4 ms·
You're right, page count is not the best metric. Instead you can just look up the hosting costs in their yearly report and find out it's a pittance compared to
by revelation 9y ago
You're right, page count is not the best metric. Instead you can just look up the hosting costs in their yearly report and find out it's a pittance compared to all their other spending and declining in relation.
- QAPereo 9y agoCould you link me to that?
- hk__2 9y agohttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-_FY15-16.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikim... Page 3. In 2016 they spent $2M in hosting vs. e.g. $2.2M in "travel and conferences" and $3.6M in "donations processing expenses".
- QAPereo 9y agoWell, shit. That’s horrendous, half of the money is just going to salaries.
- Alex3917 9y agoGiven that the entire point of WMF is that they pay people to do stuff, it would be alarming if salary wasn’t their largest expense. Why would anyone donate if not to pay for them to work on stuff?
- QAPereo 9y agoMost of what they do is host the work of others, who are not paid. It seems more than a little obscene that a corps 300 employees are splitting 31 million, for the task of overseeing a 2mil hosting operation. They spend more on processing donations than hosting. They give away about 5x as much as they do on hosting. What value are these people adding beyond the cost of hosting the repository built by people who are not paid?
- revelation 9y agoI mean, that's what the complaint is about. People think when they donate it's to ensure the Wikipedia keeps running and is maintained. In reality most of that money is feeding an insatiable beast that has very little to do with "running Wikipedia".
- Alex3917 9y ago> Most of what they do is host the work of others, who are not paid. Have you actually read their annual report lately? I don't follow what they do at this point, but the last time I checked many of their contributors were paid.
- QAPereo 9y agoUnless they’re one of the 300 employees splitting that salary, winning awards, or under the ~3mil of specialist services.... If the latter, then they still account for a fraction of the budget. Bull. Shit. An operation which could be run for about 5 mil is running an order of magnitude higher for no discernible change in service.
- tonyztan 9y agoThe vast majority of people who write Wikipedia articles are unpaid. We are all volunteers, writing with our own time. In fact, paid editing must be disclosed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid-contribution_disclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid-contribution_di....
- toomuchtodo 9y agoHaving office space in SF seems to be...unnecessary? Can someone explain the need for this expense? Operating Leases The Foundation has a seven-year noncancelable operating lease for its San Francisco location. The lease expires on September 30, 2017. Minimum rent payments under operating leases are recognized on a straight-line basis over the term of the lease including any periods of free rent. Rental expense for operating leases for the years ended June 30, 2016 and 2015 was $1,341,844 and $1,291,452, respectively. Future minimum lease payments under noncancelable operating leases as of June 30, 2016 are as follows: Year ending June 30: 2017 $ 1,306,986 2018 329,565 Total minimum lease payments $ 1,636,551
- ghaff 9y agoHalf of expenses being wages and salaries isn't clearly out of line and is probably fairly typical for a lot of non-profits. Also, if you look at what the senior people are being paid, it doesn't really seem particularly excessive--low six figures.
- mulmen 9y agoThere's a difference between a nonprofit and a charity.
- QAPereo 9y agoThere seems to be an obscene amount of profit compared to expenditures related to the actual site. Charity hardly even enters it; looking at those financials, nooooo one will accuse them of charity, barring their award activities of course.
- mulmen 9y agoYour comment mentioned salary specifically, not profit. Nobody should accuse mediawiki of charity because that's not what they claim to be. They are simply a company whose stated goal is not to make a profit. In that case it makes sense their salaries are high if we assume a positive correlation between salary and work completed.