[jmusall]

I could not find any indication that the purpose of this ever-increasing spending (while alarming) is money laundering in the essay you linked. Can you provide any other source to back up this claim? Money laundering is illegal, while spending money in of itself is definitely not.

[dannyw]

I'm generally critical of WMF and think (1) they waste significant amount of resources on mis-managed projects, and (2) are not very honest or transparent in donation communications.

But to play devils advocate, a lot of this depends on your views of what WMF should be. Some see WMF as "keep wikimedia sites up and healthy". But the foundation is much broader:

> The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.

As an example, one of the hundreds of projects that WMF funds is the WikiPortraits Photo Service (https://photos.wikiportraits.org). Take this with a huge grain of salt, but Sol found ~$500K of direct grants in the past 3yr; with 50k Creative Commons or public domain portraits taken as a result.

Some people might be shocked at this, and feel scammed that some of their donation to WMF is funding photographer's hotels/flights/compensation to Cannes, Fifa World Cup, etc; instead of servers or infra or 'KOTL employees'.

Others might think it's an incredibly great use of money; at just $10/photo; while contributing novel, high-quality, human-authored, freely licensed content to the world

[wildfireday2]

That $500K over three years represents 0.08% of the foundation’s budget in that time period. The question is, what are they spending the other 99.92%? There is a significant small chunk spent on crucial infrastructure, but it’s mostly a slush fund for board pet projects.

[akolbe]

Yes, that is a good example. I used to be cynical about these uses of money until I met a 70-year-old volunteer who regularly attends international cycling championships to take pictures of the cyclists. She is totally devoted to documenting the sport and is not by any stretch of the imagination getting rich doing that or living in luxury. So I've changed my mind: her being able to do that is a good thing for her, for Wikipedia and for the sportspeople involved in these championships. YMMV.