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Comment by raz32dust | Hacker News Reader

I am all for transparency in spending, but I don't support the author's suggested guidelines for spending. Sticking to inflation-and page-view adjusted growth in spending is a terrible requirement. It ties the hands of the company to do any sort of innovation. I donate pretty regularly, and I am happy that wikipedia is doing more with my money than to just keep the site running.

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Can you name one thing that the foundation did with your money? This might be a trick question, so be careful to not confuse things that Wikipedia does without your money with things Wikimedia does with your money.

IIRC they started a web search engine project that went nowhere.

You remember incorrectly. It was a plan from a past Executive Director that never even started.

Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer".

See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

I do not believe that the above "It was a plan from a past Executive Director that never even started" claim is accurate. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

Key quotes:

"In May 2015, Risker observed that a team called 'Search and Discovery' was 'extraordinarily well-staffed with a disproportionate number of engineers at the same time as other areas seem to be wanting for them'."

"We also know at some point it was an ambitious project to create a brand new search engine as an alternative to Google."

I am not sure but I think the new wysiwyg editor was a good use of that money. Nothing that would cost millions I agree.

I can't, which is why I would definitely like to see more transparency. But you do need a certain amount of trust as well in these things. I don't want it to be the case where people are questioning each and every penny. Instead, I want to have knowledgeable, smart people whom I trust run the company and give them some freedom in investing as they think is right. Exposing too many details will make it difficult to make long-term investments, but I do think we should have more details than what is currently available.

Wikidata is the latest "sister project", has been highly successful in some ways, and the funding for its development was quite substantial (albeit managed by WMDE as opposed to the WMF themselves)

Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer".

See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

My essay says "We should limit spending increases to no more than inflation plus some percentage". It doesn't say how big that percentage should be. If the WMF limits themselves to not spending more than ten times what they spent last year they would have done what I ask. Right now there are no limits.

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