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If you’ve been on Wikipedia at any point in the past 24 hours, you probably noticed a dramatic, black-and-yellow banner plastered atop your screen: “DEAR WIKIPEDIA READERS,” it begins in all caps — before launching into a desperate, paragraph-long pitch for money.

The banner heralds the start of the Wikimedia Foundation’s December fundraising drive, an annual Internet tradition as reliable as year-end lists and April Fool’s fakes. This year, WMF — the nonprofit that administers Wikipedia.org — hopes to raise $25 million to keep the site “online and growing.”

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Reading that, you may well assume that the world’s seventh-largest site risks going dark if you don’t donate.

In reality, that couldn’t be further from the case.

“People will come up to me during fundraising season and ask if Wikipedia’s in trouble,” said Andrew Lih, an associate professor of journalism at American University and the author of “The Wikipedia Revolution.” “I have to reassure them that not only is Wikipedia not in trouble, but that it’s making more money than ever before and is at no risk of going away.”