14 ms·

Wikipedia doesn't need your money

229 points by iProject 14y ago

thoughtcriminal 14y ago
I donated, but yeah, I'd like to know what the operating costs are.
- Ianvdl 14y ago
  There's some info in their 2012-13 annual plan (PDF): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-1... It's mostly just called "Expenses" and don't cover actual server operating costs specifically, if that's what you're looking for.
- shrikant 14y ago
  I donated as well (and got a bunch of others to do so, without any guilt tripping), but I don't really care what the operating costs are. I (personally) price goods and services by the value they offer me, and not the cost of providing said goods and services.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    So if it turns out Jimmy Wales always flies first class... still don't care?
    - tommorris 14y ago
      Jimmy doesn't take any expenses from the Foundation. He pays his own way with things like flights and hotels even when he's on Wikipedia business.
      - smackfu 14y ago
        It was just an example. It's easy to say "I don't care about what they spend their money on if I'm getting value" if they are reasonable about spending the money. But it's very easy for foundations to start spending a lot of money in ways that aren't very key to their mission.
        teeja 14y ago
        Speaking as a long-time WP editor, if the Foundation decided to fly Wales around First Class, that sure wouldn't bother me at all. The man has devoted himself to a widely-recognized and ever-more-succesful project ... I think he deserves some perks. (A helluva lot more savory than W's frequent flights to 'cut brush' on his 'ranch'.) He's the man who's got to answer the world's questions, after all (and who was, I'll add, right about a LOT of stuff).
      - papsosouid 14y ago
        Do you have any sort of proof to support that claim? I've never heard anything like that, and previously "flying jimmy out to do talks" was listed as one of the things we needed to donate for.
        tommorris 14y ago
        "I take no salary or expenses from the Wikimedia Foundation because as the main "face" of the fundraiser, it's important that people understand that donor money is not for me." http://www.quora.com/Jimmy-Wales-1/How-does-Jimmy-Wales-make-money/answer/Jimmy-Wales http://www.quora.com/Jimmy-Wales-1/How-does-Jimmy-Wales-make...
        papsosouid 14y ago
        Considering that former wikimedia executives have stated that Jimmy didn't just expense things, but abused the privilege to make wikimedia pay for personal stuff, I am not inclined to simply take Jimmy at his word. Is there anyone else vouching for him? http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/wikipedia-head-accused-of-expenses-rort/2008/03/05/1204402516874.html http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/wikipedia-head-accused-of...
        tommorris 14y ago
        External auditors, other board members, chapter boards, the IRS... there's plenty of oversight if Jimmy were to do something stupid expenses-wise from now on. And there are so many unhappy-family moments with chapter politics, that if there were any good reason to think Jimmy wasn't keeping his word, that would get leaked.
        papsosouid 14y ago
        >External auditors, other board members, chapter boards, the IRS... there's plenty of oversight if Jimmy were to do something stupid expenses-wise from now on. All of that existed when he was doing this in the first place. I didn't say he was still abusing expenses, I am asking if there is any evidence to support his claim that he no longer has any expenses paid for at all. I can not find any auditors or board members supporting that claim.
- absconditus 14y ago
  If only they provided links to that information right on the front page of their site. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
- gojomo 14y ago
  There are details in their 2012-2013 Annual Plan PDF: https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf&page=56 https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:2012-... For example, on pp. 54-58, we see that their 2012-2013 plan expects to spend around $42 million, of which about $17.5 million goes to "Engineering". The largest area within engineering, about $6 million, is "Core Site Ops". The plan is for staffing to rise from 119 to 174 people over the year of the plan.
drcongo 14y ago
Andrew Orlowski alert!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Someone aught to tell Cory Doctorow. I know how impressed he was with Orlowski... http://boingboing.net/2006/01/11/correcting-the-recor.html http://boingboing.net/2006/01/11/correcting-the-recor.html
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  Does anyone know why he's got such a bee in his bonnet about anything that works against the continued expansion of copyright? I realise he's a journalist and so sells the copyright to his own work, but he's so aggressive about it I always assume there's something else going on, like some weird religious or political affiliation? Anyone?
  - justsee 14y ago
    He seems close to Dominic Young, previously News International’s director of strategy and product development, who now runs http://copyrightblog.co.uk/ http://copyrightblog.co.uk/ (intellectual platform or industry mouthpiece - you decide). Dominic was a source for his piece railing against the "Don't break the internet" slogan [1]. I wouldn't really consider any of these Orlowski pieces journalism. He's clearly very close to certain industries (Content and Nuclear for instance) and seems to just write hit pieces for the industries he favours, relying on some intellectual sleight-of-hand and snark to woo readers to an industry point of view. I suppose The Register is a channel to a particular educated, technical demographic and Orlowski uses his influece to try to shape the opinions of that demographic. I've no idea whether he gets paid via other channels for his strident advocacy, and would actually prefer that it was a situation where Hanlon's razor is in play, because most of what he writes is ridiculous. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/09/breaking_the_internet_no_property_no_privacy/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/09/breaking_the_interne...
midko 14y ago
The article reads as if it was published in a tabloid, to put it mildly. Flashy headline, then looses the focus of the headline and glues together separate paragraphs some of which seem far from the topic because there's no point being made with them, like the paragraphs about WMF not listing all its donations anymore and the decision not to show ads. In fact, there are very little assertions made. Instead, the author seems to hope that by throwing some statements, references and numbers, the readers would be impressed enough and draw conclusions. Statements like the ones below are all stated without ANY conclusion or are a conclusion on it's own but with no arguments preceding it: A) "Earlier this year Wikipedia attracted criticism for its new-found enthusiasm for political campaigning - not a traditional activity for encyclopedias, where fairness and objectivity is part of the "brand"." , B) "All this has been met with dismay by the loyal enthusiasts who do all the hard work of keeping the project afloat by editing and contributing words - and who still aren't paid. For the first time, Wikipedians are beginning to examine the cash awards - and are making some interesting discoveries." + subsequently quoting the salary of the WMF's director (again, with no point made), C) "The Wikimedia Foundation hired a convicted felon as its chief operating officer to look after its books while on she was on parole. The executive's convictions included cheque fraud and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gunshot to the chest.", D) "The substantial contributions from Google leave the foundation open to the charge that it's lobbying for the agenda of large corporations by proxy." A) forgets to mention the implications SOPA had on Wikipedia.org B) Does the author confuse how the product (wiki) works - volunteers contribute for free- and the fact people employed by a charitable organization still get paid? C) The author "forgets" to mention that person worked at WMF only for 6 months instead of making it sound that person still works there. And what's the entire point of this? WMF is corrupt and hence money disappears? I'll get back to this later. D) "open to the charge" ? Ridiculous, anything can be left open to any charge; the question whether there's a substantial reasoning and/or proof for such charge(which are >completely< lacking here) is a whole another matter. Now, let's look at the main (and only) statement of the article - WMF is awash with money and does not need donations to operate. "operate" is key. If the idea is to keep paying electricity, servers and maintenance, then yes, the author is right. This can be inferred from the stat he gives about WMF having only 3 employees in 2007 and operating with $3m. (Of course, ignoring growth in usage and costs) But why should that be the goal of the fundraiser? Should it not aim to make Wikipedia.org the product we need it to be? Hence all the money spent on improving editing tools (yes, even if that means paying a research grant, what's wrong with that?), improving the community and especially reversing the trend of less and less people contributing to the wiki? These essentially are maintenance costs of the main product, even if the bits themselves are new development. Look at the projected staff growth for next year in [1]. Almost all of the jobs are software/system engineer jobs. And the bit about the lobbyist is hilarious! I'm actually surprised they didn't have one until this year (or maybe I'm misreading). The facts in the article about how some of the raised money has been spent indeed raises questions about the WMF's efficiency (and as Argorak points out[2], even those aren't definitive). But that's about it. Claiming that the foundation is "awash" with money and no donations are needed is a very large leap. It currently has $27.7m in reserve. According to WMF's strategic plan [1], this can last the foundation for less than a year. In other words, every year the money raised are extending the life of the foundation by 1 year. I find this very close to what the fund raising message on Wikipedia.org conveys. edit: formatting [1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-1... [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947370
Tichy 14y ago
They hired a lobbyist? That means they are evil, right? What would they need a lobbyist for, it's not as if freedom of information on the internet is under any threats at all? Nothing to see here, move along. And they sent some people on a vacation with a work background, and printed business cards? Is it not allowed to throw parties for staff of charities? So why not work related vacations? Very shocking...
Argorak 14y ago
Just one short detail to show how ridiculous and picking on details this article is: How is covering Festivalsommer 2013 "highly questionable"? Thats a clever way do things! Getting rights for pictures of artists is a long and messy process, so you best take them yourself and make sure that you are an accredited journalist, so you are actually allowed to publish them. For many german artists, there are no pictures at all. The project has already been tried on one festival last year (Wacken 2012) and they try to cover 30 festivals. Expecting 50 Bands per festival, this potentially yields 1500 pictures (more or less). For that, 18000 is a _steal_, especially expecting that volunteers provide their own equipment. So, tl;dr: Wikipedia is more than a website, it is also a foundation[1] that tries to improve all aspects of the service in clever ways. This costs money as well. [1] Actually, more then one, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. is something completely different. Another thing the Article misses: Wikimedia Deutschland has its own budget.
- varjag 14y ago
  Sorry, but €12 per amateur picture is not a steal. Then there is a whole different issue of prioritizing resources while you get into projects like that. Why rock festivals? Why not illustrating Polka performers, or wurst wrappings, or carriages of subway park in Nuremberg? (Rhetorical, we all know rock festivals are fun)
  - Argorak 14y ago
    Who says that the pictures are amateurish and that amateurs are taking the pictures? Also, I don't expect them to take 1500 pictures, but 1500 usable pictures (one per act). Please read through the linked statement in the article, there is actually a long text attached. And yes, you have to prioritize. One of the factors is actual volunteers. There are people that volunteer for rock festivals and did a prototype that was well received. So why not let them do stuff that they volunteer for? Because Polka should be covered as well? The article calls this "highly questionable". No, its a thought out decision that went through multiple levels of review.
    - varjag 14y ago
zimbatm 14y ago
Seriously ? Merely clogging a bunch of maybe facts together doesn't make an evidence. Every organisation is trying to grow and for that it's understandable that a non-profit will try to secure more funds.
chris_wot 14y ago
Ah, Andrew Orlowski. When I was administrator, at around the time that I started the Admin's Noticeboard and maintained the Wikipedia In the News section of the site (thank you Google News!), I noticed that he attacked Wikipedia on an almost weekly basis. The man has an axe to grind. Not sure why, but just bear that in mind when you read his articles.
- toyg 14y ago
  Orlowski is the reason I stopped reading El Reg. He's constantly negative on absolutely everything, from Google to Linux to Wikipedia to anyone-with-any-money-whatsoever, especially if based in California. He's like one of those unmarried aunts who won't stop gossiping on other people's relationships because they don't have a life of their own.
- tomp 14y ago
  What's wrong with that? As long as he's got arguments, there's nothing wrong with him focusing on an issue that he deems significant and educating people about the issue.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    LOL. Read some more of his stuff, he's really, really good at rubbing people up the wrong way, and quite deliberately. His unwavering support for tougher IP laws would probably be funny if it didn't just wind me up sooooo much. He's basically a sort of troll, AFAICT.
  - fatbird 14y ago
    He's a British Drudge for the technology world. He's an inaccurate, rumour-mongering, slanderous/libelous troll. He's not someone with a pet issue offering useful critique, he's a vicious little ankle-biter who wants everyone else to hate what he hates because it drives traffic to his site.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      Case in point: he flamed Charity: water for having the temerity to promote an event around twitter. The horror! This actually got a write up from Paul Carr in The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/17/twestival-charity-trolls http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/17/twestival-c...
wilfra 14y ago
Jimmy Wales is very active on Quora and answers pretty much any question with his name in it (and it's "free" to ask him to answer) if anybody cares to post this. I was going to, but since the comments here seem to say the article is without merit, I wont.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  I'm curious as to what questions it actually raises? There was, a long time ago, someone who has now left as COO. The WMF (which the article consistently calls "Wikipedia") runs quite an open operation. Sue Gardener put in excellent processes into place and the organization is quite a tight ship by all accounts. Probably there are some stuff ups. It's a non-profit. The business cards issue sounds like one of those. That's something that can happen with any organization, so not sure if that's enough to see some sort of nefarious scheme conning people out of their money... Of all the issues that Orlowski could nit-pick on, he chose the most ridiculous. There's nothing to see here, just a bunch of assertions with no evidence or even earth shattering revelations. Frankly, the article is a hatchet job. Bravo El Reg, a quality publication!
  - DanBC 14y ago
    I hate the Register and I haven't read the article. So, ignoring that article: You have some knowledge of Wikimedia, and Wikipedia, and the foundation. What problems do you think those projects have, and how could they overcome those problems? I ask in the spirit of learning, not bashing.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      To be honest, it's been a very long time since I was an active participant on Wikipedia. The issues I had we're always with Wikipedia, and almost never the regulars (except Giano, who I notice has now left the project). I never had an issue with anyone from the WMF, they were always very professional. The few issues I did have were based on unsubstantiated rumour, so I'm not about to repeat them here, suffice to say that those perceived or real issues were cleaned up a long time ago.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Yes, it's a hit piece, but that doesn't mean that the author doesn't raise some good questions. What's the purpose of Wikipedia, anyway? Is it an online, open, encyclopedia? Or is it becoming some kind of quasi-political organization with tendrils everywhere? There's one thing we are learning about the net: everybody wants to own the entire net. Whether it's Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, or Wiki, once you get so large you start thinking of the internet and your service as being the same. Wikipedia has the money it needs to operate, yet still it grows. If anything, the bigger they get, the more demanding they are getting with asking for contributions. Why? I believe that's an excellent question, and investigating the answer is also fascinating. (As is watching the story continue to develop over the next 5-10 years)
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Demanding? Questions to answer? 1. They put up a temporary site notice asking for donations. They don't advertise on the project, and their sole source of funding is though donations. Very demanding. 2. What questions, specifically, does the article raise in your mind? Note - I say "questions", and not vague and ill formulated doubts.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    The question it raises in my mind is how much of my donation is going to fund the servers and bandwidth and what they are always asking for money for, and how much is going to other things that I would not agree are worthy of my charity dollars.
    - kybernetikos 14y ago
      Last time I looked at their finances it was about 50% went to fund servers, bandwidth and engineering in general. Now I'm sure that they do need to spend more than that, but I found that proportion different to what I had expected and it discouraged me from donating.
  - cadab 14y ago
    Just something about point 1, i donated last year and this, yet ive still received 2 emails this year (after this years donation) asking for another donation, plus you still get the massive banner on the wiki site.
luckystarr 14y ago
I'd rather they use my money to buy themselves more hard drive so they wouldn't have to delete as many articles. I feel there are enough music and politician articles already on Wikipedia. The fringe articles are what would drive more participants to WP, were they not deleted.
smackfu 14y ago
They sure are good at crafting that advertising message to make it sound like they are in dire straits to even pay the hosting bills. Make it sound like a small org: "we have only 150 staff" ... Lead with the necessary hosting costs, even if stuff like "programs" is where the money is being spent: "have costs like any other top site: servers, power, rent, programs, staff, and legal help" Imply the whole project is on shaky ground: "take one minute to keep it online another year"
markdhansen 14y ago
I donated, yet I still see the annoying banner. How do I make it go away?
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  That's my top pet peeve. Pay and still see ads? Removes a major incentive. I rememer long ago RealAudio introduced a constantly-rotating ad in their player. Paid for it -the ads remained! Had to ask for my money back, deinstall, never used it again.
  - tommorris 14y ago
    So, there's a reason for it. Namely, the way to implement that would require setting a cookie to say you've donated. And it'd be a cross-site cookie (because the payment is done on the Foundation site, not on Wikipedia). The Privacy Policy is pretty strong on things like that: we don't set cookies unless there's a need to. Fortunately, you just click the 'X' button in the top-right hand corner and the banner will go away for the rest of the fundraiser... whether you've donated or not.
    - Jtsummers 14y ago
      Can the donations be tied to a user account? What prevents checking 'user donated within 6 months'? (Assuming people can and do provide the information and remain logged in)
      - brokenparser 14y ago
        The donation page is on wikimedia.org and there's no mechanism to transfer your cookie, so good luck with that.
      - tommorris 14y ago
        No, that kind of information isn't stored because of the privacy policy.
_quasimodo 14y ago
Wikipedia should allow per project/task funding, so you could dedicate your money to infrastructure, lobbying, single research projects or any combination of those.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  I believe you can do this via Wikimedia chapters.
- gwern 14y ago
  Charities hate this. Ringfencing costs them a ton of money to track, exposes them to legal liabilities, does little good, is often entirely meaningless given the fungibility of money, and reduces flexibility. The way I put it would be this: if you don't trust them to spend your money well, why do you trust them to spend a restricted donation? Shouldn't you find a charity you do trust? There's so many out there, after all.
michaelochurch 14y ago
An easy way to monetize would be to capitalize on the black market for admin/sysop accounts. I bet politicians and corporate executives would pay for a properly leveled-up account.
- philwelch 14y ago
  Trust me, it really wouldn't be worthwhile.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    Not to mention they would be quickly exposed.
- davidgerard 14y ago
  http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNews:Wikimedia_Foundation_to_introduce_paid_editing http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNews:Wikimedia_Foundati...
- tommorris 14y ago
  I have an admin account. It really isn't that big of a deal. It just means there's a few extra things I can do that non-admins can't. And when I fuck up, people shout at me more. Really, that's all you get from it: more work and more drama. Everyone else sees Wikipedia administrators as supreme overlords when in fact they are basically janitors.
yarrel 14y ago
Ah, Orlowski. He's still going? Bless.
foobert 14y ago
Dear smart people, stop upvoting sensationalist articles like this. I know that you can read through it and understand it lacks real arguements. Dumb people are not actually reading it, they're just reading the headline and first paragraph and thinking 'IT MUST BE TRUE'. Yes wikipedia is becoming more than just an online encyclopedia, because it NEEDS to.
arikrak 14y ago
I really think they should have taken the advertising route. A couple of google ads would have been enough to fund the site, and they would be less of a nuisance than they're fundraising ads. In fact, I think if they had become a for-profit, they could have innovated more than they do as a non-profit. Quora and StackExchange show you can use user-contributed content in a balanced, but for-profit way. Imagine if Google had become a non-profit dedicated to an open search. We wouldn't have Gmail, Android or self-driving cars...
- glomph 14y ago
  If they had goole adverts they would have to follow google content guidelines. That would be awful.
math0ne 14y ago
It's funny how he stresses many times contributers don't get paid, and then goes on to complain about money going to photographers for photos. Which IS contributors getting paid. Also he presents no evidence for the fact hat wikipedia doesn't need the donation money, is his idea really that wikipedia should add ads? Do they really have vast cash stockpiles to keep the site running for many years. To me it seems they spend 50% of their money on hosting, for any other website that % would be absurd. Seems like he misses the mark on many points.
edyang 14y ago
If they ask for donations, it seems fair to know what their operating costs are as others have pointed out. As a point of reference, all of the non profits I donate to have annual reports that specify exactly where the monies go, and are audited. People will indeed donate if they believe the money is going to a good cause and there's adequate transparency. See Kiva.org and the job they've done in that area.
- absconditus 14y ago
  Wikimedia provides all of this. See if you can spot it hidden on this page: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
  - edyang 14y ago
    lol epic fail for me. Thanks for that! Funny, I usually enter Wikipedia from search engines...
infoseckid 14y ago
"You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villan" -- given the contribution wikipedia has made to the world, personally I am ok paying $100/yr to fund their beer. As for the people editing wikipedia - its similar to facebook users adding their "data" and Mark profiting from it all. Why should this be an exception?
esteer 14y ago
Here's the response from Jimmy Wales http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Is-Wikipedia-collecting-more-money-than-required http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Is-Wikipedia-collecting-more-...
gcmartinelli 14y ago
Wikipedia gives me so much value US$50/year is cheap. I wouldn't mind if people there where getting rich building it. Although Corporate/Organizational transparency is always a good thing, and should be demanded.
bane 14y ago
I'd consider donating when they get serious about the deletionist problem and stop pretending that the drop off in new contributions has anything to do with the absurd notion that wikipedia is exhausting the depth and breadth of human knowledge.
redthrowaway 14y ago
So, in other 2005 news, The Register still hates Wikipedia. Honestly, I just don't get it. Sure, the culture can be off-putting. Sure, the donation drives can get annoying. But it's still a massive, eminently useful site run on a shoestring budget. The constant intimation that editors should be paid, a rather ridiculous assertion given the realities of open source communities, gives this piece the air of someone's personal gripe. It really does seem like someone set out to write a hit piece, then decided after what details to cherry pick in order to make it as hitty as possible. One of these days, I'd be interested in finding out just what it is that makes The Register hate Wikipedia so much. The kind of vitriol you see from them is usually only matched by the Wikipedia Review, which leads me to believe that there's a jilted ex-editor somewhere on their staff whose mission is to expose the nasty, evil, free and open source encyclopedia to the world.
- rtkwe 14y ago
  $51 million isn't really a shoestring budget any way you cut it.
  - redthrowaway 14y ago
    Wikipedia serves more traffic than Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, or eBay. What's their budget?
- chris_wot 14y ago
  The only one making potshots is Orlowski. Orlowski hates free culture in general, and is considered by most to be a troll, not a journalist.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
spobo 14y ago
Just check his TED talk. http://blog.ted.com/2006/08/29/jimmy_wales_on/ http://blog.ted.com/2006/08/29/jimmy_wales_on/ He basically says it's dirt cheap to host and operate and that it's one of the best things about it. At the time of the video their bandwidth costs per month was just 5000$ and one paid programmer. Aka you don't need millions to run it. So I was a little baffled when I saw his first big campaign to raise money.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  That was a talk from 7 years ago. Wikipedia experienced explosive growth at around that time, and the WMF (the organisation you donate to) have expanded their remit since then.
- davidgerard 14y ago
  Back then the site also went down in a stiff breeze. It's 2012 and "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that."
Jagat 14y ago
Jimmy Wales' response on Quora http://qr.ae/1A4iQ http://qr.ae/1A4iQ "That article is typical of The Register - typical nonsense. The number of falsehoods in it is substantial, so in the interests of time, I will cover just a few of the highlights. 1. "The vast potential for advertising attracted venture capital firm Elevation Partners (whose investors include Bono from U2) to court Wikipedia" - at no point in our conversations with Elevation was there ever a suggestion that Wikipedia should take advertising. Indeed, Roger McNamee was quite adamant that Wikipedia should not do that. 2. "Bono also urged Wales to drop the volunteers and hire professionals instead." This is absolutely and utterly false. Bono has never suggested any such thing nor anything even remotely resembling it. He's always been in awe of the community and how it all works. The Wikimedia Foundation (and associated chapters) are incredibly transparent about our spending, hiring policies and practices, etc. The idea that the Foundation should restrict itself to the tiniest possible budget just to keep the site running is frankly idiotic. And the idea that the Foundation has steadily increased our reserve position is bad is also idiotic. There can be such a thing as having too large a reserve, but we aren't close to that level yet. One think we know our donors are interested in (because of their response to banner messaging) is that we keep Wikipedia safe - and that means, in part, being fiscally responsible and building up a cushion for the future."
greenyoda 14y ago
You can see Wikimedia Foundation's latest IRS Form 990, which includes information about their revenues, expenses and salaries of key employees, here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c0/Form_990_-_FY_10-11_-_Public.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c0/Form_... Additional financial reports can be found here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2012.E2.80.932013_fiscal_year https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2012....
pebb 14y ago
I'll donate if they promise to never revert my edits again.
IheartApplesDix 14y ago
I got downvoted to hell for saying this is another ycombinator thread two days ago... I guess I jumped out in front of the bandwagon instead of on to it.

229 points by iProject 14y ago

thoughtcriminal 14y ago

I donated, but yeah, I'd like to know what the operating costs are.

Ianvdl 14y ago
There's some info in their 2012-13 annual plan (PDF): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-1... It's mostly just called "Expenses" and don't cover actual server operating costs specifically, if that's what you're looking for.
shrikant 14y ago
I donated as well (and got a bunch of others to do so, without any guilt tripping), but I don't really care what the operating costs are. I (personally) price goods and services by the value they offer me, and not the cost of providing said goods and services.
- smackfu 14y ago
  So if it turns out Jimmy Wales always flies first class... still don't care?
  - tommorris 14y ago
    Jimmy doesn't take any expenses from the Foundation. He pays his own way with things like flights and hotels even when he's on Wikipedia business.
    - smackfu 14y ago
      It was just an example. It's easy to say "I don't care about what they spend their money on if I'm getting value" if they are reasonable about spending the money. But it's very easy for foundations to start spending a lot of money in ways that aren't very key to their mission.
      - teeja 14y ago
        Speaking as a long-time WP editor, if the Foundation decided to fly Wales around First Class, that sure wouldn't bother me at all. The man has devoted himself to a widely-recognized and ever-more-succesful project ... I think he deserves some perks. (A helluva lot more savory than W's frequent flights to 'cut brush' on his 'ranch'.) He's the man who's got to answer the world's questions, after all (and who was, I'll add, right about a LOT of stuff).
    - papsosouid 14y ago
      Do you have any sort of proof to support that claim? I've never heard anything like that, and previously "flying jimmy out to do talks" was listed as one of the things we needed to donate for.
      - tommorris 14y ago
        "I take no salary or expenses from the Wikimedia Foundation because as the main "face" of the fundraiser, it's important that people understand that donor money is not for me." http://www.quora.com/Jimmy-Wales-1/How-does-Jimmy-Wales-make-money/answer/Jimmy-Wales http://www.quora.com/Jimmy-Wales-1/How-does-Jimmy-Wales-make...
        papsosouid 14y ago
        Considering that former wikimedia executives have stated that Jimmy didn't just expense things, but abused the privilege to make wikimedia pay for personal stuff, I am not inclined to simply take Jimmy at his word. Is there anyone else vouching for him? http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/wikipedia-head-accused-of-expenses-rort/2008/03/05/1204402516874.html http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/wikipedia-head-accused-of...
        tommorris 14y ago
        External auditors, other board members, chapter boards, the IRS... there's plenty of oversight if Jimmy were to do something stupid expenses-wise from now on. And there are so many unhappy-family moments with chapter politics, that if there were any good reason to think Jimmy wasn't keeping his word, that would get leaked.
        papsosouid 14y ago
        >External auditors, other board members, chapter boards, the IRS... there's plenty of oversight if Jimmy were to do something stupid expenses-wise from now on. All of that existed when he was doing this in the first place. I didn't say he was still abusing expenses, I am asking if there is any evidence to support his claim that he no longer has any expenses paid for at all. I can not find any auditors or board members supporting that claim.
absconditus 14y ago
If only they provided links to that information right on the front page of their site. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
gojomo 14y ago
There are details in their 2012-2013 Annual Plan PDF: https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf&page=56 https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:2012-... For example, on pp. 54-58, we see that their 2012-2013 plan expects to spend around $42 million, of which about $17.5 million goes to "Engineering". The largest area within engineering, about $6 million, is "Core Site Ops". The plan is for staffing to rise from 119 to 174 people over the year of the plan.

drcongo 14y ago

Andrew Orlowski alert!

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
chris_wot 14y ago
Someone aught to tell Cory Doctorow. I know how impressed he was with Orlowski... http://boingboing.net/2006/01/11/correcting-the-recor.html http://boingboing.net/2006/01/11/correcting-the-recor.html
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
Does anyone know why he's got such a bee in his bonnet about anything that works against the continued expansion of copyright? I realise he's a journalist and so sells the copyright to his own work, but he's so aggressive about it I always assume there's something else going on, like some weird religious or political affiliation? Anyone?
- justsee 14y ago
  He seems close to Dominic Young, previously News International’s director of strategy and product development, who now runs http://copyrightblog.co.uk/ http://copyrightblog.co.uk/ (intellectual platform or industry mouthpiece - you decide). Dominic was a source for his piece railing against the "Don't break the internet" slogan [1]. I wouldn't really consider any of these Orlowski pieces journalism. He's clearly very close to certain industries (Content and Nuclear for instance) and seems to just write hit pieces for the industries he favours, relying on some intellectual sleight-of-hand and snark to woo readers to an industry point of view. I suppose The Register is a channel to a particular educated, technical demographic and Orlowski uses his influece to try to shape the opinions of that demographic. I've no idea whether he gets paid via other channels for his strident advocacy, and would actually prefer that it was a situation where Hanlon's razor is in play, because most of what he writes is ridiculous. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/09/breaking_the_internet_no_property_no_privacy/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/09/breaking_the_interne...

midko 14y ago

The article reads as if it was published in a tabloid, to put it mildly. Flashy headline, then looses the focus of the headline and glues together separate paragraphs some of which seem far from the topic because there's no point being made with them, like the paragraphs about WMF not listing all its donations anymore and the decision not to show ads. In fact, there are very little assertions made. Instead, the author seems to hope that by throwing some statements, references and numbers, the readers would be impressed enough and draw conclusions. Statements like the ones below are all stated without ANY conclusion or are a conclusion on it's own but with no arguments preceding it: A) "Earlier this year Wikipedia attracted criticism for its new-found enthusiasm for political campaigning - not a traditional activity for encyclopedias, where fairness and objectivity is part of the "brand"." , B) "All this has been met with dismay by the loyal enthusiasts who do all the hard work of keeping the project afloat by editing and contributing words - and who still aren't paid. For the first time, Wikipedians are beginning to examine the cash awards - and are making some interesting discoveries." + subsequently quoting the salary of the WMF's director (again, with no point made), C) "The Wikimedia Foundation hired a convicted felon as its chief operating officer to look after its books while on she was on parole. The executive's convictions included cheque fraud and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gunshot to the chest.", D) "The substantial contributions from Google leave the foundation open to the charge that it's lobbying for the agenda of large corporations by proxy." A) forgets to mention the implications SOPA had on Wikipedia.org B) Does the author confuse how the product (wiki) works - volunteers contribute for free- and the fact people employed by a charitable organization still get paid? C) The author "forgets" to mention that person worked at WMF only for 6 months instead of making it sound that person still works there. And what's the entire point of this? WMF is corrupt and hence money disappears? I'll get back to this later. D) "open to the charge" ? Ridiculous, anything can be left open to any charge; the question whether there's a substantial reasoning and/or proof for such charge(which are >completely< lacking here) is a whole another matter. Now, let's look at the main (and only) statement of the article - WMF is awash with money and does not need donations to operate. "operate" is key. If the idea is to keep paying electricity, servers and maintenance, then yes, the author is right. This can be inferred from the stat he gives about WMF having only 3 employees in 2007 and operating with $3m. (Of course, ignoring growth in usage and costs) But why should that be the goal of the fundraiser? Should it not aim to make Wikipedia.org the product we need it to be? Hence all the money spent on improving editing tools (yes, even if that means paying a research grant, what's wrong with that?), improving the community and especially reversing the trend of less and less people contributing to the wiki? These essentially are maintenance costs of the main product, even if the bits themselves are new development. Look at the projected staff growth for next year in [1]. Almost all of the jobs are software/system engineer jobs. And the bit about the lobbyist is hilarious! I'm actually surprised they didn't have one until this year (or maybe I'm misreading). The facts in the article about how some of the raised money has been spent indeed raises questions about the WMF's efficiency (and as Argorak points out[2], even those aren't definitive). But that's about it. Claiming that the foundation is "awash" with money and no donations are needed is a very large leap. It currently has $27.7m in reserve. According to WMF's strategic plan [1], this can last the foundation for less than a year. In other words, every year the money raised are extending the life of the foundation by 1 year. I find this very close to what the fund raising message on Wikipedia.org conveys. edit: formatting [1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-13_Wikimedia_Foundation_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-1... [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947370

Tichy 14y ago

They hired a lobbyist? That means they are evil, right? What would they need a lobbyist for, it's not as if freedom of information on the internet is under any threats at all? Nothing to see here, move along. And they sent some people on a vacation with a work background, and printed business cards? Is it not allowed to throw parties for staff of charities? So why not work related vacations? Very shocking...

Argorak 14y ago

Just one short detail to show how ridiculous and picking on details this article is: How is covering Festivalsommer 2013 "highly questionable"? Thats a clever way do things! Getting rights for pictures of artists is a long and messy process, so you best take them yourself and make sure that you are an accredited journalist, so you are actually allowed to publish them. For many german artists, there are no pictures at all. The project has already been tried on one festival last year (Wacken 2012) and they try to cover 30 festivals. Expecting 50 Bands per festival, this potentially yields 1500 pictures (more or less). For that, 18000 is a _steal_, especially expecting that volunteers provide their own equipment. So, tl;dr: Wikipedia is more than a website, it is also a foundation[1] that tries to improve all aspects of the service in clever ways. This costs money as well. [1] Actually, more then one, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. is something completely different. Another thing the Article misses: Wikimedia Deutschland has its own budget.

varjag 14y ago
Sorry, but €12 per amateur picture is not a steal. Then there is a whole different issue of prioritizing resources while you get into projects like that. Why rock festivals? Why not illustrating Polka performers, or wurst wrappings, or carriages of subway park in Nuremberg? (Rhetorical, we all know rock festivals are fun)
- Argorak 14y ago
  Who says that the pictures are amateurish and that amateurs are taking the pictures? Also, I don't expect them to take 1500 pictures, but 1500 usable pictures (one per act). Please read through the linked statement in the article, there is actually a long text attached. And yes, you have to prioritize. One of the factors is actual volunteers. There are people that volunteer for rock festivals and did a prototype that was well received. So why not let them do stuff that they volunteer for? Because Polka should be covered as well? The article calls this "highly questionable". No, its a thought out decision that went through multiple levels of review.
  - varjag 14y ago

zimbatm 14y ago

Seriously ? Merely clogging a bunch of maybe facts together doesn't make an evidence. Every organisation is trying to grow and for that it's understandable that a non-profit will try to secure more funds.

chris_wot 14y ago

Ah, Andrew Orlowski. When I was administrator, at around the time that I started the Admin's Noticeboard and maintained the Wikipedia In the News section of the site (thank you Google News!), I noticed that he attacked Wikipedia on an almost weekly basis. The man has an axe to grind. Not sure why, but just bear that in mind when you read his articles.

toyg 14y ago
Orlowski is the reason I stopped reading El Reg. He's constantly negative on absolutely everything, from Google to Linux to Wikipedia to anyone-with-any-money-whatsoever, especially if based in California. He's like one of those unmarried aunts who won't stop gossiping on other people's relationships because they don't have a life of their own.
tomp 14y ago
What's wrong with that? As long as he's got arguments, there's nothing wrong with him focusing on an issue that he deems significant and educating people about the issue.
- Nursie 14y ago
  LOL. Read some more of his stuff, he's really, really good at rubbing people up the wrong way, and quite deliberately. His unwavering support for tougher IP laws would probably be funny if it didn't just wind me up sooooo much. He's basically a sort of troll, AFAICT.
- fatbird 14y ago
  He's a British Drudge for the technology world. He's an inaccurate, rumour-mongering, slanderous/libelous troll. He's not someone with a pet issue offering useful critique, he's a vicious little ankle-biter who wants everyone else to hate what he hates because it drives traffic to his site.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    Case in point: he flamed Charity: water for having the temerity to promote an event around twitter. The horror! This actually got a write up from Paul Carr in The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/17/twestival-charity-trolls http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/17/twestival-c...

wilfra 14y ago

Jimmy Wales is very active on Quora and answers pretty much any question with his name in it (and it's "free" to ask him to answer) if anybody cares to post this. I was going to, but since the comments here seem to say the article is without merit, I wont.

chris_wot 14y ago
I'm curious as to what questions it actually raises? There was, a long time ago, someone who has now left as COO. The WMF (which the article consistently calls "Wikipedia") runs quite an open operation. Sue Gardener put in excellent processes into place and the organization is quite a tight ship by all accounts. Probably there are some stuff ups. It's a non-profit. The business cards issue sounds like one of those. That's something that can happen with any organization, so not sure if that's enough to see some sort of nefarious scheme conning people out of their money... Of all the issues that Orlowski could nit-pick on, he chose the most ridiculous. There's nothing to see here, just a bunch of assertions with no evidence or even earth shattering revelations. Frankly, the article is a hatchet job. Bravo El Reg, a quality publication!
- DanBC 14y ago
  I hate the Register and I haven't read the article. So, ignoring that article: You have some knowledge of Wikimedia, and Wikipedia, and the foundation. What problems do you think those projects have, and how could they overcome those problems? I ask in the spirit of learning, not bashing.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    To be honest, it's been a very long time since I was an active participant on Wikipedia. The issues I had we're always with Wikipedia, and almost never the regulars (except Giano, who I notice has now left the project). I never had an issue with anyone from the WMF, they were always very professional. The few issues I did have were based on unsubstantiated rumour, so I'm not about to repeat them here, suffice to say that those perceived or real issues were cleaned up a long time ago.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

Yes, it's a hit piece, but that doesn't mean that the author doesn't raise some good questions. What's the purpose of Wikipedia, anyway? Is it an online, open, encyclopedia? Or is it becoming some kind of quasi-political organization with tendrils everywhere? There's one thing we are learning about the net: everybody wants to own the entire net. Whether it's Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, or Wiki, once you get so large you start thinking of the internet and your service as being the same. Wikipedia has the money it needs to operate, yet still it grows. If anything, the bigger they get, the more demanding they are getting with asking for contributions. Why? I believe that's an excellent question, and investigating the answer is also fascinating. (As is watching the story continue to develop over the next 5-10 years)

chris_wot 14y ago
Demanding? Questions to answer? 1. They put up a temporary site notice asking for donations. They don't advertise on the project, and their sole source of funding is though donations. Very demanding. 2. What questions, specifically, does the article raise in your mind? Note - I say "questions", and not vague and ill formulated doubts.
- smackfu 14y ago
  The question it raises in my mind is how much of my donation is going to fund the servers and bandwidth and what they are always asking for money for, and how much is going to other things that I would not agree are worthy of my charity dollars.
  - kybernetikos 14y ago
    Last time I looked at their finances it was about 50% went to fund servers, bandwidth and engineering in general. Now I'm sure that they do need to spend more than that, but I found that proportion different to what I had expected and it discouraged me from donating.
- cadab 14y ago
  Just something about point 1, i donated last year and this, yet ive still received 2 emails this year (after this years donation) asking for another donation, plus you still get the massive banner on the wiki site.

luckystarr 14y ago

I'd rather they use my money to buy themselves more hard drive so they wouldn't have to delete as many articles. I feel there are enough music and politician articles already on Wikipedia. The fringe articles are what would drive more participants to WP, were they not deleted.

smackfu 14y ago

They sure are good at crafting that advertising message to make it sound like they are in dire straits to even pay the hosting bills. Make it sound like a small org: "we have only 150 staff" ... Lead with the necessary hosting costs, even if stuff like "programs" is where the money is being spent: "have costs like any other top site: servers, power, rent, programs, staff, and legal help" Imply the whole project is on shaky ground: "take one minute to keep it online another year"

markdhansen 14y ago

I donated, yet I still see the annoying banner. How do I make it go away?

JoeAltmaier 14y ago
That's my top pet peeve. Pay and still see ads? Removes a major incentive. I rememer long ago RealAudio introduced a constantly-rotating ad in their player. Paid for it -the ads remained! Had to ask for my money back, deinstall, never used it again.
- tommorris 14y ago
  So, there's a reason for it. Namely, the way to implement that would require setting a cookie to say you've donated. And it'd be a cross-site cookie (because the payment is done on the Foundation site, not on Wikipedia). The Privacy Policy is pretty strong on things like that: we don't set cookies unless there's a need to. Fortunately, you just click the 'X' button in the top-right hand corner and the banner will go away for the rest of the fundraiser... whether you've donated or not.
  - Jtsummers 14y ago
    Can the donations be tied to a user account? What prevents checking 'user donated within 6 months'? (Assuming people can and do provide the information and remain logged in)
    - brokenparser 14y ago
      The donation page is on wikimedia.org and there's no mechanism to transfer your cookie, so good luck with that.
    - tommorris 14y ago
      No, that kind of information isn't stored because of the privacy policy.

_quasimodo 14y ago

Wikipedia should allow per project/task funding, so you could dedicate your money to infrastructure, lobbying, single research projects or any combination of those.

chris_wot 14y ago
I believe you can do this via Wikimedia chapters.
gwern 14y ago
Charities hate this. Ringfencing costs them a ton of money to track, exposes them to legal liabilities, does little good, is often entirely meaningless given the fungibility of money, and reduces flexibility. The way I put it would be this: if you don't trust them to spend your money well, why do you trust them to spend a restricted donation? Shouldn't you find a charity you do trust? There's so many out there, after all.

michaelochurch 14y ago

An easy way to monetize would be to capitalize on the black market for admin/sysop accounts. I bet politicians and corporate executives would pay for a properly leveled-up account.

philwelch 14y ago
Trust me, it really wouldn't be worthwhile.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Not to mention they would be quickly exposed.
davidgerard 14y ago
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNews:Wikimedia_Foundation_to_introduce_paid_editing http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNews:Wikimedia_Foundati...
tommorris 14y ago
I have an admin account. It really isn't that big of a deal. It just means there's a few extra things I can do that non-admins can't. And when I fuck up, people shout at me more. Really, that's all you get from it: more work and more drama. Everyone else sees Wikipedia administrators as supreme overlords when in fact they are basically janitors.

yarrel 14y ago

Ah, Orlowski. He's still going? Bless.

foobert 14y ago

Dear smart people, stop upvoting sensationalist articles like this. I know that you can read through it and understand it lacks real arguements. Dumb people are not actually reading it, they're just reading the headline and first paragraph and thinking 'IT MUST BE TRUE'. Yes wikipedia is becoming more than just an online encyclopedia, because it NEEDS to.

arikrak 14y ago

I really think they should have taken the advertising route. A couple of google ads would have been enough to fund the site, and they would be less of a nuisance than they're fundraising ads. In fact, I think if they had become a for-profit, they could have innovated more than they do as a non-profit. Quora and StackExchange show you can use user-contributed content in a balanced, but for-profit way. Imagine if Google had become a non-profit dedicated to an open search. We wouldn't have Gmail, Android or self-driving cars...

glomph 14y ago
If they had goole adverts they would have to follow google content guidelines. That would be awful.

math0ne 14y ago

It's funny how he stresses many times contributers don't get paid, and then goes on to complain about money going to photographers for photos. Which IS contributors getting paid. Also he presents no evidence for the fact hat wikipedia doesn't need the donation money, is his idea really that wikipedia should add ads? Do they really have vast cash stockpiles to keep the site running for many years. To me it seems they spend 50% of their money on hosting, for any other website that % would be absurd. Seems like he misses the mark on many points.

edyang 14y ago

If they ask for donations, it seems fair to know what their operating costs are as others have pointed out. As a point of reference, all of the non profits I donate to have annual reports that specify exactly where the monies go, and are audited. People will indeed donate if they believe the money is going to a good cause and there's adequate transparency. See Kiva.org and the job they've done in that area.

absconditus 14y ago
Wikimedia provides all of this. See if you can spot it hidden on this page: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
- edyang 14y ago
  lol epic fail for me. Thanks for that! Funny, I usually enter Wikipedia from search engines...

infoseckid 14y ago

"You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villan" -- given the contribution wikipedia has made to the world, personally I am ok paying $100/yr to fund their beer. As for the people editing wikipedia - its similar to facebook users adding their "data" and Mark profiting from it all. Why should this be an exception?

esteer 14y ago

Here's the response from Jimmy Wales http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Is-Wikipedia-collecting-more-money-than-required http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Is-Wikipedia-collecting-more-...

gcmartinelli 14y ago

Wikipedia gives me so much value US$50/year is cheap. I wouldn't mind if people there where getting rich building it. Although Corporate/Organizational transparency is always a good thing, and should be demanded.

bane 14y ago

I'd consider donating when they get serious about the deletionist problem and stop pretending that the drop off in new contributions has anything to do with the absurd notion that wikipedia is exhausting the depth and breadth of human knowledge.

redthrowaway 14y ago

So, in other 2005 news, The Register still hates Wikipedia. Honestly, I just don't get it. Sure, the culture can be off-putting. Sure, the donation drives can get annoying. But it's still a massive, eminently useful site run on a shoestring budget. The constant intimation that editors should be paid, a rather ridiculous assertion given the realities of open source communities, gives this piece the air of someone's personal gripe. It really does seem like someone set out to write a hit piece, then decided after what details to cherry pick in order to make it as hitty as possible. One of these days, I'd be interested in finding out just what it is that makes The Register hate Wikipedia so much. The kind of vitriol you see from them is usually only matched by the Wikipedia Review, which leads me to believe that there's a jilted ex-editor somewhere on their staff whose mission is to expose the nasty, evil, free and open source encyclopedia to the world.

rtkwe 14y ago
$51 million isn't really a shoestring budget any way you cut it.
- redthrowaway 14y ago
  Wikipedia serves more traffic than Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, or eBay. What's their budget?
chris_wot 14y ago
The only one making potshots is Orlowski. Orlowski hates free culture in general, and is considered by most to be a troll, not a journalist.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

spobo 14y ago

Just check his TED talk. http://blog.ted.com/2006/08/29/jimmy_wales_on/ http://blog.ted.com/2006/08/29/jimmy_wales_on/ He basically says it's dirt cheap to host and operate and that it's one of the best things about it. At the time of the video their bandwidth costs per month was just 5000$ and one paid programmer. Aka you don't need millions to run it. So I was a little baffled when I saw his first big campaign to raise money.

chris_wot 14y ago
That was a talk from 7 years ago. Wikipedia experienced explosive growth at around that time, and the WMF (the organisation you donate to) have expanded their remit since then.
davidgerard 14y ago
Back then the site also went down in a stiff breeze. It's 2012 and "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that."

Jagat 14y ago

Jimmy Wales' response on Quora http://qr.ae/1A4iQ http://qr.ae/1A4iQ "That article is typical of The Register - typical nonsense. The number of falsehoods in it is substantial, so in the interests of time, I will cover just a few of the highlights. 1. "The vast potential for advertising attracted venture capital firm Elevation Partners (whose investors include Bono from U2) to court Wikipedia" - at no point in our conversations with Elevation was there ever a suggestion that Wikipedia should take advertising. Indeed, Roger McNamee was quite adamant that Wikipedia should not do that. 2. "Bono also urged Wales to drop the volunteers and hire professionals instead." This is absolutely and utterly false. Bono has never suggested any such thing nor anything even remotely resembling it. He's always been in awe of the community and how it all works. The Wikimedia Foundation (and associated chapters) are incredibly transparent about our spending, hiring policies and practices, etc. The idea that the Foundation should restrict itself to the tiniest possible budget just to keep the site running is frankly idiotic. And the idea that the Foundation has steadily increased our reserve position is bad is also idiotic. There can be such a thing as having too large a reserve, but we aren't close to that level yet. One think we know our donors are interested in (because of their response to banner messaging) is that we keep Wikipedia safe - and that means, in part, being fiscally responsible and building up a cushion for the future."

greenyoda 14y ago

You can see Wikimedia Foundation's latest IRS Form 990, which includes information about their revenues, expenses and salaries of key employees, here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c0/Form_990_-_FY_10-11_-_Public.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c0/Form_... Additional financial reports can be found here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2012.E2.80.932013_fiscal_year https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2012....

pebb 14y ago

I'll donate if they promise to never revert my edits again.

IheartApplesDix 14y ago

I got downvoted to hell for saying this is another ycombinator thread two days ago... I guess I jumped out in front of the bandwagon instead of on to it.