Wikipedia asking for donations...
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that's the thing about opinion, any two people are going to have at minimum two different opinions on any given subject.
I think you'll find that most people would agree: an idea that would make them filthy stinking rich is by definition a good idea.
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Nice number mongering by The Register: The link says "cash" while the article's title omits it and the content lowers it to $27m.
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... or more like 6 months or so..
I encourage to study their financial report which in section 1e states:
The
Foundation’s current practice is to maintain at least six months of cash and cash equivalents to
support a combination of operating cash and a current reserve fund.
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Probably got revised when someone pointed out that their 60m in assets isn't all readily transferable to cash, and the slug didn't change for fear of breaking links.
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This morning my son approached me and told me that if anyone gave him money, we should just donate it to Wikipedia. I asked him why and he was depressed that "98% of their readers don't donate."
I told him we would not be doing that because they have millions more dollars than they need.
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This thread reminded me of something that I saw on my phone a few days ago
Nearly three screens of this crap, and if you clicked "maybe later" or "no thanks" it scrolled you away but the whole thing stayed at the top of the page.
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On a side note, I found articles from 2014 and 2016 that talk about WM's $millions in reserves (though with a $60M budget and $30M reserves, that does indeed sound like 6 months, so I guess they're not quite rolling in cash, but only because they bleed cash like a stuck pig), but I can't find anything from the last 2 years about WM's cash reserves. Maybe it just got SEO-buried.
Though, while searching for WM's cash reserves, I did find an article on how to become a hobo:
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@PotatoEngineer said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
with a $60M budget and $30M reserves, that does indeed sound like 6 months, so I guess they're not quite rolling in cash
Sounds to me like what they really need to do is to cut their costs. Probably the best way is by moving to somewhere cheaper to operate in than SF or the Bay; almost the whole world is better than there for that.
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Wikipedia said in the Wikimedia Foundation FY19-20 Annual Report:
I agree with @dkf. Too bad their lease isn't up until 2029.
ETA: @PotatoEngineer, on page 8 they talk about their current cash-and-cash-equivalent reserve of $71 million, and a few pages later about $133 million in longer-term investment
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@TwelveBaud said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
Too bad their lease isn't up until 2029.
Wikipedia said in the Wikimedia Foundation FY19-20 Annual Report:
(7) Operating Leases
In 2017, the Foundation entered into a seven-year non-cancelable operating lease for its headquartersin San Francisco with a commencement date of October 1, 2017. The lease provides the Foundation the option to extend the lease term for one additional period of five years.It sounds like their lease is up in 2024, but they can extend to 2029 if they want.
On another note, in addition to the "$71 million cash in the bank!!!", if folks want to make a true-but-outrageous-when-taken-out-of-context claim, here's another fun one: they made 17 million dollars in profit last year!!! (On the back of $120 million in donations, and $9 million in other income, they only spent $112 million.)
I'm somewhat surprised that their hosting bill is only $2.4 million per year...
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@stoborrobots I'm hoping that's just the cost of the connection. I'm also hoping that servers and server components, datacenter operations, system and network administrators, the physical datacenter building, et cetera, are covered by other categories.
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@TwelveBaud said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
servers and server components, datacenter operations, system and network administrators, the physical datacenter building, et cetera
Nah, they don't need any of that, they're in "The TM".
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@stoborrobots said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
@TwelveBaud said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
Too bad their lease isn't up until 2029.
Wikipedia said in the Wikimedia Foundation FY19-20 Annual Report:
(7) Operating Leases
In 2017, the Foundation entered into a seven-year non-cancelable operating lease for its headquartersin San Francisco with a commencement date of October 1, 2017. The lease provides the Foundation the option to extend the lease term for one additional period of five years.It sounds like their lease is up in 2024, but they can extend to 2029 if they want.
On another note, in addition to the "$71 million cash in the bank!!!", if folks want to make a true-but-outrageous-when-taken-out-of-context claim, here's another fun one: they made 17 million dollars in profit last year!!! (On the back of $120 million in donations, and $9 million in other income, they only spent $112 million.)
I'm somewhat surprised that their hosting bill is only $2.4 million per year...
is their staff that they have $55 million in salaries given that their content is mostly volunteer generated & maintained
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@izzion said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
@stoborrobots said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
@TwelveBaud said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
Too bad their lease isn't up until 2029.
Wikipedia said in the Wikimedia Foundation FY19-20 Annual Report:
(7) Operating Leases
In 2017, the Foundation entered into a seven-year non-cancelable operating lease for its headquartersin San Francisco with a commencement date of October 1, 2017. The lease provides the Foundation the option to extend the lease term for one additional period of five years.It sounds like their lease is up in 2024, but they can extend to 2029 if they want.
On another note, in addition to the "$71 million cash in the bank!!!", if folks want to make a true-but-outrageous-when-taken-out-of-context claim, here's another fun one: they made 17 million dollars in profit last year!!! (On the back of $120 million in donations, and $9 million in other income, they only spent $112 million.)
I'm somewhat surprised that their hosting bill is only $2.4 million per year...
is their staff that they have $55 million in salaries given that their content is mostly volunteer generated & maintained
That's a mean salary of $110,000 for 500 people, which makes it sound significantly less . It's still a lot of money, and I wonder how they are managing to find work for five hundred people, maybe more. On the other hand, maybe that means that the is that they employ that many people.
On the other hand, in the context of an organisation that regularly puts obnoxiously large and repetitive begging pitches on their site, it's obnoxiously dishonest of them to lump all different kinds of "Donations and contributions" into one line item. It may be required by accounting rules, I suppose, but it would be interesting to see a breakdown of where the donations and contributions come from, to say nothing of the artificial-sounding distinction between "donations" and "contributions".
Especially given that their net assets increased by nearly sixteen mebidollars...
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
mebidollars
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@boomzilla said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
mebidollars
Hey, ya gotta take yer fun where ya find it ...
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
@boomzilla said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
mebidollars
Hey, ya gotta take yer fun where ya find it ...
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
That's a mean salary of $110,000 for 500 people, which makes it sound significantly less . It's still a lot of money, and I wonder how they are managing to find work for five hundred people, maybe more. On the other hand, maybe that means that the is that they employ that many people.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Wikipedia is becoming the victim of Parkinson's Law. You may not need 500 people to manage the Biggest Website Evar, but you may need that many vice-presidents to debate over which one gets its budget expanded.
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5 YEARS LATER
Also, when pasting the picture above, I've got this message box.
2 bugs for the price of 1?
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@Gąska @anotherusername has the forbidden pattern in his sig
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Found out the Internet archive asks too!
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@Tsaukpaetra But it only asks once IME
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@loopback0 said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
@Tsaukpaetra But it only asks once IME
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Now I kinda want Cardi A to catch on.
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@Gąska said in Wikipedia asking for donations...:
Now I kinda want Cardi A to catch on.
It's always been popular, tops the charts any given year.