4 ms·

Useless signaling? 1 million is definitely not useless.

• xyzzyz 8y ago
  It is absolutely useless to Wikimedia, since it already rakes in around $90M a year, and only manages to spend $70M of it, most of it on useless projects that don't make any difference to actual day to day operations of Wikipedia, which is done 95% by unpaid volunteers (the remaining 5% is paying for servers and network, and maintaining software, which costs much, much less than $70M). Wikimedia clearly doesn't need as much money, but since it gets it, it grows to spend as much of it as it can. If they scaled back to their spending in 2012 (when they already were high up in the top 10 most visited websites), and did fundraising for only extra 2 or 3 years, they would have enough endowment to fund their operations in perpetuity, and not need to run sad Jimbo face on Wikipedia ever again. Alas, the foundation will expand to fill the available space, wasting millions in the process.
  • blattimwind 8y ago
    WMF is essentially in the agency-budgeting phase. They always need a larger budget and they always find a way to (almost) blow through their previous budget to have an excuse to ask for a bigger one next year round. > We've been selling cocaine for the CIA so they could buy arms from Iran? Did we at least free some hostages? > No, this was about our annual budget. > What? > If we don't spend it this year we can't get an increase next year.