A quite wonderful student in our Internet & Society ’05 class (and
a teacher of mathematics and computing in his own right), Kevin
Driscoll, writes about hearing new Berkman Fellow Jimbo Wales the other night here on campus.  Among other fine observations, Kevin writes:

“While Wikipedia passed up tremendous sums by foregoing advertising,
the financial future looks bright. As Wikipedia leaves its adolescence
and receives 501.3c non-profit status, donations are more reliable than
ever. Wales told of a three-week, $75000(US) fundraising drive cut
short after $95000(US) was collected in only two! Yahoo recently
donated a data center to create homebase for Asian wiki initiatives.
The next step for Wikipedia is NGO-status which, according to Wales,
requires a more traditionally bureaucratic infrastructure in order that
it may “interface” better with other large-scale international
organizations.

‘Perversely, pathologically optimistic,’ (and still afraid of kicking
out the Klingons) Jimbo Wales is demonstrating the enabling, democratic
promises of the Web with every ambitious new project.”