First of all, I want to say that I agree with most everything Erik has
written so far, and can't really add to his eloquent explanations. Nevertheless,
as someone who was involved from the beginning in these discussions, I want to
raise a few points here.
1. The Wikimedia Foundation has grown beyond anyone's wildest expectations
in terms of traffic, hits, articles, and projects. We are a top ten website.
2. We are doing this on a shoestring budget, with minimal staff and minimal
expenses.
3. We are able to do this because of dedicated volunteers, like everyone
writing on this list.
But --
4. The Foundation, which hosts all these projects does not want to be
gobbled up by some big corporation, like Youtube was, like Myspace was, or like any
other successful website was. We want to maintain our independence.
5. Independence comes at a cost. We have to buy servers, and we have to find
the right people to manage all of the other things involved with running a
huge foundation.
6. Considering our growth, the base of volunteers does not scale. All the
good will in the world does not mean that people can take off exams or their
jobs or their families to work 24/7 to keep this thing running.
7. We are already paying a steep cost. While it doesn't appear in the audit,
the fact that we do not have advertising is costing us. This is unrealized
income at a minimum of $60k a day and probably much more. In other words it is
many millions a year. Yet, the Board and the community have chosen to avoid
ads so that we can maintain our independence.
So where do we get the money to keep this thing afloat?
8. Donations from devoted users. We are grateful for each and every
donation, and each and every donation is valuable, whether it is $1 or $100.
9. Unfortunately, however, given our size, this is not enough. Read the
financial statements, follow the projections about growth. Compare our budget to
the budgets of other comparably-sized websites, or even to websites smaller
than us.
Fortunately--
10. There are people out there who want to help us. Some have selfish
motives, no doubt, and others have purely altruistic motives. Deal with it. Such is
life.
11. When the selfish overwhelms the altruistic, we can say no. The Board has
said no--to some very big potential sponsors.
12. When people do help us on our terms, it is only right that we express
our gratitude to them. We thank them. The site notice is a means of thanking
them.
13. From this perspective, this whole debate is about what is "too much
gratitude." That is, in my opinion, unfortunate.
A final statement--
14. To the editors and other contributors--Wikipedia and all the other
projects do NOT exist so that a bunch of bored people have some place to play in
their leisure time. They exist to spread free knowledge and free culture. Our
target audience is not the editor per se, but the user-without-a-user-name who
comes to rely on our projects for information, whether its a student, a
traveller, or someone with an obscure interest and a passion for learning. As
editors and contributors we are serving them, and not being served. That is why
we keep all the sites going, no matter how costly it is. And let's be
grateful to the groups and organizations that help us meet these costs.
Danny
