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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. from+MO1[view] [source] 2022-09-15 04:33:50
>>dbingh+Ge
There has been an explosion in expenses without any substantial improvement to the site or really anything that the people who actually use Wikipedia would notice. Is there any reason why they needed $50 million more dollars in 2021 than they needed in 2016? For the most part it’s still the same old Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikitravel etc. And please don’t tell me making the new editor cost that much (many people are not fans of it either).
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