How much does it cost? And how much does it need to save to be able to operate in perpetuity? And how much should it be giving away to ensure that there's an environment of well educated people who can continue to tend to its needs in future generations?
I'm assuming you don't have the answers, I certainly don't. I'm also assuming they have a pretty good sense of what those answers are.
There's a huge jump there. I don't agree that the average person donating to Wikipedia through these ads thinks they're donating to "ensuring there's an environment of well educated people", above and beyond providing a neutral, comprehensive and universally-editable encyclopaedia.
You're absolutely right I don't know how much it costs to operate in perpetuity. If your point is about building up a trust that's a great idea. I can't see anything in the plan about this: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...
The average person is donating to the concept of Wikipedia. "I like this site, I'll toss them a couple bucks". They probably don't care how it's allocated at all.
Like all donations, it's an abstraction - you donate to the thing you see, but behind the abstraction is a complex bit of machinery you do not understand.
I donate to the world wildlife fund. I assume my donations help wildlife both concretely and abstractly, and that they continue to keep the WWF operational. I have no idea where my $50 actually goes, nor do I particularly care.
Same with Doctors Without Borders, or whatever else.
I assume charities know better than me their needs and finances.
<<I have no idea where my $50 actually goes, nor do I particularly care.
I hate to say this, but I think this is one reason why we anecdotally read reports of lottery winners relatively quickly returning to their original predicament. Some people are terrible at allocating resources. For Wikipedia, of all places, to take advantage of that is mildly.. well.. evil.
<<behind the abstraction is a complex bit of machinery you do not understand.
Not all people operate like that. Some like to understand where their money is going. If it is doing good, that is great! Can I see how you do it? Wait. This financial statement says you are not doing nearly as well as you just told me you did. Can you explain it to me?
It is a very different mindset. I restrict my donations to occasional EFF and IA, but I primarily focus on donating my time ( the nature of those varies as I am still searching for a way to make actual impact ).
> Wikipedia's servers cost around £2 million a year. WMF's assets are over £230 million. See the 2021 Audit Report. If the existing assets are invested, then Wikipedia could run till the end of time and live comfortably off the investment returns with plenty to spare. However, WMF staff costs are nearly £68 million, and there's money thrown around in all directions, very little of which has anything to do with Wikipedia itself. The fundraising has nothing to do with keeping Wikipedia going, it is about making WMF richer and more powerful.
Ok, but servers are a small minority of their expenses. They pay 6 million a year in donation processing fees, 88 million in wages and benefits, 12 million in operating expenses, 16 million in professional services (presumably contract work), and 3 million in depreciating assets.
All told their expenses are 145 million a year, of which 10% is "awards and grants".
Focusing on the server costs is like saying an engineer only writes code. It takes much much more than servers to make a site.
I think part of what people are upset about and pointing out is that these wages and operating expenses are far greater than they need to be, and have been inflating near exponentially.
Probably a huge amount of fat and bullshit jobs able to be cut without affecting the Wikipedia service at all.
The point I'm making is that they don't know that. It's all armchair CEOs. They don't have the information that WMF has, they aren't privy to the problems WMF faces.
You think if WMF could run with half the expenses they have today but not lower income they'd just choose to run the way they do? I guarantee you they are looking at cost cutting daily, like every other corporation.
> The point I'm making is that they don't know that.
We have a pretty strong indication though, since Wikipedia ran with significantly leaner staff not long ago, and Wikipedia wasn't fundamentally much less useful then compared to now.
If you look at the financial reports, in 2012[1] they paid almost exactly the same in internet hosting fees and other operating expenses as in 2022[2]. However the salary expenses ballooned to ~6.7x (adjusted for inflation).
> I'm assuming you don't have the answers, I certainly don't.
Yeah you do: this is all in their financial reports. You can see exactly what it costs and what is needed. (Presumably that's what everyone reads before deciding to believe a random cry for money in an online banner ad.)
The costs for servers (with developers/admins that maintain them) are a tiny tiny fraction of the income. I'm fully in favor of also funding further development instead of only maintenance, but just look at the kind of things that more than half of the money goes to.
I last looked at this 2-3 years ago but simply from the fact that they're still collecting even more money annually than they already did 3 years ago (and the banners are more obnoxious if nothing else), they apparently have decided to do the opposite of starting to spend more appropriate and sustainable amounts.
> What are they doing 6x more of compared to ten years ago? 80% more of since last year?
For one, employing people to coordinate fundraising. Ten years ago there was 3-4 people involved, and now there's nearly 50 employees who work on raising funds... very Ouroboros-like.
18m/year pays for maybe 40-60 engineers. An engineer might get paid 150k, but their salary doesn't include the cost of buildings, facilities, insurance, benefits, payroll, etc etc etc.
But then you aren't paying for legal, hr, recruiting, admins, leadership, data center workers, etc.
To say nothing of the global operations teams you need to ensure Wikipedia is compliant with local laws.
18m to run Wikipedia would be absolutely threadbare.
Wikipedia expenses were around that in 2011. What significant improvement has Wikipedia had ever since, now that it spends 10x more? There's more content sure, but that's the volunteers work.
I'm assuming you don't have the answers, I certainly don't. I'm also assuming they have a pretty good sense of what those answers are.