[inigyou]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

No wonder they've upped the guilt tripping this year. Wikipedia has enough money right now to run Wikipedia forever but it keeps wasting it on useless stuff and feeling like it needs more. The WMF cannot fathom how to operate without continuous growing wastes of money, and without donations, Wikipedia would die within two years. We need to starve the beast so it learns to live frugally again.

Jimmy needs his third yacht, dangit!

[ymolodtsov]

Seems it'd be far more reasonable to direct the excess funds into an endowment of sorts instead of spending it on other areas.

[inigyou]

If they did that they'd already have a big enough endowment to fund all of Wikimedia for life.

[akolbe]

Well, Wikimedia does have an Endowment, currently valued at $169 million. See Form 990:

https://wikimediaendowment.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/20...

This is in addition to assets of around $300 million held by the Wikimedia Foundation. Form 990:

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...

For expenses breakdown see the most recent audited accounts:

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wiki...

[neilk]

I don’t know if you’re joking or not but of course Wales doesn’t profit directly from this. And, as a non-profit, compensation of executives is public knowledge. I believe Board members get zero compensation other than reimbursement for travel expenses.

(Jimmy Wales did cash in on his reputation with some ads for luxury watches and idk what else he does for $).

Salaries at the WMF have absolutely exploded, though they started out very low given the location and the talent base they were competing for. You probably want the WMF to be a somewhat competitive employer, and Silicon Valley salaries are also through the roof across the board. So those $400K executive salaries are (grating my teeth) vaguely justifiable.

A volunteer-run page summarizes salary progression in key roles (up to 2024)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...

So you can be assured your money isn’t going to the executives’ bank accounts, not directly anyway. However, this is precisely why non-profit organizations tend to get bloated. The executives can’t get away with a million dollar salaries and not other goodies like stock grants. But you can justify staffing up, which benefits the careers of the executives.

[ethbr1]

What's up with the continually revolving CTO chair? (under Executive)

[PunchyHamster]

Feels like where Mozilla went

[inigyou]

Great analogy.