Comment by woodruffw
3 years ago
From your link: 25% overhead doesn’t really seem that bad? If those numbers are accurate, 75c of every dollar goes directly to hosting, development, and community support (things like grants and legal aid for editors). That’s probably on par if not better than most nonprofits.
Have you noticed any actual development on Wikipedia? Only thing that changes from the user perspective is that the donation request get more and more annoying every year.
I noticed the new editor. I can't say I'm a huge fan of it, but I did notice it.
I don't know how long ago they added the hover infoboxes, but I also noticed those. But that's a relatively small feature, at least from my perspective.
You shouldn't notice much of it.
Sysadmins are paid to make sure wikipedia doesn't have random downtime. Time spent on bugfixing should only be noticed if someone screws up.
If you want to see what people are doing - the git repo is public. https://github.com/wikimedia
Most of the development isn't reader facing. It's editor facing (WYSIWYG editor/etc, toolforge), community developer facing (wikimedia cloud services/toolforge/etc), improvements to the infrastructure (CDN data centers/DR/etc), wikidata improvements (which you see as a reader, but don't know you see as a reader), and lots of other things.
I'm pretty sure there's a public roadmap somewhere, and you could always follow through their bug system or PRs. Everything is developed in the open, even the infrastructure (disclaimer: I founded wikimedia cloud services, and opened up the infrastructure development).
I've noticed that now the language selector is a two seemingly random places depending on ?? (the classical places is on the left, an exhaustive list ordered alphabetically; the new place that is sometimes there is on the top right, in a drop down list, ordered by some obscure relevance metric).
How does the donation request get more annyoing each year?
It’s bigger and harder to get rid of.
I have noticed some changes like in how they handle media, but most of their development must be backend work because for the most part you shouldn't notice a bunch of changes. The site should be kept as simple and unobtrusive as possible. The only feature I really want them to have that they don't is dark mode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode_(gadget)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode
2 replies →
wikimedia labs built a world-class setup with many new services and tech, for one example
25% overhead is what EU/EC project funds allow & provide. This is not a huge percentage. It’s pretty normal.
The important thing isn't how much of a project is "overhead", it's what you get for your donation. A project distributing lollypops might have 5% overhead, but I would still prefer to donate to one that distributed vaccines with 30% overhead.
In this case their program expenses are a mix of incredibly valuable things ("keep wikipedia online") and more borderline things ("redesigning the article editing UI"). When their fundraising talks about the former as if it's what the marginal dollar will be spent on, that's pretty misleading.
(I don't think this marketing is unusually misleading for a non-profit, and likely better than average; the bar for honesty in fundraising is depressingly low.)
> and more borderline things ("redesigning the article editing UI")
You keep harping on this, but improving the article editing UI seems like an absolutely valuable thing for wikipedia to invest in. Retaining existing and attracting new contributors is essential to wikipedia's future, and the editing experience is an essential part of that.
This would not rate as a well-run or top efficiency charity by CharityWatch. It would probably rank average at best. The best charities are in the 8-10% range.