Comment by IshKebab
3 years ago
Yeah I've looked into this before and it's basically true. They have way more money than they need. They justify it by saying "look at all the outreach projects we do!" but really nobody was asking for those. The people donating don't know they exist.
If they had spent wisely they could easily have a $0.5bn endowment by now and basically be self-sustaining without donations.
It also feels like a massive waste for one of the few open source organisations that is actually well funded. Where are the technical improvements to Wikipedia? The only thing I remember changing in the last 10 years is the link hover box which is very nice, but is that it?
They've built several GUI editors, and a more forum like discussion experience (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Flow/Bac_%C3%A0...) which the community on larger wikis has pretty forcefully rejected
Gee, Flow was awful. :) The little "Reply" button they've made now is cool, but as Kunal Mehta (User:Legoktm) pointed out the other day, they knew even then that was all that was required:
"Back in 2014, we had a very clear list of how to fix talk pages. Yet the mw:Talk pages project only started in 2019."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
Which reminds me: 3 of the 6 community candidates shortlisted for the Wikimedia board this year supported election compass statement #5:
"WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever."
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio...
That is a fascinating thing to me - I have noticed that a lot of people arguing that the WMF is out of control and needs to cool it are editors.
It really feels like there is a fundamental disconnect between project contributors and the team making decisions at the foundation level. Of course, I expect to some degree that there will be disagreements, and that is why a foundation needs to exist, but the last couple of years its seemed a lot like people are just being stonewalled.
Ultimately, the communications gap is by far the most concerning part of it for me, even to the point where I would suggest the donation campaign is a symptom rather than the cause.
1 reply →