Thanks Seb35 for pointing me this email. I did a study last year about the value of Wikipedia, as a thesis for my diploma in HEC Paris. Here is the link below. It is written in french and I used French Wikipedia as an example, but the methods used are the same for all languages. I was looking for indicators on "how to value the job of wikipedians" so my prefered indicator was the increase of pageviews. For a glam giving its material, saying how many views it generated is the best convincing argument imho. But I searched for a lots of different valuations, with each their own limits. As an example : - advertisement value : more or less the market value if a private company would like to make an offer to the foundation, best evaluation is with a simple ratio of pageviews * average page view value. $8 per 1000 pageviews => $1 600 000 000 per year for all wikipedia with discounted cash flow method (with the internet growth prediction), I get a $8 800 000 000 value. (2% of Apple Market Capitalisation) limitation : the value of wikipedia relays in its contributors and if it was sold, no more contributors would keep writing (and a fork would be done) limitation : the pageview value given by the foundation includes bots... - "how much would it cost to write Wikipedia" ? I used the indicator of freelance journalist paid at the "word" and I multiplied by the monthly size increase of Wikipedia. limitation : of course the choice of journalist is discutable, it's not the same job, but it is close enough to be compared. I used 57,74€ for 1500 signs (a value found in france), which gave me €32 000 000 per month value for french wikipedia, so with a €3000 monthly cost, it gives 900 employees for french wikipedia. - I also calculated with a "time spent" indicator, calculated with wikiscan.org (15 minutes max per contribution), which gaves me a more or less same result : 900 full-time contributors on fr.wikipedia.org Thesis: http://www.amplyd.com/these/Valorisation%20du%20b%C3%A9n%C3%A9volat%20sur%2… Slides for a Wikimedia France presentation: http://www.amplyd.com/these/Valorisation%20du%20b%C3%A9n%C3%A9volat%20sur%2… Don't hesitate to ask questions ! Plyd ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Seb35 &lt;seb35wikipedia(a)gmail.com&gt; Date: 2013/4/8 Subject: Valeur de Wikipédia To: Plyd &lt;wiki.vincent(a)amplyd.com&gt; Hello, Si tu veux parler de ton étude de la valeur de Wikipédia, il en est question sur wikimedia-l (pas lu, juste vu le titre), ça intéressera sûrement Lodewijk. http://lists.wikimedia.org/**pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-** April/125050.html<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-… Seb