Hi Nosebagbear and all,


On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 11:52 AM <nosebagbear@gmail.com> wrote:
Going off the average salaries, and the standard non-salary overhead for equivalent organisations, it should support a 16-18 person team.


This calculation would benefit from some WMF salary data. In its 2019 Form 990[1] (the most recent one available), the WMF reported a "Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits" figure of $55,634,913 for a total of 291 employees.

This works out at an average of $191,185.27 per employee. (The WMF cost per employee actually increased by 38% in the space of four years.[2]) 

It's not cheap, especially when compared to, say, the Internet Archive, also based in San Francisco, which in its 2019 Form 990[3] reported $10,924,995 for 169 employees, an average of $64,644.94 per employee – about one-third the WMF figure. (The Internet Archive, which has genuinely struggled to break even in recent years, is actually crucial to Wikipedia, as it helps prevent link rot, and could really do with donations.)

For the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to give another example of a non-profit based in San Francisco, the 2019 Form 990 data yield an average of $121,646,73 per employee[4] – less than two-thirds the WMF figure.

WMF salary costs have increased further since 2019. The 2020/21 financial statements[5] released earlier this month gave a "Salaries and wages" figure of $67,857,676, an increase of 22% over the year prior. 

Assuming a total of around 300 employees for that year, based on the number of employees shown in this April 2021 archive of the Staff and Contractors page,[6] I estimate the annual cost per WMF employee is now around $225K (I'm happy to be corrected on this if any of my figures or assumptions should turn out to be mistaken). 

Contractors (176 listed on the current WMF staff and contractors page[7]) are somewhat cheaper, of course.

Andreas




This team's purpose is to handle the "Big Ticket" items, beyond the capacities of the current team. It will probably be 1-2 main items a year, with the ability to handle small(er) items from the main wishlist if they finish slightly early.

The current team could then alternate annually between Wikipedia/Wikidata/Commons items and small-project items.

**Part 2: blocked item obligations**

By far and away the two most common reasons for wishlist items being declined are "too large a project" (hopefully handled by part 1) and "in another team's scope". This aims to handle the 2nd issue with a "co-operate or takeup" mandate.

Where another team is "in the way" of a wishlist item, it should be obligated to fulfill that item itself within 24 months, or co-operate and utilise the Wishlist team's resources to fulfill it while avoiding disruption from separate workflows.
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