> The Wikimedia Foundation closed last fiscal year with $208.6 million in revenue. It holds $296.6 million in reserves, 17.1 months of operating expenses.

The actual physical cost of hosting Wikipedia is < $5 million per year.

▲

bawolff 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> The actual physical cost of hosting Wikipedia is < $5 million per year.

This is always a silly point. What do you plan to do with the servers if you don't hire people to plug them in or software engineers to maintain the software?

I think there are things to criticize WMF budget about, but the website wouldn't exist if you only paid for the web server. Legal is important. Trust and safety is important. Having people maintain the software is important. Having people on call in case the site goes down at 1am is important. Having people write new software features is important to stay relavent.

That's not to say i agree with everything WMF spends money on, but there is a lot more to running a major website then just buying a bunch of servers.

▲

DaSHacka an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

But if "the open encyclopedia" doesn't spend $50 Million on internal DEI initiatives[0], what's even the point?

[0] https://i.sstatic.net/H35whdaO.jpg

▲

troad 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Internal DEI initiatives are very helpful for an organisation trying to create a comprehensive knowledge base without falling to any group's bias. That requires diverse perspectives.

I don't care about internal DEI if the job is managing sewerage systems, but this is a perfect example of a context where fostering diverse engagement is both rational and improves the end product.

▲

appreciatorBus 24 minutes ago | parent [-]

That's a fine goal, but at some point, someone should evaluate if that goal is being achieved, if the purported methods actually work.

It's difficult to look at any remotely contentious Wiki page today and conclude that they have succeeded.

	▲	troad 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The perfect ought not be the enemy of the good - the question isn't whether Wikipedia has solved all prejudice, the question is whether it is doing better on that question than its peers. And I'd say it is, relatively speaking. I'm always happy for it to do better, though. Spending money to get people into editing Wikipedia that would never otherwise have done so seems like a very worthy goal to me.

▲

meibo 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Posting this without actually looking at what these stand for is more than useless.

People need to be paid. People want benefits. People need to be taught how to edit. Children need to be taught how to research. People need to be brought together to figure out where the site and the tech is going. People want to feel safe participating in their community. If Wikipedia had only ever been "server costs" it would be nowhere close to what it is today.