[WikiEN-l] Foundation audit

[Nick]

>
> <snip>
> I suspect that many of the qualms people have about the cost of
> salaries is that many people aren't particularly familiar with what
> all the staff do. We'd love to hear more about all the good work they
> do :) </snip>


That's a very good point, I don't want to sound patronising, but Wikipedia
is going to be the first company that lots of our users and benefactors will
have any experience of dealing with, or any real interest in, and many of
the people looking at our accounts will simply not understand why so much is
spent on particular things. People always point out that hosting packages
are available for a few hundred dollars per year for example. I think
there's a real need not just to account for each dollar that is spent, but
the reasons behind why each dollar has to be spent. So much of what we see
explaining situations is a rather defensive approach, which can be counter
productive, and I know that's not anybodies fault, we often expect
inquisitive users to have more of an understanding into how costly running a
website is.

So, let's take the initiative and flesh out the accounts into a big
explanation of what we do and how we do it, for all to see. It might even
raise some extra money when people realise just what is involved in running
one of the 10 most popular websites in the world.
-- 
Nick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nick