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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. presen+Kf1[view] [source] 2022-09-14 23:31:17
>>dbingh+Ge
I for one am worried that Wikipedia only has enough assets to survive a bit over a couple years of the fundraising climate dries up. That is not anti fragile.
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3. s1arti+Dp1[view] [source] 2022-09-15 00:43:16
>>presen+Kf1
Someone could replace it with Wikipedia II for 5% the cost or less. A tiny fraction of spend is on hosting and site maintenance.
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