[PeterStuer]

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".

[ViktorRay]

You say it’s not corruption but it’s still shady as hell.

I think it’s reasonable to say any shady stuff is a form of corruption

[PeterStuer]

Shady as hell, sure. Misleading? At least misdirecting. But corruption? No.

If you have an olive green shirt and a grass green shirt, you can call both of them green, but calling the olive one grass green is a mistake.

[m101]

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.