[elect_engineer]

Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer".

See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

Charity Navigator is a fine organization, but they do have the flaw of having to take the charities word on what the core mission is. If the WMF says they need 350 employees -- or 350,000 employees -- to accomplish the core mission, Charity Navigator takes their word for it. If the WMF says that flying people to exotic locations for Wikimania meetings is needed to accomplish the core mission, Charity Navigator takes their word for it. If the WMF says that building a search engine to compete with Google is needed to accomplish the core mission, Charity Navigator takes their word for it.

My position is that Wikipedia was accomplishing that core mission just fine in 2008. I was an active editor in 2008 and I did not notice any pressing needs that were not funded because we were spending 4.3% of what we are spending now. What, exactly, are we doing now that we were not doing ten years ago that justifies us spending 23 three times as much money to do essentially the same job? I could see spending 5 times more, but 23?