Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it reasonable to believe that donations will increase in line with
> readers? Has anyone analysed the available data to see if this is
> happening?

My gut feeling (based on my experience with the last several fund drives and my
projections of hardware cost increases) is that our rate of traffic growth (and
thus the need to put more hardware online) is more exponential than our rate of
donation growth. 

Plotting the two growth curves on the same time axis and projecting that into
the future to see when/if the two lines cross has been on my ToDo list for
months now. The big problem is finding a consistent and reliable data source.
WikiStats tracked page views until October 2004. Since then the available data
have been much harder to parse. 

It would *really* be *very* useful to bring those stats back. I know that the
missing data are likely gone forever, but if I can get good data from now on I
can easily model the missing part of the curve.  
 
-- mav


	
		
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