5 ms·

> While i am sympathetic to wmf finding alternative funding streams Why are you sympathetic to it? Their fund, at this point, can make enough off interest on

by tw04 2y ago

> While i am sympathetic to wmf finding alternative funding streams Why are you sympathetic to it? Their fund, at this point, can make enough off interest on a basic CD to not just pay for every possible cost they could have until the end of time, but make the maintainer(s) obscenely wealthy without breaking a sweat. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/3/3e/Wikimedia_Foundation_2022_Form_990.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/3/3e/Wikim... $250m - they’re doing this out of greed, not need.

ff317 2y ago
Over the long term of many years you're /lucky/ if a stable very-low-risk investment can net ~3% when accounting for inflation. Thus $250M could maybe net you roughly $7.5M/year. Exactly how many network links, servers, and engineering staff do you think that buys? It's way under what it operates on today, which is way under what it ideally should be for site like Wikipedia. And that's /just/ the operational engineering of the sites on a technical level. You also need HR, you need Finance, you need a lot of Lawyers, you need software developers, you need a travel department, a fundraising team, PR people, community relations people, grant-making for the extended open ecosystem around the Wikimedia movement, conference planning, and the list goes on. You're off by enough to seem troll-ish at best.
- flipbrad 2y ago
  It would be nice if we had a "lot of lawyers", given how frequently we're sued to try and get content censored, or having to fight orders to hand over user data - and more generally, how massive these new laws we need to comply with are (see, e.g., the EU Digital Services Act, which even creates an entirely new annual independent audit process). We even intervene in other court cases to try and prevent bad laws being created/interpreted in ways that would hurt the open internet (see, e.g., our amicus in the French Constitutional Court two weeks ago, our lawsuit against the US NSA, and our amicus briefs in the two US "Netchoice" US Supreme Court cases). We also operate the https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Legal_Fees_Assistance_Program/en https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Legal_Fees_Assis... Sadly, we're a very tight team. The downsides of being a nonprofit... Anyhow, I'm going to assume people are just ignorant as to how much WMF does, not deliberately trying to undermine it. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assume_good_faith https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assume_good_faith , as they say. (disclosure: lawyer for WMF)
  - bhickey 2y ago
    It isn't a question of the good work you do. People care about Wikipedia, not the Wikimedia Foundation. The criticism arises from misleading advertising. WMF fundraising conflates the two, implying that _Wikipedia_ needs money or it'll die. Meanwhile the 2023 budget shows $3.1m in hosting expenses versus $24.4m in awards and grants.
    - mrweasel 2y ago
      That is an issue. There is a number of projects that the Wikimedia Foundation want to do or be involved in, because they align with the mission. These all costs money, but are frequently of little interest to anyone not involved directly. There is absolutely no way to fund these, which leads to the foundation pushing for donations via Wikipedia, because that's the only thing enough people actually care about. For the most part Wikimedia could kill off everything but English, Germany, French, Russian and a handful of other wikis and most people would be just as happy. Wikimedia absolutely suck at telling people why they need the money. Technically the budget is completely transparent, it's just communicated extremely poorly.
    - flipbrad 2y ago
      Firstly, there's less conflation these days - go see recent banner wording for yourself. Secondly, if you're still just acknowledging Wikipedia hosting costs - and thus pretending there's (for example) no legal work necessary for it - I don't think people are getting through to you as they should. (And no, I'm not saying all legal work we do is a strict necessity for Wikipedia. Some is a strict necessity, and some is strategic e.g. an amicus, or the NSA lawsuit - but the latter does help secure a healthy environment for it and future projects that might want to take its place.)
      - bhickey 2y ago
        > Secondly, if you're still just acknowledging Wikipedia hosting costs - and thus pretending there's (for example) no legal work necessary for it - I don't think people are getting through to you as they should. From your phrasing (still) it seems like you might've confused me with the person you initially replied to. I was comparing technical infrastructure costs to award/grant costs because most critics are going to view the former as essential and the latter as mission creep. I don't have any insight, nor do I have any inclination to criticize, your payroll.
- tw04 2y ago
  What are you talking about? The AVERAGE CD right now is 5%. My local CU is almost 6%. US bonds are currently ~4.5% - if you consider those unstable, I guess the US economy isn't stable - and if the US economy crashes, wikipedia will be the least of their or our worries. Wikimedia's expenses are almost ENTIRELY going to staff. Their balance sheet for 2023 included $101m in expenses for salaries and benefits out of a total expense of $160m. Their hosting was $3m. So yes, I'm confident their network links and servers cost almost nothing, and they don't need anywhere near $101m in compensation to keep the lights on when the VAST majority of their content is contributed for free. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wikimedia_Foundation_FS_FY2022-2023_Audit_Report.pdf#page=6 https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/W...
  - kemayo 2y ago
    You may have missed them saying "when accounting for inflation". In the US at the moment that's around 3%. Thus your local credit union's savings account, a nice and stable investment, is effectively giving you around 3% appreciation in real-money each year right now. (I have no idea whether their broader point about the rate over-time is correct, admittedly.)
  - bawolff 2y ago
    > Their hosting was $3m Its kind of unclear what this includes. Computer equipment is a separate line, and wikimedia owns its own servers, so presumably that is separate from server costs. You don't have to buy new servers every year so some servers might simply have been purchased in other years, although maybe that gets ammortized, i dont know. Additionally when you host your own servers you need staff to operate them. When using something like AWS, this would be part of your AWS fees, but if you operate your own servers then you have to pay that part separately. Its probably cheaper overall in the end when you are wikipedia scale, but the costs break down differently.
  - remus 2y ago
    > What are you talking about? The AVERAGE CD right now is 5%. My local CU is almost 6%. US bonds are currently ~4.5% - if you consider those unstable, I guess the US economy isn't stable - and if the US economy crashes, wikipedia will be the least of their or our worries. If you want to live off the interest you have to worry about inflation which essentially devalues your pot by x% per year, so if you really need y% for running costs you really need about x*y% to do it long term.
choppaface 2y ago
Harvard is also exceptionally greedy to charge tuition, but also it wouldn’t be fair for legacy admits to get the brand and network without paying what is peanuts to most of those families. LLM trainers need to pay for Wikipedia to help balance the information economy. If Google had to pay something substantial versus just lifting the content into their own “smart” results, then other sites would follow and wouldn’t have to rely on crappy SEO tricks. Another perspective is that LLM trainers have largely been so disrespectful of IP / copyrights from their own greed that the content creators need to fight back with greed of their own. If the WM approach to media loses out to corporate and/or state control, it could e.g. make the Western internet much more like state-owned China. Not entirely convincing arguments but it’s probably going too far to call WMF too greedy.
bawolff 2y ago
This is a rediculous thing to say. You think the interest off 250 million would be enough to run the wikipedia website? Do you have any experience operating web properties at scale to come to this conclusion? Did you base this on anything at all?
- olalonde 2y ago
  1M$/year used to be enough. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
  - bawolff 2y ago
    Why stop there, the site cost $0/year back in 1999.
    - olalonde 2y ago
      The growth of spending does not reflect the growth of usage or content, not even close.
- Brybry 2y ago
  I don't agree that it's pure greed but hosting costs for the Wikimedia Foundation in the FY2022-2023 were $3.1 million. [1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-11-20/News_and_notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wikimedia_Foundation_FS_FY2022-2023_Audit_Report.pdf https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/W... (page 4, pdf page 6 for expenses)
  - Shrezzing 2y ago
    Hosting costs are £3m, but total expenditure is $160m - which obviously isn't covered by the interest on $250m.
  - Contax 2y ago
yareal 2y ago
Your own link shows investment income as about $3-4m. Nowhere near enough to pay for infrastructure and engineers, let alone all the other things you need to operate Wikipedia. If you want to argue against finding Wikipedia you are going to have to do so in something approximating reality. Because the idea that they could somehow operate on one percent of their first budget is completely off base.

by tw04 2y ago

ff317 2y ago

Over the long term of many years you're /lucky/ if a stable very-low-risk investment can net ~3% when accounting for inflation. Thus $250M could maybe net you roughly $7.5M/year. Exactly how many network links, servers, and engineering staff do you think that buys? It's way under what it operates on today, which is way under what it ideally should be for site like Wikipedia. And that's /just/ the operational engineering of the sites on a technical level. You also need HR, you need Finance, you need a lot of Lawyers, you need software developers, you need a travel department, a fundraising team, PR people, community relations people, grant-making for the extended open ecosystem around the Wikimedia movement, conference planning, and the list goes on. You're off by enough to seem troll-ish at best.

flipbrad 2y ago
It would be nice if we had a "lot of lawyers", given how frequently we're sued to try and get content censored, or having to fight orders to hand over user data - and more generally, how massive these new laws we need to comply with are (see, e.g., the EU Digital Services Act, which even creates an entirely new annual independent audit process). We even intervene in other court cases to try and prevent bad laws being created/interpreted in ways that would hurt the open internet (see, e.g., our amicus in the French Constitutional Court two weeks ago, our lawsuit against the US NSA, and our amicus briefs in the two US "Netchoice" US Supreme Court cases). We also operate the https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Legal_Fees_Assistance_Program/en https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Legal_Fees_Assis... Sadly, we're a very tight team. The downsides of being a nonprofit... Anyhow, I'm going to assume people are just ignorant as to how much WMF does, not deliberately trying to undermine it. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assume_good_faith https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assume_good_faith , as they say. (disclosure: lawyer for WMF)
- bhickey 2y ago
  It isn't a question of the good work you do. People care about Wikipedia, not the Wikimedia Foundation. The criticism arises from misleading advertising. WMF fundraising conflates the two, implying that _Wikipedia_ needs money or it'll die. Meanwhile the 2023 budget shows $3.1m in hosting expenses versus $24.4m in awards and grants.
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    That is an issue. There is a number of projects that the Wikimedia Foundation want to do or be involved in, because they align with the mission. These all costs money, but are frequently of little interest to anyone not involved directly. There is absolutely no way to fund these, which leads to the foundation pushing for donations via Wikipedia, because that's the only thing enough people actually care about. For the most part Wikimedia could kill off everything but English, Germany, French, Russian and a handful of other wikis and most people would be just as happy. Wikimedia absolutely suck at telling people why they need the money. Technically the budget is completely transparent, it's just communicated extremely poorly.
  - flipbrad 2y ago
    Firstly, there's less conflation these days - go see recent banner wording for yourself. Secondly, if you're still just acknowledging Wikipedia hosting costs - and thus pretending there's (for example) no legal work necessary for it - I don't think people are getting through to you as they should. (And no, I'm not saying all legal work we do is a strict necessity for Wikipedia. Some is a strict necessity, and some is strategic e.g. an amicus, or the NSA lawsuit - but the latter does help secure a healthy environment for it and future projects that might want to take its place.)
    - bhickey 2y ago
      > Secondly, if you're still just acknowledging Wikipedia hosting costs - and thus pretending there's (for example) no legal work necessary for it - I don't think people are getting through to you as they should. From your phrasing (still) it seems like you might've confused me with the person you initially replied to. I was comparing technical infrastructure costs to award/grant costs because most critics are going to view the former as essential and the latter as mission creep. I don't have any insight, nor do I have any inclination to criticize, your payroll.
tw04 2y ago
What are you talking about? The AVERAGE CD right now is 5%. My local CU is almost 6%. US bonds are currently ~4.5% - if you consider those unstable, I guess the US economy isn't stable - and if the US economy crashes, wikipedia will be the least of their or our worries. Wikimedia's expenses are almost ENTIRELY going to staff. Their balance sheet for 2023 included $101m in expenses for salaries and benefits out of a total expense of $160m. Their hosting was $3m. So yes, I'm confident their network links and servers cost almost nothing, and they don't need anywhere near $101m in compensation to keep the lights on when the VAST majority of their content is contributed for free. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wikimedia_Foundation_FS_FY2022-2023_Audit_Report.pdf#page=6 https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/W...
- kemayo 2y ago
  You may have missed them saying "when accounting for inflation". In the US at the moment that's around 3%. Thus your local credit union's savings account, a nice and stable investment, is effectively giving you around 3% appreciation in real-money each year right now. (I have no idea whether their broader point about the rate over-time is correct, admittedly.)
- bawolff 2y ago
  > Their hosting was $3m Its kind of unclear what this includes. Computer equipment is a separate line, and wikimedia owns its own servers, so presumably that is separate from server costs. You don't have to buy new servers every year so some servers might simply have been purchased in other years, although maybe that gets ammortized, i dont know. Additionally when you host your own servers you need staff to operate them. When using something like AWS, this would be part of your AWS fees, but if you operate your own servers then you have to pay that part separately. Its probably cheaper overall in the end when you are wikipedia scale, but the costs break down differently.
- remus 2y ago
  > What are you talking about? The AVERAGE CD right now is 5%. My local CU is almost 6%. US bonds are currently ~4.5% - if you consider those unstable, I guess the US economy isn't stable - and if the US economy crashes, wikipedia will be the least of their or our worries. If you want to live off the interest you have to worry about inflation which essentially devalues your pot by x% per year, so if you really need y% for running costs you really need about x*y% to do it long term.

choppaface 2y ago

Harvard is also exceptionally greedy to charge tuition, but also it wouldn’t be fair for legacy admits to get the brand and network without paying what is peanuts to most of those families. LLM trainers need to pay for Wikipedia to help balance the information economy. If Google had to pay something substantial versus just lifting the content into their own “smart” results, then other sites would follow and wouldn’t have to rely on crappy SEO tricks. Another perspective is that LLM trainers have largely been so disrespectful of IP / copyrights from their own greed that the content creators need to fight back with greed of their own. If the WM approach to media loses out to corporate and/or state control, it could e.g. make the Western internet much more like state-owned China. Not entirely convincing arguments but it’s probably going too far to call WMF too greedy.

bawolff 2y ago

This is a rediculous thing to say. You think the interest off 250 million would be enough to run the wikipedia website? Do you have any experience operating web properties at scale to come to this conclusion? Did you base this on anything at all?

olalonde 2y ago
1M$/year used to be enough. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
- bawolff 2y ago
  Why stop there, the site cost $0/year back in 1999.
  - olalonde 2y ago
    The growth of spending does not reflect the growth of usage or content, not even close.
Brybry 2y ago
I don't agree that it's pure greed but hosting costs for the Wikimedia Foundation in the FY2022-2023 were $3.1 million. [1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-11-20/News_and_notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wikimedia_Foundation_FS_FY2022-2023_Audit_Report.pdf https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/W... (page 4, pdf page 6 for expenses)
- Shrezzing 2y ago
  Hosting costs are £3m, but total expenditure is $160m - which obviously isn't covered by the interest on $250m.
- Contax 2y ago

yareal 2y ago

Your own link shows investment income as about $3-4m. Nowhere near enough to pay for infrastructure and engineers, let alone all the other things you need to operate Wikipedia. If you want to argue against finding Wikipedia you are going to have to do so in something approximating reality. Because the idea that they could somehow operate on one percent of their first budget is completely off base.