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[return to "Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved"]
1. dbingh+Ge[view] [source] 2022-09-14 18:14:35
>>akolbe+(OP)
This is an extremely misleading take.

Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent financial report.

They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, and came out of the year with $240 million in assets.[1]

So they had about half a year's surplus, and wound up with ~2 years worth of savings. And yes, that's a simplification, a good chunk of those assets are necessary to continue operating and cannot be liquefied to cover operating expenses.

In 19-20, they took in $120 million against a $111 million operating budget.[2]

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...

[2]https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu...

So, yes, Wikipedia is doing well - as we should hope they would be. But no, they are not rolling in it, and yes they do depend on our continued support to continue doing well.

Edit: The article linked in the tweet asks valid questions and puts the stats in better context, but the twitter thread presents the numbers in a way that is very, frustratingly, misleading.

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2. Pragma+oC[view] [source] 2022-09-14 19:52:59
>>dbingh+Ge
> They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget,

The giant operating budget is what people take issue with.

People see these banners on the website and assume that their donations are going to fund the website. However, the Wikimedia Foundation has been inexplicably expanding their budgets to match whatever amount of money comes in each year, leading them to this endless cycle of needing ever-increasing amounts of donations because they're doing ever-increasing amounts of spending on various activities unrelated to serving the website.

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3. akolbe+9H[view] [source] 2022-09-14 20:16:59
>>Pragma+oC
Bingo. You can't grow your revenue tenfold and still claim you are asking for money to ensure your bare survival.

Remember: the WMF less than ten years ago themselves said they could survive quite well on "$10M+/year".

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March...

Now they ask for $160M+.

At some point the message has to change. It has to become something a little more like: Look, so far we've done this which you thought was cool. Now we want to do X, Y and Z. Will you support us?

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4. musica+D11[view] [source] 2022-09-14 22:03:03
>>akolbe+9H
Well $10M in 2012 would be more like $13M today, so their budget has only expanded 12x in constant dollars, and they probably have more articles and users than they had in 2012.
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5. s1arti+pp1[view] [source] 2022-09-15 00:41:30
>>musica+D11
Not sure if this is sarcasm.

They have had some marginal change in hosting fees, so a 1200% change in costs seems reasonable?

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