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Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites.

> Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites.

How do you square that with this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180736) that says only they only spend "2% on actual hosting costs."

100% of the work of actually maintaining Wikipedia is is done by unpaid volunteers, and much of the tooling they use also appears to be developed on a volunteer basis.

It comes from the Wikimedia Foundation.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2021-annu...

The 42% presumably includes hosting cost and salaries in support of "Wikipedia and its companion sites", whereas the ~2% is direct hosting expenses.

I think the 42% is over inflated. Of course it takes more than just hosting Wikipedia, but the 42% likely includes a lot of vanity projects that are not needed to keep the website operational longterm.

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