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Archive 1

Add this chart?

File:Wikimedia Foundation's expenses evolution by rubrics in US Dollars.svg

What do you think? Worth adding?

--Guy Macon (talk) 17:55, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Strategy

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Frequently_asked_questions#Why_will_it_require_up_to_US$2.5_million_to_develop_a_movement_strategy?

"Why will it require up to US$2.5 million to develop a movement strategy?"

Benjamin (talk) 10:06, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

I am speechless. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 10:19, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

So sorry

My bad, edited on your page, so sorry for that (did not see that this was not an open, official page).--LH7605 (talk) 20:04, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I just put your edit back. There was no need to undo it. There is an HTML comment at the top of the page that says:
 <!-- Please note that [[WP:ESSAYS]] states that "The author of a personal essay located in his or her user space has the right to revert any changes made to it by any other user". Everyone is free to make changes to this page, but I reserve the right to have the final say. -Guy Macon -->
So your changes were not only allowed, but actually encouraged. I really appreciate corrections to this essay. Again, thanks. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
Ok, was in panic and did not read it correctly. I am glad that my changes were helpful. Greetings, --LH7605 (talk) 22:29, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

The latest fundraising banner

"To all our readers in the U.S., It's a little awkward, so we'll get straight to the point: This Friday we humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. We depend on donations averaging $16.36 from the exceptional readers who give. If you donate just $2.75, the price of a coffee, Wikipedia could keep thriving. Most people donate for a simple reason—because Wikipedia is useful. If Wikipedia gave you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the volunteers that bring you access to reliable, neutral information that their work is the biggest act of generosity still alive on the Internet. Thank you."

The above is what you see if you simply read wikipedia without being a logged-in editor. It is, of course, on a black background, and on my monitor fills roughly 90% of the page.

Related:

--Guy Macon (talk) 12:46, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Hence why I turned off that banner in preferences. "Show the volunteers that" donations come from suckers who stupidly hand money to SanFran. Why don't we apportion part of Main Page to counterprogram? We could put a banner linking to our many assessments of WMF's finances. We could run DYK's about how much WMF pays for furniture and private travel. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:32, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Growth and Modification of old software

Excellent essay!

Having said that, the statistics might better portray costs on a “per view” basis, which has risen, or a per viewer, or per editor. Gross expenditures have risen with an increase in readership and numbers of pages to be read. We need more editors. The latter needs have seemed bent to allow poorer editing/ knowledge of standards. Judging “ per article” than trying for a standard appearance or content.

As the software gets older, it becomes harder to modify.

We need continuing changes to compete, a challenge with old software and culture about appearance.

There are too many articles for the editors to maintain. Quality may be dropping. Easier editing vi new updates may be necessary.

There are too few notable politicians (! No, seriously), too many notable bands who barely make a living, much less, write notable music, too many mediocre sports figures, too many artists, too many articles about non-notable events or people. No longer do we see [citation needed] after questionable statements and too few of these same statements rm after a reasonable period of time.

We’ve bitten off more than we can chew. I’ve read through large histories that seem true but contain few, if any, citations.

So the essay is probably correct. We once thought that Vandals would destroy Wikipedia. It seems more like our own growth (“cancer”) will do the trick easily enough. Student7 (talk) 17:22, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Per page view instead of per page sounds like a good change. Do we have reliable statistics on pageviews going back as far as I will need?
Whether Wikipedia (not the WMF) has too many pages is an interesting thought, but has zero to do with this essay, which is about whether the WMF (not Wikipedia) is spending too much money. You might want to consider turning the above into an essay titled "Too many Pages" with some statistics about how the ratio of editors vs. pages has changed over time. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:53, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Alternative title: Money is the Root of All Incompetence

I suspect that your essay may explain the latest misguided acts by the Foundation: the attempt by T&S to enforce their version of a Code of Conduct. What we have in the Foundation are a surplus of people with no real purpose to their jobs, so they are constantly attempting to justify being employed, which leads to stuff like WP:FRAMGATE. And their endless process with creating their Plan 2030: they are dragging it out, either intentionally or unintentionally, because once its complete people will need to either find a new project or a new job. As far as I can see, whatever this visioning thing they are creating will never effect my editing stats one way or the other. (More likely factors include the amount of spare time I have, family demands, & amount of material I can find with a reasonable effort to write articles with.) Or anyone else's.

However, I can come up with useful ways they could use resources to enhance -- & yes, funding to editors for research is one, but there are many more. What about research into UX, & sharing it online so we volunteers could use it? What about training in matters such as copyright & plagiarism? One project that would solve an issue plaguing en.wikipedia at the moment would be research into the effectiveness of cross-article ties? Right now I know of five ways to link articles to each other: hyperlinks, categories, navboxes, outlines, & portals. If someone were to analyze which of these produce the most traffic -- & why -- we could develop guidelines to make use of them. (And maybe determine objectively whether to keep portals as a general thing.) I bet such an analysis of Wikipedia data would take a month & at most $15,000 to accomplish, & might just head off a dispute from being handled by ArbCom.

I'll close with this thought: I bet if the Foundation were to lay off 20% or more of their staff, at worse no one would notice; at best, I bet those who were left would focus more on supporting the needs of the communities rather than chase after aspirational but abstract & unobtainable goals such as supporting diversity. (Last time I checked, regardless of our editor base no one seriously advocates an exclusively white cis-male hetrosexual computer-oriented Euro-American viewpoint for Wikipedia. Our membership is far more open & tolerant than we are given credit for.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:14, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Seriously, folks; I really need some help this time.

Because of recent cardiac arrest, I have to limit my Wikipedia editing to short bursts. WP:CANCER badly needs an update containing the latest financials. I invite anyone reading this to got to that page and make the needed changes. After that, I will once again write up a brief editorial summary for the year, and for that comments like the ones above are a great startling point. Please add more comments. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:11, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Please take care of yourself, Guy. This article will still be here. I'll give it a look over this week and hopefully there will be more eyes on it. Liz Read! Talk! 02:25, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Updated the numbers. --Yair rand (talk) 02:38, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) lol I was in the middle of doing it as well but I guess you hit Save before I did... cheers anyway, Shearonink (talk) 02:52, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
It really boosts my spirits seeing that other editors are willing to help out when I am having health issues. Thanks, both of you. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:57, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Regarding the most recent update: Moving the endowment into a new independent non-profit organization was a topic of the Endowment Advisory Board meeting in January, although "no decision has been made yet". Also, the cancellation of Wikimania 2020 was announced a week ago. --Yair rand (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks! haven't been able too keep up because of limited computer time (after my cardiac arrest rest and physical rehab come first; I love Wikipedia but I am not an idiot...). Please keep asking and keep me updated.
Re: Wikimania, any plans to replace it with something online that doesn't involve a vacation in Bangkok for the favored few? I would guess no, because of fears that someone might ask why not do it that way every time... Am I still correct in my claim that it is impossible to get a full accounting of what any Wikimania from any year has cost the donors who are footing the bills? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:31, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Inflation

Are the spending increases presented in nominal terms, or are the figures adjusted for inflation? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 04:41, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Direct cut and paste from the WMF financial reports, so no inflation adjustment. If you or anyone else would like to calculate the numbers adjusted to Jan 1st 2020 dollars and post them here, I would be glad to make all of the numbers inflation adjusted.
According to [ https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2003 ] it would take 100 2003 dollars to equal 140 2020 dollars. Adjusting for inflation would reduce the 125,000% increase to a 89,286% increase. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:54, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

2020 Movement Strategy

The Foundation is desperately short on funds and needs to increase revenue... more.

The earlier versions of the document were more blatant, but see M:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement. The number one strategy slot is to focus on finding more ways to jack up the revenue streams. Because apparently the Foundation is insufficiently sustainable under the current rate of revenue growth. Alsee (talk) 19:25, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Good catch! My response (with an invitation to discuss the issue here which will most likely be ignored) is here:
--Guy Macon (talk) 00:26, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Proposed page move

There's no problem with Wikipedia. I propose a pagemove to Wikimedia_has_Cancer. Alsee (talk) 19:29, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

First, Alsee already knows this, but as a note to any minions... I mean henchpersons... I mean loyal opposition... I mean abettors... I mean adversaries... I mean unindicted coconspirators... I mean arch-nemeses... I mean coadjutors... I mean bête noires... I mean sycophants... I mean stalkers... I mean talk page watchers... Yeah, let's go with talk page watchers...reading this, the final decision on most pagemoves in userspace lies with the person who "owns" the userspace (with the usual exceptions for material that violates a Wikipedia policy).
Alsee makes a good point. This essay is indeed about the Wikimedia Foundation. However, the common name is "Wikipedia". See WP:COMMONNAME and WP:OFFICIAL. That's what is on the fundraising banners, for example:
"If you donate just $2.75, the price of a coffee, Wikipedia could keep thriving. Most people donate for a simple reason—because Wikipedia is useful. If Wikipedia gave you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate."
Also, the WMF is currently pushing to have their name changed to "Wikipedia".  :(  
I am inclined to keep the name as it is, but I am certainly open to being convinced that it should be changed. Does anyone else reading this have an opinion? --Guy Macon (talk) 00:56, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
I agree. It's in userspace so it's not really up for a vote to rename. Further, the distinction with Wikimedia is a bit off point. I would wonder how much money our sister projects bring in. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:30, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Imho the name fits good, as Wikipedia really has cancer, and the proper name of that cancer is 'Wikimedia Foundation' (or Wikipedia Network Trust or Wikipedia Organization or Wikipedia Foundation or King Jimbo's empire, or ...) --77.11.56.106 (talk) 13:42, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
So Wikipedia is the patient and the W?F is the cancer? Clever. I am inclined to say that ever-increasing spending is the cancer. You don't have to get rid of the W?F to get rid of the spending increases. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:45, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

A userbox

I made a userbox for advocacy of this issue:

This user is concerned about the WMF's unsustainable spending.

User:Frogging101/Userboxes/WMF unsustainable spending

Please feel free to edit and improve it (I won't mind), or suggest improvements here or on its talk page. I just threw it together from the userbox template; I'm no design expert :) — Frogging101 (talk) 23:37, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

That's great! I am going to wait a while to see if anyone improves it, then put it on the WP:CANCER page. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:50, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
@Frogging101: Thanks for the userbox! I was also thinking about the WMF wanting rename themselves and made a userbox:
WMF→WPFThis user invites you to comment on the WMF renaming themselves.
subst-ed old verson
User:DarthFlappy/WMF rename infobox
@Guy Macon: Perhaps you could add a comment about the proposed name change in the article?  Darth Flappy «Talk» 17:15, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
While I oppose the renaming, and encourage people to start using the term "W?F" as a protest, on this page I want to focus on spending rather than making it a catch-all. Have you considered writing your own essay about the renaming? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:05, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Good point about the scope of this essay. I think I will try to write one, but... this comic puts it well...  Darth Flappy «Talk» 12:55, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for that userbox! I've added it to my userpage. : ) Benjamin (talk) 17:51, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
I would like a variation. Instead of [ WMF->WPF ], is there room for [ WMF->WPF:W?F ]? --Guy Macon (talk) 09:47, August 18, 2020‎
I'm not sure if you noticed, but Alexis Jazz made somthing simalar. I changed the id to W?F but I think that I will use Alexis' box on my userpage instead of mine.
W?FThis Wikimedian opposes rebranding the WMF as Wikipedia.
 Darth Flappy «Talk» 22:45, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Endowment or piggy bank?

Re: the endowment (mentioned in the section above), is there any evidence that moving the endowment into a new independent non-profit organization would accomplish my stated recommendation to "structure the endowment so that the WMF cannot legally dip into the principal when times get bad"?

No matter what the overall legal framework is, if the WMF (I include in "WMF" anyone who has decision-making authority for both the WMF and the endowment) can look at a sudden drop in donations and decide to dip into the principle of the endowment rather than cutting spending, then the endowment is a compete failure at the first part of the stated goal at [1] of

Wikimedia Endowment mission statement
"Access to knowledge is a fundamental human right. The Wikimedia Endowment is our enduring commitment to a world of freely shared knowledge, now and in perpetuity."
The purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment is to act as a permanent safekeeping fund to generate income to support the operations and activities of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity.

The above is just another way of stating my "structure the endowment so that the WMF cannot legally dip into the principal when times get bad" recommendation, and I support it 100%.

Alas, the second part of [2] directly contradicts the first part:

The funds may be transferred from Tides either to the Wikimedia Foundation or to other charitable organisations selected by the Wikimedia Foundation to further the Wikimedia mission.

It can only be one or the other, not both. Either it is "a permanent safekeeping fund to generate income to support the operations and activities of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity" or it is a temporary place to store funds that can be "transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation" at any time.

Fun project: try to get either the WMF or Tides to reveal the exact wording of any legally binding contract that explains, in detail, exactly what has to happen for the principle of the endowment to be "transferred from Tides either to the Wikimedia Foundation or to other charitable organisations selected by the Wikimedia Foundation to further the Wikimedia mission".

Go ahead and try. I have repeatedly tried and failed. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:31, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm more concerned about stopping fundraising when the endowment is big enough to fund the things that we want the WMF to fund. There is a superficial attraction about "not dipping into the principal", but you then want to consider what happens in a bad year such as this year. There are a couple of ways round this, but what we don't want for this endowment is an endowment that can't be touched in a bad year because the funds have just dropped by a double digit amount because of a stock market crash. One way it can be done is to adopt a longterm strategy of maintaining the value of the endowment in real terms, but evening out boom and bust years. ϢereSpielChequers 22:02, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Stopping fundraising when the endowment is big enough could become a problem. For example, MIT has an $11 billion dollar endowment and 11 thousand students. That's a million dollars per student. However, we are years away from having enough saved to be able to live off the endowment interest.
I strongly disagree that we should dip into the principle of the endowment. We have a choice as to how much to put in the endowment and how much to put into savings. We currently have plenty of non-endowment savings to cover pretty much any possible future -- unless we refuse to make any spending cuts or even cut back on the runaway growth in spending no matter how much revenue shrinks.
And even if we do dip into the principle of the endowment after burning through our savings, it won't be long before all the money is gone, the foundation goes bankrupt, and Wikipedia will be for sale at an auction presided over by a bankruptcy court.
You have been here since 2007. Here is how much money it took to run the encyclopedia during your first four years:
Year  Support and Revenue   Expenses                  Net Assets at year end 
2007–2008 $5,032,981 $3,540,724 $5,178,168
2008–2009 $8,658,006 $5,617,236 $8,231,767
2009–2010 $17,979,312 $10,266,793 $14,542,731
2010–2011 $24,785,092 $17,889,794 $24,192,144
Did you notice any bad effects back then that were a result of us not spending enough?
Here are the numbers for the last four years:
Year  Support and Revenue   Expenses                  Net Assets at year end 
2015–2016 $81,862,724 $65,947,465 $91,782,795
2016–2017 $91,242,418 $69,136,758 $113,330,197
2017–2018 $104,505,783 $81,442,265 $134,949,570
2018–2019 $120,067,266 $91,414,010 $165,641,425
Are you seeing evidence of us doing twenty four times as much as we were doing when you started editing Wikipedia?
Can you make a logical argument for why a ten times increase wouldn't have been enough?
Again, we should:
  • Make spending transparent, publish a detailed account of what the money is being spent on and answer any reasonable questions asking for more details.
  • Limit spending increases to no more than inflation plus some percentage (adjusted for any increases in usage).
  • Build up our endowment and structure the endowment so that the WMF cannot legally dip into the principal when times get bad.
If we do these things now, in a few short years we could be in a position to do everything we are doing now, while living off of the endowment interest. We would be completely self-sustaining , and would have no need for further fundraising.
Or we could keep fundraising, using the donations to do many new and useful things, knowing that whatever we do there is a guaranteed income stream from the endowment that will keep the servers running indefinitely.
How is the above a Bad Thing? How is what we are doing better? --Guy Macon (talk) 23:42, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Mozilla

Hi. This essay is referenced at the bottom of <http://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html>, which may be of interest to those studying how bad Wikimedia Foundation Inc. has gotten. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:18, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

The Admiral's Yacht

I recently ran into the classic "Admiral's Yacht" argument.

The Admiral's Yacht argument goes like this: if anybody argues that the US is spending too much on the military (see note below) someone proposes that we stop buying bullets for the army or that we stop buying food for the navy. Nobody ever proposes getting rid of the general's private jet or the admiral's yacht.

Note: In 2019 the US spent 732 billion dollars (up from 649 billion in 2018) dollars on the military. The combined military budget of the next ten countries (Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and the UK) was 726 billion dollars, and the combined military budget of the rest of the world (139 countries) was $460 billion dollars.[3] --Guy Macon (talk) 18:12, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Sure, but as a proportion of GDP, US military spending doesn't even make the top ten, Russia and a bunch of Middle Eastern countries are higher. ··gracefool 💬 01:21, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Weird stuff

Out of $8.723 million: 'The remainder will be used to equitably fund the annual operating expenses of other Wikimedia affiliate organizations" From meta:Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/Financial/Audits/2019-2020_-_frequently_asked_questions/id#This_year’s_report_says_that_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_provided_an_unconditional_grant_of_$8.723_million_to_Tides_Advocacy_for_the_Wikimedia_Knowledge_Equity_Fund._What_is_the_Wikimedia_Knowledge_Equity_Fund?. I find it ambiguous exactly what is going on, or if the operating expenses of the other affiliates include things that are not anticipated.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 05:00, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your essay

I've added a note about it to my Why Wikipedia is dying essay.

I've also created a new donor userbox linking to it:

This user was a donor to the Wikimedia Foundation before realising it was wasting his money.

··gracefool 💬 06:10, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Endowment Structure resolution

The Board has approved moving the Endowment to a new standalone separate 501(c)(3) organization: wmf:Resolution:Wikimedia Endowment Structure, 2021. Looks like they're going to go forward with this. --Yair rand (talk) 19:33, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

12% Fundraising

The WMF 2020 annual report says that 12% of its donated funds that year went towards fundraising. I'm curious how fundraising could have costed 12% of its annual income. It's worthy of note that internet hosting actually only costed $2M. 142.157.192.0 (talk) 19:31, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

[ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annual-report/contact-us/ ] says:
Thank you for reading our Annual Report. We welcome all the feedback we receive from our readers, donors and contributors.
If you have any questions or comments about this report, please email us at donate@wikimedia.org.
I think everyone reading this should send a polite email to the above address and ask for details about that 12% Please post any replies you get here. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:27, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Accountability

Any donor should be seriously concerned about the noted refusals for financial accounting. The scenario of bankrupcy and acquisition by a mega-corporation is gravely disturbing. Exactly the fate of Mountain Equipment Coop, started in Vancouver by a group of outdoor enthusiasts. For several decades a wonderful success. Then it began to grow like a mushroom, opening stores across the country. Opposition to the growth encountered stonewalling. =8~| No problem for a few years. =8~| Then the economy shifted. MEC became bankrupt and was forced to sell assets to a private interest. I really don't want Wikimedia to fall to the same fate but, without accountability, that might be inevitable. =8~( Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 15:58, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Guy includes the alternative title: "Just because you have some money, that doesn't mean that you have to spend it."
The parallelism to a well known quotation of Niklaus Wirth is striking: "... we do not consider it as good engineering practice to consume a resource lavishly just because it happens to be cheap."
The fundamental question: is a resource-money in this discussion-used wisely? Of all organizations, Wikimedia should have the ability to use resources wisely. Will that ability be exercised?
Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 16:01, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Are we getting the message out?

Since we know that income to SanFran results in bad outcomes, have we collectively considered what we might do to stop that? What if we were able to get pieces published in newspapers and magazines telling everyone to stop donating? Every Christmastime Ma and Pa Kettle get scared that Wikipedia will be sold to Microsoft or some such; I doubt they hear from actual editors that their donations create perverse incentives. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:51, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Not a direct response — sorry! — But this was the most current post I have found so far. My question: Is there data / info / a set of articles, pages, etc. discussing what impact the pandemic has had on all of these issues? Left Central (talk) 16:44, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:CANCER" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Wikipedia:CANCER and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 November 15#Wikipedia:CANCER until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Mike Peel (talk) 18:50, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Result: "The result of the discussion was keep per WP:SNOW. There's overwhelming consensus to keep this redirect." --Guy Macon (talk) 18:19, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Relevant New Developments

Potentially relevant to @Guy Macon's thesis.

SpurriousCorrelation 10:16, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! The camel's nose comes to mind...
So, my loyal minions   sycophants   fanbois   henchmen   talk page stalkers  talk page watchers, how should I cover this? --Guy Macon (talk) 13:02, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
One point that is implied but not easily said out loud is that the general internet-connected public doesn't really know about or care about Wikimedia. They see this amazing Wikipedia project, and that's the end of their journey. WMF is using dark patterns in fundraising, and now APIs, to exploit this, by implying that its about the survival of the project, dammit. Two immediate concerns about the API: 1, it converts companies relying on WP for its source of knowledge into customers, who will therefore have leverage over WMF. WMF may not promise anything, they may explicitly say that using the service does not mean any guarantees of <thing>, but the economic principle is unavoidable. 2, by having a commercial offering, WMF is now always incentivized to keep the "free" product worse. Yes, there may be an official policy to not do this, but it doesn't sit well to rely on what is basically a poster on a wall that says, "remember: it is against policy to do what you feel pressured to do".SpurriousCorrelation 01:06, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
Oh, and along with the Camel's nose metaphor, this fits under the concept of Creeping normality, which is how I see this being made palatable to project contributors. SpurriousCorrelation 01:10, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Cassidy J. Moon's Rebuttal

PART 1: I don't really know how to edit wikipedia properly, so my apologies for the mess that this will look like. Your calculations contain an error. You assumed a constant number of internet users. Assuming that wikipedia use has grown at the same rate as general internet use, it makes perfect sense that hosting costs have been multiplied by 33; actually, it seems like they should have grown higher.

You say: "According to the WMF, Wikipedia (in all language editions) now receives 16 billion page views per month.[18] The WMF spends roughly $2 million USD per year on Internet hosting[11] and employs some 300 staff.[19] The modern Wikipedia hosts 11–12 times as many pages as it did in 2005,[20] but the WMF is spending 33 times as much on hosting,[21] has about 300 times as many employees, and is spending 1,250 times as much overall.[22] WMF's spending has gone up by 85% over the past three years.[23]"

Using this as a source: https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm

I don't know if these calculations are from 2015 or 2022. Depending on when you measure, there were 3 to 4 times more users of the internet in 2015 than 2005. There are now 6 to 7 times more users of the internet than there were in 2005.

Assuming that hosting costs = users × pages (it... doesn't work that way... but, whatever, lets go with it) then you'd expect 11 to 12 times as many web pages, with 3 to 4 times more users, to result in 33 to 48 times as much in hosting costs. Using 2022 numbers, you'd expect 66 to 84 times as much in hosting costs.

Given that, there's no reason to assume that they're being profligate in their spending, at least as far as hosting is concerned.

PART 2: Your essay contains an implicit assumption that going from a great many volunteers + 1 employee to a great many volunteers + 300 employees is a terrible waste of money that could have easily been avoided by simply not hiring 299 people. There is no reason to believe that that is correct.

People need to eventually make money. Many volunteer projects fall apart because of this. If your revenue greatly exceeds your expenses, and you might lose an important volunteer becasue they need to go and make money instead of helping maintain a globally important piece of infrastructure, then you should probably pay that volunteer to keep them doing whatever important thing they have already been doing for years.

Given that, there's no reason to assume that they're being profligate in their spending, at least as far as employees are concerned.

ANTI-PART 3: I still find the lack of transparency or financial limits concerning. All I have done is prove that most of your evidence for wikipedia's financial imprudence doesn't work. I haven't actually proven that wikipedia is on sound financial footing, and am not making that claim. I am literally only saying that it's less clear than you think it is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.43.215.66 (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Regarding your part 1, hosting costs are a very minor share of Wikimedia's spending, so the increase in spending cannot be explained only by an increase in pages/visits. --Ita140188 (talk) 07:47, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Nothing wrong with your editing or writing, but if you ever get into a situation where you can't get something to look right on Wikipedia, the magic words are "feel free to edit/format this. I will tell you if I don't like your changes". This removes the "don't edit other people's comments even to fix spelling or grammar error" handcuffs, and you almost always end up liking the result.
I do want to avoid errors in math or fact, so please explain exactly how you think I should edit the page to enhance the clarity. In particular, I am having trouble understanding why how many users of the internet there are is relevant. I think number of page views is the right thing to measure.
Maybe a "what the page says now" and "what the page should say instead" format would get your point across. Could you try that?
I suspect (but cannot verify because of the lack of transarency; examples include listing "computers and furniture" as a line item and later reluctanly revealing that many of the computers are in a datacenter but rental of computers in the same dtacenter are not included) that hosting costs are reasonable. They are such a tiny percentage of total spending that it doesn't "smell" like someone going wild on hosting spending. Second, we now have multiple datacenters with a lot of redundancy. That was money well spent.
As for employees and volunteers, in general the employees didn't replace volunteers. The vast majority of the actual work of creating an encyclopedia is and always has been done by volunteers.
In the last five years salaries and wages have gone from $31,713,961 USD to $88,111,412 USD. (Again there is a lack of transparacy; it is unclear if this includes outside contractors.) The foundation does not have 2.75 times as much work to do. We weren't hurting from a lack of W?F workers in 2018. We cleartly had no good reason to hire more than double the number of people to do an amount of work that really hasn't changed. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:16, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
(...Sound of crickets...)
Does anyone reading this have any guess as to why the cost to keep Wikipedia running would be related to the total number of people on the Internet as opposed to the number who read Wikipedia pages? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
As I read it, there seems to be unclarity in this paragraph:
> According to the WMF, Wikipedia (in all language editions) now receives 16 billion page views per month. The WMF spends roughly $2 million USD per year on Internet hosting and employs some 300 staff. The modern Wikipedia hosts 11–12 times as many pages as it did in 2005, but the WMF is spending 33 times as much on hosting, has about 300 times as many employees, and is spending 1,250 times as much overall. WMF's spending has gone up by 85% over the past three years.
If the "The modern Wikipedia hosts 11–12 times as many pages as it did in 2005" refers to 1.4 billion vs 16 billions of page views per month (and [20] reference math seem to confirm that), then Wikipedia serves 11-12 times as many pages (per month), because the word "host" in this context would usually be understood as "how many unique pages website has". And I think they did understand it like that and that's how "total users" x "total pages" could be seen as a flawed but better approximation of hosting cost growth. Trafium (talk) 19:05, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Ah. I see the problem. Thanks for the clear explanation.
A bit of background for those reading this page:
Hosting a web page means "making the page available on the internet." Most of the companies that sell this kind of service sell make websites available on the internet. In other words, Lyle Zapato pays one price to make both https://zapatopi.net/belgium/ and https://zapatopi.net/blackhelicopters/ available.
Of course hosting pages imples serving pages, unless nobody looks at a page. For small sites it cost the same whether 5 or 5,000 people look at a page in a month, but for large sites like Wikipedia that serve many millions of pages serving more pages costs more money. Yet the service is still called "hosting".
How about this:
"The modern Wikipedia serves 11–12 times as many pages as it did in 2005, but the WMF is spending 33 times as much for this service, which seems reasonable given that they have increased the reliability and improved the redundancy and backups. More concering is the fact that since 2005 the WMF has hired roughly 300 times as many employees and is now spending 1,250 times as much overall, which seems rather excessive considering that the actual amount of work they have to do is pretty much the same."
Would that clear up the confusion? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:04, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
This is definitely more clear, although, rereading it again, I imagine "serves 11–12 times as many pages" could be still misunderstood as "has 11-12 times as many (total unique) pages to serve". Incorporating "page views" would eliminate the ambiguity for me entirely. But I'm not a native english speaker, so it might be just me.
Anyway, glad I could help and thank you for the page, it was quite insightful for me to read it after the new Wikipedia UI which forced me to create an account here to change it back :) Trafium (talk) 19:29, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
We wouldn't want to give you a button that lets you choose without creating an account! The W?F knows better than you do what is best for you. (Creating the account would still be better; as an IP your choice would disappear if you cleared your cookies - Not the W?DF's fault, just the way the web works.) --Guy Macon (talk) 00:06, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Unless someone objects or has a better version, I will change it to

"The modern Wikipedia has 11-12 times as many page views than it had in 2005, but the WMF is spending 33 times as much to serve up these pages to the readers. This seems reasonable given that they have improved reliability, redundancy and backups. More concerning is the fact that since 2005 the WMF has hired hundreds of extra employees and is now spending 1,250 times as much overall, which seems rather excessive considering that the actual amount of work they have to do is pretty much the same." --Guy Macon (talk)
That's a good wee improvement (I fixed the typo "concering"). ··gracefool 💬 08:52, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Anonymous

From Taiwan News:[4]

"The collective also railed against Wikipedia for allegedly underrepresenting women in its articles, having a 'spending cancer,' engaging in deletionism, and committing POV skewing".

I would ask my loyal   minions   henchmen   loyal opposition   sycophants   unindicted coconspirators   arch-nemeses   coadjutors   bête noires   abettors   adversaries   talk page stalkers   talk page watchers...yeah, let's go with talk page watchers...reading this to please try to find any source where Anonymous talks about Wikipedia having a "spending cancer". I searched and could only find sources talking about it, not the actual words used by Anonymous. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:18, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

The Wiki Piggy Bank

New (2 days ago) article: The Wiki Piggy Bank: Wikimedia grows rich as Wikipedia donations are used for political causes

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4458111/the-wiki-piggy-bank

Related: User talk:BilledMammal/2023 Fundraising RfC

--Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 19:19, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Also related:
Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/08/28/wikipedia-donations-contributors-social-justice-charities/
One of the things we are paying for is to "match racial justice leaders with machine learning research engineers to develop data-based machine learning applications to drive change in the areas of climate, genetics, and economic justice".
--Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 02:59, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Elon Musk goes after Wikipedia, asks where all the money goes

https://www.techspot.com/news/100590-elon-musk-goes-after-wikipedia-asks-where-all.html

--Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 15:56, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

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