4 ms·

> The modern Wikipedia hosts 11–12 times as many pages as it did in 2005, but the WMF is spending 33 times as much on hosting, has about 300 times as many emplo

> The modern Wikipedia hosts 11–12 times as many pages as it did in 2005, but the WMF is spending 33 times as much on hosting, has about 300 times as many employees, and is spending 1,250 times as much overall. WMF's spending has gone up by 85% over the past three years. Can someone analyze this? It sounds a lot like he has a negative feeling about WMF, and threw in numbers to validate his opinion. I'd expect non-linear spending (in terms of pages hosted) at some point (because other things related to pages like links probably grow non-linearly).

weeks 9y ago
As a Wikipedia administrator (mostly inactive), this sentiment makes complete sense to me. The WMF seemingly spends the majority of its money on non-critical functions such as community outreach, local chapters, yearly conferences and other non-critical costs. Including a parade of highly paid, not very effective executives. One thing to keep in mind is the WMF != the Wikipedia community, it is very possible to truly support the Wikipedia mission without also supporting how the WMF is ran.
- smsm42 9y ago
  > on non-critical functions such as community outreach, local chapters, yearly conferences These are critical functions if you want to have live developing community. If you just want to have a site that answers http requests, sure, not critical. There are billions of those. Making sure Wiki projects work as communities and not just as IP address answering http requests is what makes it critical. > One thing to keep in mind is the WMF != the Wikipedia community, it is very possible to truly support the Wikipedia mission without also supporting how the WMF is ran. Absolutely. But in doing that one must not forget what the point is. If you declare chapters and and community development unnecessary, what is necessary? Just server maintenance? Nope. Google has tons of expertise in maintaining servers, still can't make communities. Their Freebase project is no more, Wikidata is alive and well. Something to learn from this?
  - fiter 9y ago
    How does WMF measure their community building success/failure?
    - smsm42 9y ago
      There are regular surveys, and then by talking to people on events, conferences or just by people providing feedback on one of many channels. And of course by statistical measures such as traffic, editor activities, etc. (for which WMF has team that does relevant data collection and research - yet another non-obvious place where people work that is not directly "site maintenance"). You can also check out https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Collaboration https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Collaboration and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources for teams that do it and know better than I do :)
  - ChristianKle 9y ago
    Wikipedia had more membership growth in the time where there was no money for yearly conferences and community outreach. Wikidata mainly works because it's programmers do a decent job and people like to participate. It doesn't work because WMF invests in community outreach and yearly conferences. It's get's a lot of money from the German chapter, so it shows some usefulness of the chapter but it's not a result of the community building spending of that chapter.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Highly paid executives? https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salar... shows that the top executives are paid less than individual contributors at other companies in the area. If anything, they're underpaid.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
Their per page hosting costs should be dropping. Something is objectively wrong with how WMF spends its money.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-_FY15-16.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikim... indicates that only about $2M of this is spent on hosting. Wikipedia pages likely include more, higher-resolution imagery and video than they did ten years ago.
Turing_Machine 9y ago
Surely bandwidth would be a better metric than number of pages, or even number of page views? While I don't have any numbers, my gut tells me that 2017 Wikipedia has a lot more pictures and multimedia files than 2005 Wikipedia. Edit: found some numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#How_big_is_the_database.3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#How_bi... In February 2003, a Wikipedia backup was about 4 GB in size. Today it's over 30 terabytes (4-6 TB for text, history, etc., and ~27 TB for images and other media).

weeks 9y ago

As a Wikipedia administrator (mostly inactive), this sentiment makes complete sense to me. The WMF seemingly spends the majority of its money on non-critical functions such as community outreach, local chapters, yearly conferences and other non-critical costs. Including a parade of highly paid, not very effective executives. One thing to keep in mind is the WMF != the Wikipedia community, it is very possible to truly support the Wikipedia mission without also supporting how the WMF is ran.

smsm42 9y ago
> on non-critical functions such as community outreach, local chapters, yearly conferences These are critical functions if you want to have live developing community. If you just want to have a site that answers http requests, sure, not critical. There are billions of those. Making sure Wiki projects work as communities and not just as IP address answering http requests is what makes it critical. > One thing to keep in mind is the WMF != the Wikipedia community, it is very possible to truly support the Wikipedia mission without also supporting how the WMF is ran. Absolutely. But in doing that one must not forget what the point is. If you declare chapters and and community development unnecessary, what is necessary? Just server maintenance? Nope. Google has tons of expertise in maintaining servers, still can't make communities. Their Freebase project is no more, Wikidata is alive and well. Something to learn from this?
- fiter 9y ago
  How does WMF measure their community building success/failure?
  - smsm42 9y ago
    There are regular surveys, and then by talking to people on events, conferences or just by people providing feedback on one of many channels. And of course by statistical measures such as traffic, editor activities, etc. (for which WMF has team that does relevant data collection and research - yet another non-obvious place where people work that is not directly "site maintenance"). You can also check out https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Collaboration https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Collaboration and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources for teams that do it and know better than I do :)
- ChristianKle 9y ago
  Wikipedia had more membership growth in the time where there was no money for yearly conferences and community outreach. Wikidata mainly works because it's programmers do a decent job and people like to participate. It doesn't work because WMF invests in community outreach and yearly conferences. It's get's a lot of money from the German chapter, so it shows some usefulness of the chapter but it's not a result of the community building spending of that chapter.
lern_too_spel 9y ago
Highly paid executives? https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salar... shows that the top executives are paid less than individual contributors at other companies in the area. If anything, they're underpaid.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

Their per page hosting costs should be dropping. Something is objectively wrong with how WMF spends its money.

ceejayoz 9y ago
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-_FY15-16.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikim... indicates that only about $2M of this is spent on hosting. Wikipedia pages likely include more, higher-resolution imagery and video than they did ten years ago.

Turing_Machine 9y ago

Surely bandwidth would be a better metric than number of pages, or even number of page views? While I don't have any numbers, my gut tells me that 2017 Wikipedia has a lot more pictures and multimedia files than 2005 Wikipedia. Edit: found some numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#How_big_is_the_database.3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#How_bi... In February 2003, a Wikipedia backup was about 4 GB in size. Today it's over 30 terabytes (4-6 TB for text, history, etc., and ~27 TB for images and other media).