[WikiEN-l] Ads on Wikipedia?

Sun Jan 1 03:33:44 UTC 2006

--- charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Because there is a five-year history of those ideals getting the job done. 
> You don't need a _logical_ connection, when you have a track record.

We also had a track record of bringing in more money in each fund drive than in all previous
drives combined. The current drive is not following that trend. Past performance is not a good
indication of what to expect indefinitely in the future. 

> If $750000 was spent in 2005, it's hardly a shoestring. 

Considering we are running a top 30 website it certainly is. That is also what was budgeted; we've
been pretty good at underspending what we budget for by not being able to buy and deploy servers
fast enough. 

See:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report and 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers/hardware_orders

The Q3 spending vs actual report is delayed until we sort out some outstanding undocumented
transactions.

> The 'server strain' argument occurs only because exponential growth has been 
> seen.  WP _has not_ crumbled under the strain.  Traffic seems to have risen 
> 50% in December alone.  We all know this can't continue for ever.  

We've been saying that for years now. And yet we continue to grow much faster than the rest of the
Internet. :) 

At some point our growth will match that of the rest of the Internet, but the Internet itself will
continue to grow exponentially for years to come (still several billion people who aren't online
at all yet). Heck, if we are really successful then we will significantly drive part of that
growth. 

> can't possibly know enough and rationally discuss how much money WP needs, 
> until we have a clearer idea of where it is headed.  

We can project a few quarters out. The proposed draft budget for Q1 of 2006 already stands at
about $500,000.

See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_budget/2006/Q1 (needs to be updated with 3 new staff
positions and Wikimania-related costs).

> upside down, by the way - we have only an upside risk on the traffic, and 
> apart from Jimbo's seed money we are not burning through the money in the 
> bank, but visibly making it easier to get money, with no strings, simply by 
> posting a notice on the sites.)

Our reserve fund was nearly depleted before the start of the current fundraiser. So we have burnt
through the money in the bank. The money we raised so far in the fund drive will not last long
either. Another drive will be needed in Q1 to cover the rest of that quarter's costs. 

-- mav

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