[Foundation-l] new site notice now ready

[The Cunctator]

On 12/28/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> First of all, I want to say that I agree with most everything Erik has
> written so far, and can't really add to his eloquent explanations. Nevertheless,
> as someone who was involved from the beginning in these discussions, I want to
> raise a few points here.
>
> 1. The Wikimedia Foundation has grown beyond anyone's wildest  expectations
> in terms of traffic, hits, articles, and projects. We are a top ten  website.
> 2. We are doing this on a shoestring budget, with minimal staff and minimal
> expenses.
> 3. We are able to do this because of dedicated volunteers, like everyone
> writing on this list.
>
> But --
>
> 4. The Foundation, which hosts all these projects does not want to be
> gobbled up by some big corporation, like Youtube was, like Myspace was, or like  any
> other successful website was. We want to maintain our independence.
> 5. Independence comes at a cost. We have to buy servers, and we have to  find
> the right people to manage all of the other things involved with running a
> huge foundation.
> 6. Considering our growth, the base of volunteers does not scale. All the
> good will in the world does not mean that people can take off exams or their
> jobs or their families to work 24/7 to keep this thing running.
> 7. We are already paying a steep cost. While it doesn't appear in the  audit,
> the fact that we do not have advertising is costing us. This is  unrealized
> income at a minimum of $60k a day and probably much more. In other  words it is
> many millions a year. Yet, the Board and the community have chosen  to avoid
> ads so that we can maintain our independence.

You have a strange definition of cost. Wikipedia is missing out on
tons of money by not being in the porno business. You don't get to
write that up as a cost.