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

[Delphine Ménard]

On 10/26/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:

> I thought it was generally agreed upon though that rising costs on
> hardware could be compensated for, since users are more than willing to
> donate for hardware costs.  Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't
> wikimedia just adjust their donation goals to cover that and thus cover
> the cost of new hardware/repairs/upgrades, etc...?

We can, and we will, to an extent. The difficulty of this lies
elsewhere. Fundraising drives so far have been huge successes, fine.
But let's try to see it differently. I receive every week dozens of
sollicitations, through the post, on websites, whatever. I can only
give *so much* a week/month/year. So can you, probably. Although our
traffic is growing, and our readership (ie. people who are willing to
help us with donations) is growing, I doubt we can appeal to them for
specific fundraising drives everyday. There comes a time when people
will say "Well, I have given for the year" and won't give anymore.
Daniel made it clear, the curve for donations won't follow the curve
for costs. Since our costs are growing so fast (I won't go back to all
the explanations given here and elsewhere), I don't think that
fundraising drives will be near enough to cover those costs.

Small donations originated by fundraising drives are something we
should *count* on, but not something we should *rely* on. We're not
the only ones out there asking for money, and I believe that it is
also our job to be looking elsewhere for hard cash.

In our case, I would say that all editors, by spending the time they
spend providing content and making Wikimedia projects what they are,
are already donating. I would not blame anyone who'd argue that they
"don't have cash, but already give some time and knowledge". Except
that time and knowledge, although they are indispensable, don't buy
servers or cover operating costs.


Cheers,

Delphine
--
~notafish