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Study Reveals Wikimedia Foundation Is 'Awash In Money'
New submitter Harold Dumbacher writes: Few things seen on Wikipedia aggravate its users more than the annual fundraising banners. Yet millions of people continue to contribute, seeming to think that Wikipedia will "go offline" if they aren't given more donations. Yet as a new Wikipediocracy blog post reveals, the Wikimedia Foundation is rolling in dough — $53 million in net assets as of this year (that's actual hard sitting-around currency, currently put into various investment vehicles). Meanwhile it only costs about $2.5 million to actually keep Wikimedia project servers online and handling user traffic. The rest of the WMF's annual donations go for "staff salaries, travel and miscellaneous." And evidently, many people are growing disgruntled with this ongoing state of affairs, even Wikimedia staff who benefit from it.
Look, over there! -A financially successful venture.
Why do they have millions? that's not right 'they' should take all the money away or wikimedia foundation should give us stuff, because.
Sure, we didn;t envy them when it was just a concept considered shaky at best. We didn't envy when they were struggling or were on the verge of collapse...
But look, over there, they have money! -they should have dust, or little else because *anger*, just because.
A few bucks for a rainy day, or an expansion etc. always easy to count costs for someone else and what they should and shouldn't do with money that is not your own.
Have a coke and a smile. Say, 'heck few people thought this will ever make money, now it did even though it was not created solely out of greed. Congratulations and well done!'
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Remember that the actual content is produced free of charge by volunteers. Are 230 employees needed for infrastructure maintenance and development?
Are you still using Wikipedia? If yes, here's a link for you.
There's nothing hypocritical about wanting to know where they're going to spend the money before I give them more money if people are already giving them more to operate on than they actually require. I have contributed more to open and free knowledge on the internet than more than 99% of you dillholes, which is not to say that it's all that much. But I've produced a bit of content and given it away for free, including a little bit of what's on Wikipedia, a nice lump on Everything2, and many detailed and documented HOWTOs on my website, for which I collect no donations nor ad revenue... in short, eat a bag of dicks up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
However, when you look at the presence of WikiPedia on the internet, it's basically first hit on google in every search on every possible subject. It's probably the number one source for people to find information about a subject. They have a HUGE presence.
Yes -- all the more reason to NOT keep encouraging them. I know most people use Wikipedia on a frequent basis, but if you start poking around the Wikipediocracy posts (not just the one listed in TFS), you start to see a LOT of serious issues there.
Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source of information. Let me repeat that: Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source of information.
(Or, if you prefer a more mainstream media discussion, look here for something recent.)
We should be lamenting your fact that such a screwed up resource has become so dominant as a source of information for so many.
I love the idea of Wikipedia. I was an active contributor back in the early years. But it's never "grown up." It's like a piece of open-source software stuck forever in alpha because active contributors are dwindling, new contributors get mired in a bureaucratic nightmare of argumentation over meaningless "policies" rather than content, and the actual source has remained so open to "Wild-West-style" editing that past hard work is continuously degraded by people deliberately introducing "new bugs into the code."
Meanwhile, they're asking people to donate money -- not to the actual contributors or authors, or even to the admins who police the content to keep the vandalism at bay. But instead to some weird set of people who are only tangentially related to all the supposed "high-value" content that isn't produced or directly managed by them.
Really? If this were a software project, you'd want to contribute to a software project like that? (Well, in all honesty, it IS a software project, not an information source that you're contributing to... but that's another whole discussion....)
And what about honesty in their fundraising? Wikipedia doesn't want people talking about the bureaucratic crap going on behind the scenes or about the rampant vandalism that threatens the apparent value that you point out people place on the site... and they also can't be honest to readers and potential donors that they have plenty of money to keep the servers running ad-free -- they're just choosing to spend it on other things??
Anyone who actually reformed this mess into something even moderately more stable and reliable would definitely make it worth billions, as in your estimation. But it's not there, and until it is reformed significantly, it has a high probability of getting worse and more problematic over time.
The problem with this,
Wikipedia is like the boy crying wolf
If they limited fund-raising banners to once a year that would be OK.
Constantly "spamming" banner ads asking for money is tiresome.
Is there a breakdown of their ~$25 million on salaries so we can see exactly where ALL the money is going each year?