Thanks Wikipedia, for allowing me to Graduate

My Wikipedia searches this term have ranged from "Non Government Organizations" to "Materialities/Imaginaries" to Justin Bieber- and the website helped me understand each topic I searched in addition to some other research. Without it, I honestly don't think I would be graduating from University this upcoming Spring. This is why I decided to donate to the Wikipedia Foundation this past month. I understand that Wikipedia is not thought of as a reliable source for scholarly papers but it is indeed a great way to start a paper to get a general understanding of main concepts/themes/definitions. This post is intended to be a shout-out and socio-economic analysis of the extremely popular medium all University students must know and love.
The website can be thought of as a non market peer production platform that enables success for some users and dissatisfaction for others in the sense that their governance structure has been labelled has "autocracy and bureaucracy."


"Wikipedia shapes online sociality not by implementing buttons for liking, friending, following and trending- functions anchored in the popularity principle- but by contructing a platform for 'knowing' that is moored in the neutrality principle" (Van Dijck, 2013).

Wikipedia has created a platform that is actively involved in what Van Dijck calls a "culture of connectivity" but has done so in a way that contributes to our knowledge and understanding of everyday concepts and largely valuable to us as students. Wikipedia has never allowed advertisements so it's obvious that this is not their business model- rather they
focus on public and private donations from people like ourselves and companies to keep up with the maintenance of the platform. Without these donations, the "free online encyclopedia" would not exist, and that to me- sounds like a nightmare.

Would you agree that Wikipedia can be described as the epitome of crowdsourcing? Would you consider donating to the Wikipedia foundation?