Wikipedia finances

[naerey]

Have you guys seen how Wikimedia (the organization that runs wikipedia and many other wikiprojects) spends the money given by donations?

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report

Apparently lots of that money goes to Office of the Executive Director (309k $) and Finance & Admin. ($1,046K), which amounts to really nice wages for Jimmy Wales and company ¬.¬

Also look at Programs (296k $) [Includes salaries for program staff, public outreach expenses, communications expenses.], which seems nice. But note that they use rather expensive options over cheaper ones, such as furnishing apple computers(which I love) over cheaper choices such as regular PC's :S

Shocking is also the increase of money spent on... everything!
A few years back the wikimedia foundation ran perfectly well with just 500k $ a year. This fiscal year (2007/200 it ran on 3 million. And for next year they plan to use 6 million $. That's double in one year, whereas internet traffic is supposed to have a slight increase, not double.

Is wikimedia starting to love money too much? Think about it, 7 million dollars in donations is a lot.

[ichwar]

If you don't like how they use the money you give them, don't give them money. If you haven't been giving them any money, don't complain, it's not hurting anyone any, it's all free will donations that they use. They're only spending that much because people are freely and generously giving them that much.

[gali98]

Wikipedia is cool and all, but I think they try and play the openness card. They're a company... And "there is no freedom of speech on wikipedia."