Tangential: what is the current funding status of the Wikimedia Foundation relat...

rvnx · on Feb 22, 2023

Running the structure is expensive. According to Wikimedia, base salaries are 20000 USD to 30000 USD per month or so. It has to be paid somehow.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...

londons_explore · on Feb 22, 2023

It switched from a charity-like operation, with barebones staffing and incredible benefits for users per dollar spent, to a 'splash the cash and hope' strategy.

I personally don't want my money spent like that, so I don't donate.

anon___ · on Feb 22, 2023

Wikipedia has Cancer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

londons_explore · on Feb 22, 2023

From the page:

In 2005, they were doing 1.6 billion pageviews monthly, with a bandwidth budget of $5000/mo and a staff of 1.

By 2015, their pageviews had gone up 11x. Their bandwidth costs had gone up 33x, and their staffing costs 1250x.

In my view, both bandwidth and staffing costs should be nearly linear with pageviews - and ideally a little sublinear.