

The extra money above $6 million will go into a reserve fund to pay for costs after this year. And there's every chance that will grow because Wikipedia is still taking donations.