Steady on cowboy. They might mislead the public in their needs and spends, but to jump from that to "corruption" is a bit too fast and loose.
From their financial statement 2024 you can learn that they probably spend about $6,825,794 on site operation (excl. salaries etc.). This includes $3,116,445 for Internet hosting and an estimated $3,709,349 on Server infrastructure (est. as 85% of equipment).
Now as of June 30, 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation's net assets totaled approximately $271.6 million, and the Wikimedia Endowment, established to support the long-term sustainability of Wikimedia projects, reported net assets of approximately $144.3 million as of the same date, so combined approximately $415.9 million.
So yes, annual sites operation is about 1,64% of their total assets, and they can operate all the wikimedia sites till the end of time without raising a single dime in donations ever again.
Sure they're not going to advertise this fact when doing another donation drive as that would likely make the donators starting to ask pertinent questions about the exact purpose of their donations, but that is just marketing, not "corruption".
I think you need to think carefully as to what corruption means. I would go so far as to say man's inability to recognise things as corrupt is a corruption of man.
That was always my feeling - however big Wikipedia is, however many requests it handles, it is not big enough to warrant burning so many millions every year. Alas, I never studied the subject, as overall I feel Wikipedia is good force in the Universe.
Real concern or not, this is not related to the discussion at hand, which is AI crawlers hammering Wikipedia, which is related to AI crawlers hammering everything these days. Here's the concern at hand.
I would like to read on Wikipedia corruption with quality sources (in a separate HN post, which would probably be successful), but that's not quite on-topic here. Not only it's off-topic and borderline whataboutism, it's also not sourced, so the comment doesn't actually help someone who isn't in the knows. Thus, as is, it's not much interesting and kinda useless.
These reasons are probably why it has been downvoted: off topic, not helping, not well researched.
I think there are a lot of blinkered folks who don't see the corruption with Wikipedia. What wiki are experiencing with bots is probably ubiquitous with every website yet the violins come out for them, one of the most corrupt institutions around.
It’s getting downvoted because the parent comment aligns with what Elon said about Wikipedia; so it’s a knee jerk reaction. Though the sentiment is factual.
From their financial statement 2024 you can learn that they probably spend about $6,825,794 on site operation (excl. salaries etc.). This includes $3,116,445 for Internet hosting and an estimated $3,709,349 on Server infrastructure (est. as 85% of equipment).
Now as of June 30, 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation's net assets totaled approximately $271.6 million, and the Wikimedia Endowment, established to support the long-term sustainability of Wikimedia projects, reported net assets of approximately $144.3 million as of the same date, so combined approximately $415.9 million.
So yes, annual sites operation is about 1,64% of their total assets, and they can operate all the wikimedia sites till the end of time without raising a single dime in donations ever again.
Sure they're not going to advertise this fact when doing another donation drive as that would likely make the donators starting to ask pertinent questions about the exact purpose of their donations, but that is just marketing, not "corruption".