4 ms·

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 the

by 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...
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Not sure if this is sarcasm. They have had some marginal change in hosting fees, so a 1200% change in costs seems reasonable?
ckoerner 4y ago
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? I think this is a perfectly valid idea and would encourage you to lead with this sort of approach in trying to get the Foundation to change strategy. It's straightforward and constructive. Pointing out all the ways the fundraising is bad is not nearly as useful as suggesting ways to approach it differently and improve it. (I normally don't talk about Fundraising stuff as a volunteer, but the Meta thread where I was pinged led me here).

by akolbe 4y ago

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...
s1artibartfast 4y ago
Not sure if this is sarcasm. They have had some marginal change in hosting fees, so a 1200% change in costs seems reasonable?

ckoerner 4y ago

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? I think this is a perfectly valid idea and would encourage you to lead with this sort of approach in trying to get the Foundation to change strategy. It's straightforward and constructive. Pointing out all the ways the fundraising is bad is not nearly as useful as suggesting ways to approach it differently and improve it. (I normally don't talk about Fundraising stuff as a volunteer, but the Meta thread where I was pinged led me here).