Bob Schwartz

Raise your hands if you’ve ever used Wikipedia. Okay, put them down.

Raise your hands if you use Wikipedia regularly. Okay.

Raise your hands if you’ve ever donated to keep Wikipedia, a non-profit service, up and running. Uh-huh.

A few times a year, Wikipedia pops up a request for donations. This time around, they suggest $2.75, or more if you can. Only 2% of Wikipedia users donate. 2%.

The nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation provides the essential infrastructure for free knowledge. We host Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, created, edited, and verified by volunteers around the world, as well as many other vital community projects. All of which is made possible thanks to donations from individuals like you. We welcome anyone who shares our vision to join us in collecting and sharing knowledge that fully represents human diversity.

Those of us who consider ourselves serious researchers acknowledge that Wikipedia should only be a starting point for research (though many people don’t recognize that). Those of us who consider ourselves serious researchers also acknowledge that lots of times, it is precisely where we do start. We can imagine a world without Wikipedia, but we agree it would be a less informative and entertaining one.

Please donate to Wikipedia today.

One thing now obvious is that brave and aggressive plans to resume conventional life—in business, schools, sports and other institutions—are going to be waiting a while longer. The profound impact of these delays can’t be minimized.

Like it or not, new and often unfamiliar ways are being forced upon us. The good news is that there are plenty of creative and adaptable people to help fashion these new ways. Lots of the options may not be comfortable or familiar, but we’ve got what we’ve got.

As these ways are being fitted to our lives (or our lives fitted to them), we should keep up our spirit of optimism. But we should place that precious optimism carefully. For the moment, some loud or fanatical hopes for immediate institutional normality are just wasted whistling in the dark. Instead, that optimism should be transferred to whatever we do now and to the ways things will be when we emerge from this moment.

We can make this work. We can make this work.