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You're free not to contribute to Wikipedia. You're free not to use Wikipedia. You're free to download all of the content hosted on Wikipedia and use it for your

You're free not to contribute to Wikipedia. You're free not to use Wikipedia. You're free to download all of the content hosted on Wikipedia and use it for yourself. You're free not to donate money to Wikipedia. You're free to run your own online encyclopedia that's just a dumb web server on Hetzner serving plaintext for pennies each month that's as fiscally conservative as you please. Wikipedia continues to bring in more money than it spends. It has a quarter billion dollars in the bank. By all accounts, Wikipedia is financially healthier than essentially every startup featured on this site and oversees what's probably the largest, most well-curated collection of knowledge ever compiled. If fundraising dips in the future, so what? They cut back? It's sad to see folks get laid off, but that's essentially what the author is arguing for, so it's kind of moot. > Sooner or later, something is going to happen that causes the donations to decline instead of increase. It could be a scandal (real or perceived). It could be the WMF taking a political position that offends many donors. Or it could be a recession, leaving people with less money to give. ... Whatever the reason is, it will happen. Incidentally, we did go through a global recession. COVID caused Wikipedia to see almost double it's normal increase in funding while the organization decreased expenses. And the following year, fundraising brought in less cash, but income still far outstripped expenses, and income basically returned to it's trend before the recession. The argument "it's not their place to spend the money they raise" seems, at this point, like such a ridiculous argument when there's really nothing at this point that shows that the people in charge are being irresponsible.

eganist 3y ago
This is an interesting comment that seems to miss the point. > If fundraising dips in the future, so what? They cut back? It's sad to see folks get laid off, but that's essentially what the author is arguing for, so it's kind of moot. The point author is making is that there's no track record to suggest that cost cutting is on the cards, or more broadly, that the organization has any concept of how to manage organizational risk. Author cites a lack of other best practices across the organization + a continued ramp-up in spend not commensurate with what wikipedia needs as a defense of this argument. The best practices and need for fiscal prudence cited by the author exist in essence to mitigate the risk of waste and insolvency against the fulfillment of the mission. > Incidentally, we did go through a global recession. COVID caused Wikipedia to see almost double it's normal increase in funding while the organization decreased expenses. And the following year, fundraising brought in less cash, but income still far outstripped expenses, and income basically returned to it's trend before the recession. I'm not sure what this is intending to suggest, but all I can come up with is "because Wikipedia thrived during the biggest imminent risk to humanity in decades, there's not much to worry about." So did Zoom and Pfizer, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have a good handle of enterprise risk. > The argument "it's not their place to spend the money they raise" seems, at this point, like such a ridiculous argument It's probably the most grounded argument I've read about WMF's incapability to handle risk as it relates to its mission. WMF is non-profit. They serve a mission foremost. It's on their board to ensure that the mission is served effectively today and can continue to be served effectively for as long as is relevant, or in the case of Wikipedia, as long as possible. Not contributing is an option, but in the absence of alternatives, it's the option that most greatly jeopardizes the mission in the eyes of donors. This is why people may choose to use their voices rather than their dollars.
- gopher_space 3y ago
  > The point author is making is that there's no track record to suggest that cost cutting is on the cards, or more broadly, that the organization has any concept of how to manage organizational risk. I didn’t get the impression the author knew what he was talking about in this regard. He doesn’t understand what they’re up to but has a list of “best practices” they should apply to solve a problem that he came up with? “I don’t know what their 300 employees do, and that upsets me, but not enough to actually ask anyone about it.”
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  Let's say, hypothetically, that Wikipedia cuts spending by 50% without impacting fundraising. How much money do they need to save up to satisfy the idea that they have a "good handle of enterprise risk"? Half a billion dollars? A billion? More? But at the same time, what is the cost of doing 50% less? All that money isn't being lit on fire. If they cut costs, they're doing less. If they're doing less, it means they simply can't raise as much money; you're not going to convince people to give the same amount of money to do less work. At one end of the spectrum, Wikipedia is growing and doing more to justify the money it's bringing in. At the other end of the spectrum, it's PHP and nginx serving bits from a hard disk and it's just plain unethical to ask people to build up the reserves to supply an organization that's already extremely well-funded. It's also worth noting that Wikipedia's hosting expenses can almost certainly be paid for almost entirely with just the interest from their reserves account. That's likely an eight figure amount of money each year. If fundraising were to suddenly sour, there's lots that could be cut from expenses before you ever had to start laying off staff.
mlyle 3y ago
If you believe Wikipedia's mission is important, but their amount of spending is creating risk, what do you do? Starving them of cash isn't a great answer. That's why speech is cool: people can say "hey, maybe you should be building more reserves and be used to running as a leaner operation, to be able to tolerate downturns. It's not clear all your spending is really supporting the mission." > If fundraising dips in the future, so what? They cut back? It's sad to see folks get laid off, but that's essentially what the author is arguing for, so it's kind of moot. That's often easier said than done. Figuring out how to constrain growth now (and build reserves) is better than facing hard choices in a panic later.
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  > That's often easier said than done. Figuring out how to constrain growth now (and build reserves) is better than facing hard choices in a panic later. And as the data at the top of the essay shows, they already demonstrated this during the pandemic! And they have an extremely healthy reserve. Even if their fundraising got halved, they'd still be able to continue for quite a few years before having to reduce expenses by any significant amount. You can say "hey, maybe you should be building more reserves" but this is an organization with _a quarter billion dollars_ on hand and growing. Expenses might be high, but how much reserve do you expect them to keep? At some point you're just hoarding cash. An organization simply can't make the argument "hey, please donate to us to keep us running" when they spend very little and have hundreds of millions of dollars in reserve. Nobody would donate to Wikipedia if they knew it could survive on a few million dollars each year and it had hundreds of millions of dollars handy, and no new work was being done to add services and improve existing services. There has to be a balance, and where they are now is extremely balanced.
  - eganist 3y ago
    > Nobody would donate to Wikipedia if they knew it could survive on a few million dollars each year and it had hundreds of millions of dollars handy, and no new work was being done to add services and improve existing services. I mean, I would. I'd rather they fulfill their core mission on ROI alone than waste it on stuff that evidently adds no value. I'd donate for that. I won't donate to see it wasted.

eganist 3y ago

This is an interesting comment that seems to miss the point. > If fundraising dips in the future, so what? They cut back? It's sad to see folks get laid off, but that's essentially what the author is arguing for, so it's kind of moot. The point author is making is that there's no track record to suggest that cost cutting is on the cards, or more broadly, that the organization has any concept of how to manage organizational risk. Author cites a lack of other best practices across the organization + a continued ramp-up in spend not commensurate with what wikipedia needs as a defense of this argument. The best practices and need for fiscal prudence cited by the author exist in essence to mitigate the risk of waste and insolvency against the fulfillment of the mission. > Incidentally, we did go through a global recession. COVID caused Wikipedia to see almost double it's normal increase in funding while the organization decreased expenses. And the following year, fundraising brought in less cash, but income still far outstripped expenses, and income basically returned to it's trend before the recession. I'm not sure what this is intending to suggest, but all I can come up with is "because Wikipedia thrived during the biggest imminent risk to humanity in decades, there's not much to worry about." So did Zoom and Pfizer, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have a good handle of enterprise risk. > The argument "it's not their place to spend the money they raise" seems, at this point, like such a ridiculous argument It's probably the most grounded argument I've read about WMF's incapability to handle risk as it relates to its mission. WMF is non-profit. They serve a mission foremost. It's on their board to ensure that the mission is served effectively today and can continue to be served effectively for as long as is relevant, or in the case of Wikipedia, as long as possible. Not contributing is an option, but in the absence of alternatives, it's the option that most greatly jeopardizes the mission in the eyes of donors. This is why people may choose to use their voices rather than their dollars.

gopher_space 3y ago
> The point author is making is that there's no track record to suggest that cost cutting is on the cards, or more broadly, that the organization has any concept of how to manage organizational risk. I didn’t get the impression the author knew what he was talking about in this regard. He doesn’t understand what they’re up to but has a list of “best practices” they should apply to solve a problem that he came up with? “I don’t know what their 300 employees do, and that upsets me, but not enough to actually ask anyone about it.”
bastawhiz 3y ago
Let's say, hypothetically, that Wikipedia cuts spending by 50% without impacting fundraising. How much money do they need to save up to satisfy the idea that they have a "good handle of enterprise risk"? Half a billion dollars? A billion? More? But at the same time, what is the cost of doing 50% less? All that money isn't being lit on fire. If they cut costs, they're doing less. If they're doing less, it means they simply can't raise as much money; you're not going to convince people to give the same amount of money to do less work. At one end of the spectrum, Wikipedia is growing and doing more to justify the money it's bringing in. At the other end of the spectrum, it's PHP and nginx serving bits from a hard disk and it's just plain unethical to ask people to build up the reserves to supply an organization that's already extremely well-funded. It's also worth noting that Wikipedia's hosting expenses can almost certainly be paid for almost entirely with just the interest from their reserves account. That's likely an eight figure amount of money each year. If fundraising were to suddenly sour, there's lots that could be cut from expenses before you ever had to start laying off staff.

mlyle 3y ago

If you believe Wikipedia's mission is important, but their amount of spending is creating risk, what do you do? Starving them of cash isn't a great answer. That's why speech is cool: people can say "hey, maybe you should be building more reserves and be used to running as a leaner operation, to be able to tolerate downturns. It's not clear all your spending is really supporting the mission." > If fundraising dips in the future, so what? They cut back? It's sad to see folks get laid off, but that's essentially what the author is arguing for, so it's kind of moot. That's often easier said than done. Figuring out how to constrain growth now (and build reserves) is better than facing hard choices in a panic later.

bastawhiz 3y ago
> That's often easier said than done. Figuring out how to constrain growth now (and build reserves) is better than facing hard choices in a panic later. And as the data at the top of the essay shows, they already demonstrated this during the pandemic! And they have an extremely healthy reserve. Even if their fundraising got halved, they'd still be able to continue for quite a few years before having to reduce expenses by any significant amount. You can say "hey, maybe you should be building more reserves" but this is an organization with _a quarter billion dollars_ on hand and growing. Expenses might be high, but how much reserve do you expect them to keep? At some point you're just hoarding cash. An organization simply can't make the argument "hey, please donate to us to keep us running" when they spend very little and have hundreds of millions of dollars in reserve. Nobody would donate to Wikipedia if they knew it could survive on a few million dollars each year and it had hundreds of millions of dollars handy, and no new work was being done to add services and improve existing services. There has to be a balance, and where they are now is extremely balanced.
- eganist 3y ago
  > Nobody would donate to Wikipedia if they knew it could survive on a few million dollars each year and it had hundreds of millions of dollars handy, and no new work was being done to add services and improve existing services. I mean, I would. I'd rather they fulfill their core mission on ROI alone than waste it on stuff that evidently adds no value. I'd donate for that. I won't donate to see it wasted.