[ryan_lane]

Hosting means nothing without the staff. Hardware, networking, datacenters, etc are the cheap part because the staff are good at their jobs.

You and the other set of trolls that think that Wikimedia can run itself need to appreciate that just because you work for a non-profit doesn't mean you should work for slave wages, or that you should be forced to work with the bare minimum amount of staff to keep things running without being able to make improvements to the infrastructure, reader experience, editor experience, or data consumer experience.

In comparison to similar services, Wikimedia has a relatively small overall budget that's well spent.