https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#S...
The Wikimedia Foundation has also just been fundraising in India and South Africa, again asking people there to donate so Wikipedia stays online for them, ad-free, subscription-free and independent.
None of these executives have anything do with the Wikipedia content. All of that is written by unpaid volunteers in their spare time. When Wikipedia first became a top-10 website, the Wikimedia Foundation had less than a dozen staff, and annual expenses of $2 million. I am not saying lets go back to that; I'm only saying this to make the point that the success of Wikipedia was not dependent on highly paid executives. It happened when there weren't any. The main value of the site comes from the volunteers.
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.
Note that "Direct support to websites" includes things like designing and implementing more intuitive article editing UI, which while potentially worth it isn't the kind of "obviously we must do this" that keeping the site serving is.
For example, in 2016 Wikipedia served a similar amount of page views as it does today [1] on an operating budget of about half [2]. Go farther back and my impression is it's much more dramatic, though I'm not finding good page view statistics for, say, 2010.
[1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-pag...
[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat... vs https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...
Sysadmins are paid to make sure wikipedia doesn't have random downtime. Time spent on bugfixing should only be noticed if someone screws up.
If you want to see what people are doing - the git repo is public. https://github.com/wikimedia
Here's a link to the ideas page discussing the change:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propos...
And a link to a page describing the changes:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme...
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais...
It's gone through a phase of planned, aggressive growth of its headcount. Its salary costs have increased tenfold over a decade:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...
As you can see on that page, individual executives' salaries have risen by 20, 30 percent in the space of two years. And all the while people are told the Wikimedia Foundation needs money "to keep Wikipedia online", or "to protect Wikipedia's independence".
No. If you want to grow your headcount, tell people why. If you want ten times as much money from the public ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
... then say what you are going to do with it. Don't hide behind "keeping Wikipedia online".
To ask questions, a good place to start is the Teahouse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse
Good luck!
In particular, "32% direct support to communities" was seen as complete pie in the sky. 32% of $163M revenue would be $52 million.
But once you deduct the $68M salary bill and $6M in donation processing expenses from the $112M expenses total, you only have $38M left!
So how can 32% of revenue be "direct support to communities"??
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
"Direct support to communities", to me, is when you give something "directly" to a community member, such as a travel grant, or a grant for equipment, or pay for reference material.
The Wikimedia Foundation does things like that too, to be fair, but it accounts for about 3% of its expenditure, not 32%.
It's in the $9.8M "Awards and grants" item here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
However, $5.5M of that $9.8M is money the Foundation paid into its own Endowment (which, by the way, has never published audited accounts). So only a little over $4M are left for "direct support to the communities".
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?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
> ... then say what you are going to do with it. Don't hide behind "keeping Wikipedia online".
Fair. I'm with you there. I would like clearer documentation of Wikimedia's organizational breakdown and where they are spending that budget.
I tend to only donate to places that seem to spend the money well and efficiently, for example.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...
Wikipedia is the most widely read reference source on the planet. Wouldn't you rather it was stewarded by an organisation that was honest with the public?
There are other losers. This man, guilt-tripped into donating to Wikipedia when all he has is $18 to his name is a loser:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#S...
Actually, that sounds wrong. He is a wonderful man, but one that really should not have been put in this invidious position.
What about her?
https://twitter.com/tizzie/status/1570095249044967424
There are other losers still. People in India and South Africa are scared into donating to Wikipedia by emails that raise the spectre of a subscription fee, or of Wikipedia blinking out of existence for lack of funds.
There are other charitable causes they could have donated to in their own country, rather than sending money to the US, money that might have saved lives in their own country, rather than added another treat to a US employee's benefits package.
Those are some of the "losers".
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943...
Wikimedia Foundation (2019): 291 employees, $56M salary costs.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200...
Less than twice the US employees, more than five times the salary costs. (Both orgs also have some non-US employees included in the salary costs total, but they are a small minority of the staff.)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Hosting costs them $2.4M a year:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
Less than ten years ago, one of their VPs said they could sustain their mission on "$10M+/year":
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March...
What he actually said in 2013 was this:
"WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very minimal staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host a high traffic website on an absolute shoestring. But I would argue that an endowment, to actually be worthwhile, should aim for a significantly higher base level of minimal annual operating expenses, more in the order of magnitude of $10M+/year, to ensure not only bare survival, but actual sustainability of Wikimedia's mission. The "what's the level required for bare survival" question is, IMO, only of marginal interest, because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible, to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity."
Total Wikimedia assets (Foundation + Endowment funds at Tides) stood at about $400 million in March 2022.
https://wantremote.com/company_for_remote_job/wikimedia-foun...
... include "reimbursement for mind, body and soul activities such as fitness memberships, massages, cooking classes and much more"
This is a fine thing I'm sure, but I wouldn't want it to be paid for by Indian or African donors worried Wikipedia will disappear, or start charging a subscription, if they don't donate.
So fundraising appeals in the developing world in particular should be dialed right down:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
When deciding where to donate we should consider where our money will do the most good. "Keep Wikipedia online" is a candidate for one of the most important things, if that's actually what your money will help do. But other Wikimedia projects, while useful, are generally nowhere near as high priority, and there are a lot of other places we could be donating!
https://www.southcentre.int/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/TCPB1...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
Then read this 2013 post from a past Wikimedia VP:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March...
So there is a difference between keeping the Wikimedia Foundation organization going and keeping Wikipedia going. Keeping the Wikimedia Foundation going at its current size costs about 10 times as much as just keeping Wikipedia going, under the assumptions of that 2013 post.
You can't use "keep Wikipedia online" indefinitely as a justification for raising ever more money in order to expand. The Wikimedia Foundation should talk far more in its fundraising about what those hundreds of additional people are actually doing, including projects other than Wikipedia, instead of projecting this image of a small raft of people struggling to hold Wikipedia together with duct tape.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/e4/Wikim...
This was two years ago. Some of these salaries rose by over 20 or 30 percent in the space of two years, when annual US inflation was at 2%. I fully expect to find even greater salary rises since – once the Form 990 for this year is published sometime in 2024 – as US inflation went up during the pandemic.
"Back in 2014, we had a very clear list of how to fix talk pages. Yet the mw:Talk pages project only started in 2019."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
Which reminds me: 3 of the 6 community candidates shortlisted for the Wikimedia board this year supported election compass statement #5:
"WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever."
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio...
I'm guessing I'll end up either using an extension or writing something up in Greasemonkey. There might even already be a userscript out there I can use.
They bring management consultants' jargon that alienates volunteers because to them it sounds phony. They want to do things top-down, because that is what they are used to, and what they feel they have to do make "their mark" which will look good on their CV when they move on in a couple of years' time to another job that hopefully pays them more. Meanwhile, the volunteers are there year after year, observing fads coming and going while often not getting the services they would actually like.
Above all, there is a such a growth in talk fests and bureaucracy. Grand plans and strategies are developed over years ("By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us") and then everything moves at a glacial pace. "Strategy started 7 years ago and yet we still havent even reached the implementation of anything" said one long-time volunteer on the mailing list the other day who felt like the WMF is actually moving things backwards:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...
Even editors usually loyal to the Foundation – former board members – are beginning to voice gentle complaints. "Bureaucracy is defeating us":
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...
Their pleas are falling on deaf ears.
And they are saying this because hosting costs are subtly ...
https://www.wionews.com/science-technology/exclusive-wikiped...
("Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia is one of the world’s most visited websites, yet many people don’t know that it is hosted and operated by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. Unlike other top websites, we rely on donations to support Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects ...")
... and not so subtly ...
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/wiki...
("But why does the “Wiki” continually appeal for funding? ... the wheels keep turning, and it has massive bandwidth and hosting service costs.")
... alluded to in press reports designed to stimulate giving. So I think it is fair enough to point out that the scale of WMF expenses is not actually due to hosting costs.
Lastly, Erik's $10M+ estimate very clearly included the requisite salaries.