The article reads as if it was published in a tabloid, to put it mildly. Flashy headline, then looses the focus of the headline and glues together separate paragraphs some of which seem far from the topic because there's no point being made with them, like the paragraphs about WMF not listing all its donations anymore and the decision not to show ads.
In fact, there are very little assertions made. Instead, the author seems to hope that by throwing some statements, references and numbers, the readers would be impressed enough and draw conclusions.
Statements like the ones below are all stated without ANY conclusion or are a conclusion on it's own but with no arguments preceding it:
A) "Earlier this year Wikipedia attracted criticism for its new-found enthusiasm for political campaigning - not a traditional activity for encyclopedias, where fairness and objectivity is part of the "brand"." ,
B) "All this has been met with dismay by the loyal enthusiasts who do all the hard work of keeping the project afloat by editing and contributing words - and who still aren't paid. For the first time, Wikipedians are beginning to examine the cash awards - and are making some interesting discoveries." + subsequently quoting the salary of the WMF's director (again, with no point made),
C) "The Wikimedia Foundation hired a convicted felon as its chief operating officer to look after its books while on she was on parole. The executive's convictions included cheque fraud and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gunshot to the chest.",
D) "The substantial contributions from Google leave the foundation open to the charge that it's lobbying for the agenda of large corporations by proxy."
A) forgets to mention the implications SOPA had on Wikipedia.org
B) Does the author confuse how the product (wiki) works - volunteers contribute for free- and the fact people employed by a charitable organization still get paid?
C) The author "forgets" to mention that person worked at WMF only for 6 months instead of making it sound that person still works there. And what's the entire point of this? WMF is corrupt and hence money disappears? I'll get back to this later.
D) "open to the charge" ? Ridiculous, anything can be left open to any charge; the question whether there's a substantial reasoning and/or proof for such charge(which are >completely< lacking here) is a whole another matter.
Now, let's look at the main (and only) statement of the article - WMF is awash with money and does not need donations to operate. "operate" is key. If the idea is to keep paying electricity, servers and maintenance, then yes, the author is right. This can be inferred from the stat he gives about WMF having only 3 employees in 2007 and operating with $3m. (Of course, ignoring growth in usage and costs)
But why should that be the goal of the fundraiser? Should it not aim to make Wikipedia.org the product we need it to be? Hence all the money spent on improving editing tools (yes, even if that means paying a research grant, what's wrong with that?), improving the community and especially reversing the trend of less and less people contributing to the wiki? These essentially are maintenance costs of the main product, even if the bits themselves are new development. Look at the projected staff growth for next year in [1]. Almost all of the jobs are software/system engineer jobs.
And the bit about the lobbyist is hilarious! I'm actually surprised they didn't have one until this year (or maybe I'm misreading).
The facts in the article about how some of the raised money has been spent indeed raises questions about the WMF's efficiency (and as Argorak points out[2], even those aren't definitive). But that's about it. Claiming that the foundation is "awash" with money and no donations are needed is a very large leap. It currently has $27.7m in reserve. According to WMF's strategic plan [1], this can last the foundation for less than a year. In other words, every year the money raised are extending the life of the foundation by 1 year. I find this very close to what the fund raising message on Wikipedia.org conveys.
So, one thing that always gets brought up is "yeah, but what about those reserves?"
WMF have in the past said that they keep about six months of cash in reserve. And have for a few years now. Orlowski and some of the troll brigade get very antsy about this. I think it is... sound financial planning.
I don't know about you, but having a cash reserve is kind of a useful selling point if you are trying to hire programmers and engineers. "We're not suddenly going to go bankrupt overnight and leave you in the lurch" is something you actually need to be able to tell prospective employees if they've got families and mortgages and so on.
As a Wikipedia admin and volunteer, I'm actually mostly okay with how the Foundation operates. Some of the local chapters are probably a bit too bloated but the Foundation itself, I'm broadly okay with.
As someone who has worked in the non-profit sector for several years, having a cash reserve is a best practice. Six months is on the smaller end. If you don't have cash reserves and fund raising falls short, you have to start laying people off, cutting programs, turning off servers, etc. Or if the global economy tanks and people stop donating, your whole non-profit may be in trouble.
Six months of cash to cover all expenses is a selling point of Wikipedia, not a detraction. I want to donate to and work for financially prudent non-profits. If anything, I'd like to see their cash reserves upped to more like a year or so.
Six months was the last time I attended a fundraising discussion meeting. I think that there may be long-term plans to try and keep a bigger cash reserve. It's what happens when non-profits grow up.
Plus, donations are not flat through the year. In the US, at least, donations spike in December because it's the last chance to qualify as a tax deduction for the current tax year.
It's a very interesting point, and i guess the issue is if you have to start laying fundraisers off, you have no fund raiser to raise funds. Kind of a vicious circle situation!
It's The Register, and The Register has Things They Hateses, e.g., Google, and apparently, Wikipedia.
On neutral topics The Register can be fun and even informative, but when it comes to Things They Hateses, no rumor is too unsubstantiated, no conclusion too tenuous, and no argument too bizarre to be crammed together haphazardly into a nasty little ball of hate and called "an article."
They Hateses It, and It They Hateses, and that's good enough for them.
Apparently The Register think that because people don't get paid (and in fact are specifically not allowed to get paid), that the editors of Wikipedia are somehow being hard done by.
Seems ridiculous - very much a biased piece against Wikipedia, not well researched, and not particularly cogent.
So far as I can tell, it's not so much "The Register thinks" as "Orlowski thinks" - much though I tend to enjoy reading his articles, a small dump truck full of salt is pretty much always required.
The improvement from one star to four on the efficiency-as-a-charity thing and the innovative things they're doing with the money led me to have a more positive impression of wikipedia at the end of the article than I did beforehand; hopefully a decent percentage of readers will feel the same way.
Andrew Orlowski is a well known troll. Also on a personal level he's a complete cunt. I used to argue with him back and the day but there is no point.
His previous main argument against wikipedia was that anyone who uses it and supports it is advocating pedophilia.
Indeed when i , as eloquently could, disagreed with him in an email, he decided to publish snippets from my mail, with my name and email address on the reg. I had to contact the editor to get him to remove it and apologise for misrepresenting my remarks.
The best example of feeding the troll was when Pan released version 0.10.0.92 as "Andrew Orlowski Can Kiss My Ass". [1] This was in response to him flaming Gnome 2.0. [2]
A) forgets to mention the implications SOPA had on Wikipedia.org B) Does the author confuse how the product (wiki) works - volunteers contribute for free- and the fact people employed by a charitable organization still get paid? C) The author "forgets" to mention that person worked at WMF only for 6 months instead of making it sound that person still works there. And what's the entire point of this? WMF is corrupt and hence money disappears? I'll get back to this later. D) "open to the charge" ? Ridiculous, anything can be left open to any charge; the question whether there's a substantial reasoning and/or proof for such charge(which are >completely< lacking here) is a whole another matter.
Now, let's look at the main (and only) statement of the article - WMF is awash with money and does not need donations to operate. "operate" is key. If the idea is to keep paying electricity, servers and maintenance, then yes, the author is right. This can be inferred from the stat he gives about WMF having only 3 employees in 2007 and operating with $3m. (Of course, ignoring growth in usage and costs)
But why should that be the goal of the fundraiser? Should it not aim to make Wikipedia.org the product we need it to be? Hence all the money spent on improving editing tools (yes, even if that means paying a research grant, what's wrong with that?), improving the community and especially reversing the trend of less and less people contributing to the wiki? These essentially are maintenance costs of the main product, even if the bits themselves are new development. Look at the projected staff growth for next year in [1]. Almost all of the jobs are software/system engineer jobs.
And the bit about the lobbyist is hilarious! I'm actually surprised they didn't have one until this year (or maybe I'm misreading).
The facts in the article about how some of the raised money has been spent indeed raises questions about the WMF's efficiency (and as Argorak points out[2], even those aren't definitive). But that's about it. Claiming that the foundation is "awash" with money and no donations are needed is a very large leap. It currently has $27.7m in reserve. According to WMF's strategic plan [1], this can last the foundation for less than a year. In other words, every year the money raised are extending the life of the foundation by 1 year. I find this very close to what the fund raising message on Wikipedia.org conveys.
edit: formatting
[1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-1...
[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947370