4 ms·

>the vast majority of your donation does go to maintaining wikipedia. Who knows? Is there any good investigative breakdown of exactly what Wikimedia Foundation

by sdsd 3y ago

>the vast majority of your donation does go to maintaining wikipedia. Who knows? Is there any good investigative breakdown of exactly what Wikimedia Foundation spends most of its income on? Does it have a huge admin parasitical attachment sucking the money away? I'm not accusing, just wondering myself. Perhaps someone knows about this.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
notnmeyer 3y ago
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ https://www.charitynavigator.org/ is the best source i know for this.
oxfordmale 3y ago
Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites. How do you square that with this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180736) that says only they only spend "2% on actual hosting costs." 100% of the work of actually maintaining Wikipedia is is done by unpaid volunteers, and much of the tooling they use also appears to be developed on a volunteer basis.
  - oxfordmale 3y ago
    It comes from the Wikimedia Foundation. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2021-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2021-annu...
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      The 42% presumably includes hosting cost and salaries in support of "Wikipedia and its companion sites", whereas the ~2% is direct hosting expenses.
      - oxfordmale 3y ago
        I think the 42% is over inflated. Of course it takes more than just hosting Wikipedia, but the 42% likely includes a lot of vanity projects that are not needed to keep the website operational longterm.
bhaney 3y ago
Their financials are public [1]. See page 4 of the document (6th page of the pdf) for their expenditure breakdown. Some quick highlights: of their >$150M of usable donations, they spent about 57% of it on "salaries," 10% of it on "awards and grants," 4% of it just on processing donations, and a measly 2% on actual hosting costs. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/26/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2021-2022_Audit_Report.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/26/Wikim...
- bawolff 3y ago
  > and a measly 2% on actual hosting costs. Just keep in mind, when you don't use AWS, lots of costs that would normally be hosting costs become salary costs instead (the data center doesn't set itself up)
- GauntletWizard 3y ago
  There's not a good public breakdown of how much of those salaries are on people developing Wikipedia/mediawiki/moderation tools, and how much are on special projects. It doesn't matter, anyway, because impressive failed software projects like the awful visual editor are hard to parse out of the "real work" budget. Wikimedia foundation has cancer [1]. They've provided a huge value and reaped big rewards, but now they have built to grow, and the growth engine just keeps wanting to grow. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has....
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    > It doesn't matter, anyway, because impressive failed software projects like the awful visual editor are hard to parse out of the "real work" budget. This needs to be taken with the thought that not all projects necessarily end up good.
    - bawolff 3y ago
      Visual Editor is generally pretty popular with a significant portion of users (especially newer users) using it. If that's a failure WMF should have more failures.

by sdsd 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

notnmeyer 3y ago

https://www.charitynavigator.org/ https://www.charitynavigator.org/ is the best source i know for this.

oxfordmale 3y ago

Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites.

tivert 3y ago
> Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites. How do you square that with this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180736) that says only they only spend "2% on actual hosting costs." 100% of the work of actually maintaining Wikipedia is is done by unpaid volunteers, and much of the tooling they use also appears to be developed on a volunteer basis.
- oxfordmale 3y ago
  It comes from the Wikimedia Foundation. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2021-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2021-annu...
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    The 42% presumably includes hosting cost and salaries in support of "Wikipedia and its companion sites", whereas the ~2% is direct hosting expenses.
    - oxfordmale 3y ago
      I think the 42% is over inflated. Of course it takes more than just hosting Wikipedia, but the 42% likely includes a lot of vanity projects that are not needed to keep the website operational longterm.

bhaney 3y ago

Their financials are public [1]. See page 4 of the document (6th page of the pdf) for their expenditure breakdown. Some quick highlights: of their >$150M of usable donations, they spent about 57% of it on "salaries," 10% of it on "awards and grants," 4% of it just on processing donations, and a measly 2% on actual hosting costs. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/26/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2021-2022_Audit_Report.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/26/Wikim...

bawolff 3y ago
> and a measly 2% on actual hosting costs. Just keep in mind, when you don't use AWS, lots of costs that would normally be hosting costs become salary costs instead (the data center doesn't set itself up)
GauntletWizard 3y ago
There's not a good public breakdown of how much of those salaries are on people developing Wikipedia/mediawiki/moderation tools, and how much are on special projects. It doesn't matter, anyway, because impressive failed software projects like the awful visual editor are hard to parse out of the "real work" budget. Wikimedia foundation has cancer [1]. They've provided a huge value and reaped big rewards, but now they have built to grow, and the growth engine just keeps wanting to grow. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has....
- lostmsu 3y ago
  > It doesn't matter, anyway, because impressive failed software projects like the awful visual editor are hard to parse out of the "real work" budget. This needs to be taken with the thought that not all projects necessarily end up good.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    Visual Editor is generally pretty popular with a significant portion of users (especially newer users) using it. If that's a failure WMF should have more failures.