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Google is a for-profit entity designed to maximize revenue and returns for shareholders. It's an absurd comparison. You mention that the WMF has a year's budg
by fatbird 9y ago
Google is a for-profit entity designed to maximize revenue and returns for shareholders. It's an absurd comparison.
You mention that the WMF has a year's budget in reserve. For a non-profit, this is generally considered a bad thing except in certain forms like building an endowment, because hoarding cash is just a way for a non-profit to actually profit and keep it. The previous ED of wikimedia actually called this out as a problem because they don't have the governance structure to prevent "log-rolling, self-dealing, and other corrupt practices".
- Alex3917 9y agoHow is it any different? Increasing their spending either helps them meet their goals faster or it doesn’t. There is zero difference between for-profits and non-profits in this regard.
- fatbird 9y agoThey were meeting their goals a decade ago with one part-time tech and a budget only 3% of what it is today. How has exponential growth in revenue and spending improved or sped up goal-meeting? It's kept a lot of wikipedians employed building features no one wants (or outright rejects), but it hasn't furthered the goal of collecting the world's knowledge, which is still almost entirely driven by the entirely voluntary editorial staff using the same tools they had a decade ago.