5 ms·
I don't mean to nitpick, but exponentially? Really?
by samcrawford 7y ago
I don't mean to nitpick, but exponentially? Really?
- wongarsu 7y agoSo I just typed the "Total Expenses" line from page 3 of each of their financial reports [0] into Excel, this is the result: https://imgur.com/lIL79IK https://imgur.com/lIL79IK It looks like quadratic growth until around 2011, after that it becomes linear. This still seems like a lot of growth, considering the number of pageviews per article seems to be roughly constant over the last 5 years [1] 0: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/ 1: https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2015-07&end=2020-01&pages=Dog|Chair https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.or... Edit: this is how last year's expenses break down: Salaries and wages: 46,146,897 Awards and grants: 12,653,284 Internet hosting: 2,335,918 In-kind service expenses: 1,361,958 Donation processing expenses: 4,977,583 Professional service expenses: 8,998,261 Other operating expenses: 9,005,744 Travel and conferences: 2,867,774 Depreciation and amortization: 2,856,901 Special event expense, net: 209,690 ------------------------------------------ Total expenses: 91,414,010 (sorry if that's unreadable on mobile)
- ajphdiv 7y agoExcuse my ignorance. Does wikimedia pay content writers?
- wongarsu 7y agoNo. All the writing and most of the moderation is done by volunteers. The closest to that on the Foundation's payroll are the about three community managers. The Foundation does employ the engineers writing the software, the sysadmins keeping everything running, a UX team of 14 people, a lot of people related to fundraising, as well as outreach and public relations, some legal staff and various administrative staff. There's a full list of employees and contractors at https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/
- butterthebuddha 7y agoThey have a UX team? The UX hasn't changed in years!
- kick 7y agoIt's changed pretty heavily for the people who actually do the editing.
- joe-collins 7y agoPage previews are a fairly recent addition. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews
- jasoncartwright 7y agoNearly two years ago
- redis_mlc 7y agoIt's well-documented that active writers are paid shills for corporate clients. I've read interviews where the writer brags about his "ownership" of certain pages.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- divbzero 7y agoDoes anyone have links to the “well-documented” evidence mentioned above?
- labster 7y agoSo they have huge expenses for a nonprofit, but the people saying exponential growth are actually hyperbolic. Got it.
- abnry 7y agoIt's a genuine thing for people these days to misuse the phrase "exponential growth" when they just mean "really fast grow". I don't the hyperbole was strictly intended.
- saagarjha 7y ago> hyperbolic Ha.
- rileymat2 7y agoIf the expenses grew with inflation, wouldn't that be exponential growth?
- hak8or 7y ago1.3 mill for donation processing expenses? What tge heck? Well, I surely am not donating to them anymore, that is terrible.
- npsomaratna 7y agoNope - 4.9 million. I'm wondering - do they mean stuff like credit card processing fees, etc?
- lathiat 7y agoMost likely. It appears to be around 5% of this years budget. It’s typical to pay 2-3.6% in CC fees alone plus often a transaction fee of 10-30c which can add up on small $1-$5 donations (30c is 6% of $5 and much more of $1). They may have raised more or less than their annual budget this year plus I imagine probably spend some money on their email campaigns etc. So it doesn’t seem totally out of line.
- krastanov 7y agoWhy is this surprising? Everyone who accepts credit cards has to deal with processing fees, fraud prevention, chargebacks, etc. And at a larger scale they need to deal with lawyers and contracts.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Lanrei 7y agoWhy is no-one commenting that nearly half their expenses are in salaries and wages. They have 354 staff. That's ~130 000 USD per person.
- wbl 7y agoThat's pretty reasonable: benefits like health insurance are expensive!
- tracker1 7y agoDepending on where they are, and what those positions are, that's pretty cheap... that likely means their average employee's take home is around 80K give or take. Insurance, employer side taxes and other expenses aren't cheap. The government cuts both ways. If you live in SF, Seattle, Portland, NYC, Boston, Chicago or Philly, 80K is lower-middle class if that. Other cities/countries, it's incredible... just depends.
- superhuzza 7y agoIf your company is spending 130k to employee someone, that likely means the persons actual salary is around 90k. Think of the insurance, administrative costs, recruitment costs etc the company bears.