A chain reaction of responses echoed around the world after Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, was quoted by a blogger as saying at the Lift '07 conference in Geneva that "Wikipedia would run out of money in three to four months."

Devouard began immediately to send out soothing messages. It seems that the quote had been taken out of context, and that the financial condition of the foundation, which operates the Wikipedia Web site, is not quite so dire.

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David Shai, the manager of Wikipedia in Hebrew, said, "Looking at the contribution to Wikipedia's public relations, there is no doubt that the [the statement's] publication helped, but there is no need to exaggerate, there is no fear for the future of the site, the Internet will collapse before Wikipedia does."

Shai said that Hebrew Wikipedia has no financial activity, and all of its resources come from the Wikimedia Foundation. Hebrew-speakers focus only on creation of content. "The reliance on donations of surfers has continued for six years, although financial needs increase from year to year. A million dollars were recruited last month, more than the annual budget of the entire foundation last year, so that I don't see any problems looming in the future," said Shai.

The Wikipedia site currently has no advertisements, and does not intend to include ads anytime soon. "A free [of ads] site is an advantage for surfers, but the lack of ads is less a matter of principal and more a matter of being a more pleasant environment," said Shai. "There is one principal that will not change, and that is that the encyclopedia will continue to provide all of its content for free to anyone. If there are financial difficulties, ads may be added to obtain the necessary financing, and a small amount of advertising will probably be enough," he said.

Another source that could help Wikipedia overcome financial problems is cooperation with a commercial entity. The current license of use provides that the content may be reused freely, provided that the source is credited. One possible scenario is that a large Internet site such as Google or Yahoo will copy all of the content to their servers, and continue to provide a platform for users and content creators. "This is an existing, but superfluous safety net," said Shai, who does not believe that anything of the sort will be required.

The Hebrew language Wikipedia continues to grow at an increasing rate. There are currently 53,000 entries. "We enjoy successful cooperation with academic entities such as the Hebrew University, where there are students that write on legal subjects as part of an academic course. In addition, the site has a few thousand users who contribute content, and more than 100 who are very active, and create or edit content a few times a day, Shai explained.