7 ms·

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

by 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.
      - bawolff 2y ago
        > I was comparing technical infrastructure costs to award/grant costs No, you were comparing a small part of technical infrastructure costs to grant cost. Is every dollar spent mission critical to running wikipedia? Obviously not. But that doesn't mean its runnable on 3 million dollars.
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.

by ff317 2y ago

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.
    - bawolff 2y ago
      > I was comparing technical infrastructure costs to award/grant costs No, you were comparing a small part of technical infrastructure costs to grant cost. Is every dollar spent mission critical to running wikipedia? Obviously not. But that doesn't mean its runnable on 3 million dollars.

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.