I for one sure hope that Wikipedia never falls so low as to have to run ads. :) Which doesn't mean that there aren't any alternative revenue streams for the Wi

I for one sure hope that Wikipedia never falls so low as to have to run ads. :) Which doesn't mean that there aren't any alternative revenue streams for the Wikimedia Foundation. But it's a very touchy topic here. Ideas I've heard is finding/accepting more large grants (rather rare now, since it affects the independence of the organization), collaborating with companies wishing to crawl the content (like search engines; nothing that isn't public, just easier access) or hosting MediaWiki wiki instances (many people want to run "their own Wikipedia" and there aren't very many good providers now). Not that anyone is planning to switch to one of these models, as far as I know. But it's an alternative in case people stop donating.