9 ms·

This is an extremely misleading take. Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent financial report. They took in $162 million, against an $11

This is an extremely misleading take. Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent financial report. They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, and came out of the year with $240 million in assets.[1] So they had about half a year's surplus, and wound up with ~2 years worth of savings. And yes, that's a simplification, a good chunk of those assets are necessary to continue operating and cannot be liquefied to cover operating expenses. In 19-20, they took in $120 million against a $111 million operating budget.[2] [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim... [2]https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annual-report/financials/#section-1 https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu... So, yes, Wikipedia is doing well - as we should hope they would be. But no, they are not rolling in it, and yes they do depend on our continued support to continue doing well. Edit: The article linked in the tweet asks valid questions and puts the stats in better context, but the twitter thread presents the numbers in a way that is very, frustratingly, misleading.

jefftk 4y ago
They have an "$111 million operating budget", but that's because they've decided to spend money on lots of things other than "serve Wikipedia": https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goes/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe... Note that "Direct support to websites" includes things like designing and implementing more intuitive article editing UI, which while potentially worth it isn't the kind of "obviously we must do this" that keeping the site serving is. For example, in 2016 Wikipedia served a similar amount of page views as it does today [1] on an operating budget of about half [2]. Go farther back and my impression is it's much more dramatic, though I'm not finding good page view statistics for, say, 2010. [1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|all|agent~user|monthly https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-pag... [2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat... vs https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-_FY16-17.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...
- woodruffw 4y ago
  From your link: 25% overhead doesn’t really seem that bad? If those numbers are accurate, 75c of every dollar goes directly to hosting, development, and community support (things like grants and legal aid for editors). That’s probably on par if not better than most nonprofits.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    25% overhead is what EU/EC project funds allow & provide. This is not a huge percentage. It’s pretty normal.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    The important thing isn't how much of a project is "overhead", it's what you get for your donation. A project distributing lollypops might have 5% overhead, but I would still prefer to donate to one that distributed vaccines with 30% overhead. In this case their program expenses are a mix of incredibly valuable things ("keep wikipedia online") and more borderline things ("redesigning the article editing UI"). When their fundraising talks about the former as if it's what the marginal dollar will be spent on, that's pretty misleading. (I don't think this marketing is unusually misleading for a non-profit, and likely better than average; the bar for honesty in fundraising is depressingly low.)
    - magicalist 4y ago
      > and more borderline things ("redesigning the article editing UI") You keep harping on this, but improving the article editing UI seems like an absolutely valuable thing for wikipedia to invest in. Retaining existing and attracting new contributors is essential to wikipedia's future, and the editing experience is an essential part of that.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    Have you noticed any actual development on Wikipedia? Only thing that changes from the user perspective is that the donation request get more and more annoying every year.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, The giant operating budget is what people take issue with. People see these banners on the website and assume that their donations are going to fund the website. However, the Wikimedia Foundation has been inexplicably expanding their budgets to match whatever amount of money comes in each year, leading them to this endless cycle of needing ever-increasing amounts of donations because they're doing ever-increasing amounts of spending on various activities unrelated to serving the website.
- fluoridation 4y ago
  Induced demand and Parkinson's law.
- akolbe 4y ago
  Bingo. You can't grow your revenue tenfold and still claim you are asking for money to ensure your bare survival. Remember: the WMF less than ten years ago themselves said they could survive quite well on "$10M+/year". https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124621.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March... Now they ask for $160M+. At some point the message has to change. It has to become something a little more like: Look, so far we've done this which you thought was cool. Now we want to do X, Y and Z. Will you support us?
  - musicale 4y ago
    Well $10M in 2012 would be more like $13M today, so their budget has only expanded 12x in constant dollars, and they probably have more articles and users than they had in 2012.
    - morsch 4y ago
      Total page views have been pretty stable since 2016. Presumably the number and size of articles has increased, but I don't know by now much. https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|2016-01-01~2022-09-04|~total|monthly https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/reading/total...
booleandilemma 4y ago
$111 million operating budget Where does it all go?
akolbe 4y ago
Thanks for the edit.
presentation 4y ago
I for one am worried that Wikipedia only has enough assets to survive a bit over a couple years of the fundraising climate dries up. That is not anti fragile.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  Oh please, they could slap “tasteful ads” on it tomorrow and pay for the critical operations without breaking a sweat. Wikipedia isn’t going anywhere.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Someone could replace it with Wikipedia II for 5% the cost or less. A tiny fraction of spend is on hosting and site maintenance.
throwoutway 4y ago
It’s not misleading. If you look at their past decade, they’re doing really well, and yet the banner begging for money now takes up most of my screen. I gave once and I regretted it after looking at how much profit they’re tunneling away. It’s scammy
from 4y ago
There has been an explosion in expenses without any substantial improvement to the site or really anything that the people who actually use Wikipedia would notice. Is there any reason why they needed $50 million more dollars in 2021 than they needed in 2016? For the most part it’s still the same old Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikitravel etc. And please don’t tell me making the new editor cost that much (many people are not fans of it either).
krageon 4y ago
The core of what they do needs maybe 2% of what they spend. That they spend more doesn't mean they need money, it means they are frivolous spenders.
FunnyBadger 4y ago

jefftk 4y ago

They have an "$111 million operating budget", but that's because they've decided to spend money on lots of things other than "serve Wikipedia": https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goes/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe... Note that "Direct support to websites" includes things like designing and implementing more intuitive article editing UI, which while potentially worth it isn't the kind of "obviously we must do this" that keeping the site serving is. For example, in 2016 Wikipedia served a similar amount of page views as it does today [1] on an operating budget of about half [2]. Go farther back and my impression is it's much more dramatic, though I'm not finding good page view statistics for, say, 2010. [1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|all|agent~user|monthly https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-pag... [2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat... vs https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-_FY16-17.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...

woodruffw 4y ago
From your link: 25% overhead doesn’t really seem that bad? If those numbers are accurate, 75c of every dollar goes directly to hosting, development, and community support (things like grants and legal aid for editors). That’s probably on par if not better than most nonprofits.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  25% overhead is what EU/EC project funds allow & provide. This is not a huge percentage. It’s pretty normal.
- jefftk 4y ago
  The important thing isn't how much of a project is "overhead", it's what you get for your donation. A project distributing lollypops might have 5% overhead, but I would still prefer to donate to one that distributed vaccines with 30% overhead. In this case their program expenses are a mix of incredibly valuable things ("keep wikipedia online") and more borderline things ("redesigning the article editing UI"). When their fundraising talks about the former as if it's what the marginal dollar will be spent on, that's pretty misleading. (I don't think this marketing is unusually misleading for a non-profit, and likely better than average; the bar for honesty in fundraising is depressingly low.)
  - magicalist 4y ago
    > and more borderline things ("redesigning the article editing UI") You keep harping on this, but improving the article editing UI seems like an absolutely valuable thing for wikipedia to invest in. Retaining existing and attracting new contributors is essential to wikipedia's future, and the editing experience is an essential part of that.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  Have you noticed any actual development on Wikipedia? Only thing that changes from the user perspective is that the donation request get more and more annoying every year.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, The giant operating budget is what people take issue with. People see these banners on the website and assume that their donations are going to fund the website. However, the Wikimedia Foundation has been inexplicably expanding their budgets to match whatever amount of money comes in each year, leading them to this endless cycle of needing ever-increasing amounts of donations because they're doing ever-increasing amounts of spending on various activities unrelated to serving the website.

fluoridation 4y ago
Induced demand and Parkinson's law.
akolbe 4y ago
Bingo. You can't grow your revenue tenfold and still claim you are asking for money to ensure your bare survival. Remember: the WMF less than ten years ago themselves said they could survive quite well on "$10M+/year". https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124621.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March... Now they ask for $160M+. At some point the message has to change. It has to become something a little more like: Look, so far we've done this which you thought was cool. Now we want to do X, Y and Z. Will you support us?
- musicale 4y ago
  Well $10M in 2012 would be more like $13M today, so their budget has only expanded 12x in constant dollars, and they probably have more articles and users than they had in 2012.
  - morsch 4y ago
    Total page views have been pretty stable since 2016. Presumably the number and size of articles has increased, but I don't know by now much. https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|2016-01-01~2022-09-04|~total|monthly https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/reading/total...

booleandilemma 4y ago

$111 million operating budget Where does it all go?

akolbe 4y ago

Thanks for the edit.

presentation 4y ago

I for one am worried that Wikipedia only has enough assets to survive a bit over a couple years of the fundraising climate dries up. That is not anti fragile.

dougmwne 4y ago
Oh please, they could slap “tasteful ads” on it tomorrow and pay for the critical operations without breaking a sweat. Wikipedia isn’t going anywhere.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
Someone could replace it with Wikipedia II for 5% the cost or less. A tiny fraction of spend is on hosting and site maintenance.

throwoutway 4y ago

It’s not misleading. If you look at their past decade, they’re doing really well, and yet the banner begging for money now takes up most of my screen. I gave once and I regretted it after looking at how much profit they’re tunneling away. It’s scammy

from 4y ago

There has been an explosion in expenses without any substantial improvement to the site or really anything that the people who actually use Wikipedia would notice. Is there any reason why they needed $50 million more dollars in 2021 than they needed in 2016? For the most part it’s still the same old Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikitravel etc. And please don’t tell me making the new editor cost that much (many people are not fans of it either).

krageon 4y ago

The core of what they do needs maybe 2% of what they spend. That they spend more doesn't mean they need money, it means they are frivolous spenders.

FunnyBadger 4y ago