Comment by akolbe
3 years ago
They already have an endowment of over $100M:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Hosting costs them $2.4M a year:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
Less than ten years ago, one of their VPs said they could sustain their mission on "$10M+/year":
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March...
What he actually said in 2013 was this:
"WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very minimal staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host a high traffic website on an absolute shoestring. But I would argue that an endowment, to actually be worthwhile, should aim for a significantly higher base level of minimal annual operating expenses, more in the order of magnitude of $10M+/year, to ensure not only bare survival, but actual sustainability of Wikimedia's mission. The "what's the level required for bare survival" question is, IMO, only of marginal interest, because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible, to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity."
Total Wikimedia assets (Foundation + Endowment funds at Tides) stood at about $400 million in March 2022.
That particular VP wasn't very good at his job, and at the time he wrote that, the foundation was still considerably understaffed, and simply wasn't keeping up with the needs of any part of the community (readers, editors, volunteer developers).
I'm really tired of your argument that hosting costs $2.4m a year. It's disinformation at best, because you're leaving out salaries of the folks who keep it running.
And I am really tired of seeing people online saying, "Well, but they must have huge hosting costs. Think of all the traffic!"
And they are saying this because hosting costs are subtly ...
https://www.wionews.com/science-technology/exclusive-wikiped...
("Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia is one of the world’s most visited websites, yet many people don’t know that it is hosted and operated by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. Unlike other top websites, we rely on donations to support Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects ...")
... and not so subtly ...
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/wiki...
("But why does the “Wiki” continually appeal for funding? ... the wheels keep turning, and it has massive bandwidth and hosting service costs.")
... alluded to in press reports designed to stimulate giving. So I think it is fair enough to point out that the scale of WMF expenses is not actually due to hosting costs.
Lastly, Erik's $10M+ estimate very clearly included the requisite salaries.
Erik's estimates were not good, which is one of the many reasons he wasn't good at his job. The current staffing at Wikimedia is considerably more in-line with their needs, and their salaries are much closer to what the industry pays (but is still considerably lower). Wikimedia's salaries are much higher than $10 a year currently, which kind of shows how off he was on his estimates.
Note that any site near Wikipedia's scale has at least 2-3x more software engineers (many of them have thousands of engineers), and much larger legal teams. Support roles grow in parallel with employee size. Wikimedia's overall salary cost is quite amazing for what they maintain.