2009/1/7 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
A quick update: the "Thank You" banner is currently scheduled to stay up until January 9, 4 PM PST. We're keeping it up a while longer in part because it's the first work week after the holidays for many people, and in part because it's an opportunity for chapters to get some more visibility (we may have reached our goals ahead of time, but the chapters were operating under the assumption that the fundraiser would continue until January 15). As explained in the "Thank You" letter, the funds donated to WMF from now until the end of the fiscal year will go into our reserve fund and will help us to not live from hand to mouth as we head into the new fiscal. We'd always planned to raise at least $1.3M in reserve funding throughout the fiscal year.
It is also a opportunity to further annoy our readers. IT's pretty clear they don't like it so the sensible thing to do would be to remove it or if you have some weird desire to keep it make it a lot smaller.