[Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[David Gerard]

2009/10/10 Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>:

> The ratio of overhead to other expenses isn't always a great meter
> stick, as Erik mentions.  Nevertheless, one extraordinary aspect of
> Wikipedia and siblings is how high the efficiency of its core project
> work is by that measure: 100 billion views / 100 million edits a year,
> for $3M in hardware and bandwidth and maintenance, and a fraction of
> that in administrative costs.


Indeed. Running the #5 website in the world on a few million dollars a
year is a *spectacular* achievement. Everyone else in the top 20 has
luxuries like staff and money ...

One thing that has always amazed me about Wikimedia is that it has
successfully recruited reliable volunteer sysadmins. I honestly hadn't
thought that possible before I saw it.


- d.