Exactly. Even if they didn't pay writers (which might create its own problems), they could do far more to create and publicise a user-friendly scheme to provid

Exactly. Even if they didn't pay writers (which might create its own problems), they could do far more to create and publicise a user-friendly scheme to provide volunteers with access to paywalled sources, digitised books etc. They could spend some of those tens of millions on that. But there too they rely on begging and volunteer labour: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library It speaks volumes that even this rudimentary project, the Wikipedia Library, was originally initiated by a volunteer - for ten years, nobody at WMF seems to have had the brains to think of it. Supporting the broad mass of volunteers (rather than a few snouts in the trough) has never been near the top of the WMF list of priorities. I suspect the volunteers are largely regarded as amazingly convenient and useful idiots. The lion's share of WMF money has always been spent on software engineering, much of it done by former volunteers who sucked up enough to first land a WMF job and then prove their engineering incompetence (as in the VisualEditor debacle): http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-free-just-pay-us-our-salaries/ http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-fr... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/25/wikipedia_peasants_revolt/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/25/wikipedia_peasants_...