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Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

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Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#71

Post by Thaxll »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #66
colechristensen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that this is approximately how much they spend each year and have ~500 staff. I like Wikipedia but does it really take that many people and that much money to run it? Having grown with startups from a very early stage to mid-stage, it seems pretty clear that 500 people never do 10x as much as 50 people, more like 2x if that. That much spend seems unsustainable long term.

It's one of the most visited site on the planet, and people are constantly writting on it. It's on the same scale of facebook, youtube or twitter, activity wise. And I wager those sites have more than 500 people working on them, for a lot more money. And they are for profit!

Same scale? We're talking about almost static pages, with some videos / audio. At heart wikipedia is very simple and did not changed much from 15 years ago.

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#72

Post by ZetaZero »

colechristensen wrote: post #38
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

As of September 2021, the Wikimedia endowment stands at >$100 million. https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/22/wikimedia-fo... (sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation )

It seems that this is approximately how much they spend each year and have ~500 staff. I like Wikipedia but does it really take that many people and that much money to run it? Having grown with startups from a very early stage to mid-stage, it seems pretty clear that 500 people never do 10x as much as 50 people, more like 2x if that. That much spend seems unsustainable long term.

> I like Wikipedia but does it really take that many people and that much money to run it?

It takes a lot of people and money to raise $150m/year ;->

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#73

Post by stephc_int13 »

Wikipedia is a wonderful project built on the back of highly qualified unpaid staff.

Management is milking the cow and has been for years.

This is tricky because they rightfully have a stellar brand value, I am not sure that will last forever.

As you know, the fish always rot from the head, this is a good example.

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#74

Post by loeg »

wyager wrote: post #20
8260337551 wrote: post #14

Infrastructure isn’t free. Happy to donate to Wikipedia on a yearly basis. And the emails are only once a year.

Wikimedia spends like 95% of their money on stuff that isn’t Wikipedia. They’re a classic bloated NGO, where they have some initial mission they can do efficiently but they keep asking for money way down the diminishing returns curve.

To substantiate these (accurate) claims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#75

Post by [deleted] »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #25
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

As of September 2021, the Wikimedia endowment stands at >$100 million. https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/22/wikimedia-fo... (sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation )

Yale University has an endowment of $30 billion. That’s an endowment 300 times bigger than Wikipedia. https://investments.yale.edu/ Apple, in comparison, has $200 billion in cash reserves. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-companies-most-cash-reserv...

[deleted]

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#76

Post by loeg »

rich_sasha wrote: post #18

What are their expenses btw? Are their hosting costs so high? Do they have paid staff beyond some fairly trivial admin? Do they curate articles for cash?

The expenses of wikipedia itself are miniscule compared with wikimedia's total revenue and expenses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#77

Post by Aachen »

qweqwweqwe-90i wrote: post #21
8260337551 wrote: post #14

Infrastructure isn’t free. Happy to donate to Wikipedia on a yearly basis. And the emails are only once a year.

Food isn't free either, but I haven't been sending Bill Gates money every year to help him buy his own food.

I didn't know Gates ran a non profit that provided you with food/content/whatever on a daily basis. Not sure in what other scenario this comparison makes sense.

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#78

Post by charles_f »

colechristensen wrote: post #38
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

As of September 2021, the Wikimedia endowment stands at >$100 million. https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/22/wikimedia-fo... (sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation )

It seems that this is approximately how much they spend each year and have ~500 staff. I like Wikipedia but does it really take that many people and that much money to run it? Having grown with startups from a very early stage to mid-stage, it seems pretty clear that 500 people never do 10x as much as 50 people, more like 2x if that. That much spend seems unsustainable long term.

Between content moderation, dev, security, infrastructure and such, then the support needed, I can easily see how Wikipedia can grow to 500 people. They're offering a stable product that has a presence in almost _every country in the world_, serving an insane volume of data. This is not a random startup, I'm actually amazed they pull it out with just 500 people

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#79

Post by loeg »

andrewstuart wrote: post #53

I don't resent them doing what they need to do. Wikipedia is one of the few things on the Internet that feels right. If they need to play the same shit game as everyone else, so be it. The tone of resentment here from the commenters is disappointing - it's like Wikipedia needing money is somehow not OK.

Wikipedia doesn't need money. Wikimedia wants an even bigger pile of money to light on fire, and trades on wikipedia's good name to solicit that money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#80

Post by toomuchtodo »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #66
colechristensen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that this is approximately how much they spend each year and have ~500 staff. I like Wikipedia but does it really take that many people and that much money to run it? Having grown with startups from a very early stage to mid-stage, it seems pretty clear that 500 people never do 10x as much as 50 people, more like 2x if that. That much spend seems unsustainable long term.

It's one of the most visited site on the planet, and people are constantly writting on it. It's on the same scale of facebook, youtube or twitter, activity wise. And I wager those sites have more than 500 people working on them, for a lot more money. And they are for profit!

For comparison, OpenStreetMap has roughly $800k in reserves and their expenses are a couple hundred thousands dollars per year.

I agree there are probably more justifiable expenses at Wikimedia than that, but that there is a middle ground between the high water mark they're targeting and what other non-profits are operating with. The Internet Archive's annual budget is ~$10 million.

EDIT: @dylan604 (replying here due to HN throttling): Section 230 shields Wikipedia from most liability/exposure: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/successes/wikipedia

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