MZMcBride <z <at> mzmcbride.com> writes: > > Gerard Meijssen wrote: > >Do not be daft. The Wikimedia Foundation centralised its fundraising. It > >said that it would do a better job. Seen from a central periphery model, > >it probably does, However seen from the Netherlands it is rather silly., > > > >Pooh poohing this away with "you can donate time as well" is fine when you > >are in the centre. > > I see a few inter-related questions here that I think must be resolved > during the drafting of the next Strategic Plan: > > * who should primarily be responsible for collecting donations? > > * how large, in terms of staff and budget, should the Wikimedia Foundation > be? > > * how large, in terms of staff and budget, should individual chapters be? > > * should the Wikimedia Foundation continue to be headquartered in San > Francisco? > > * how do we measure effectiveness/impact of programs by the Wikimedia > Foundation and chapters? > > I personally don't think the current model of having so many staff in such > an expensive area of the world is practical or sustainable. The cost of > being in San Francisco, California seems to _far_ outweigh any benefit > it's providing. It's been six years since the Wikimedia Foundation moved > out to San Francisco and what do we have to show for it? Weekly lunches > with Wikia? Ugh. Is $60 million a year really needed? I doubt it, we did > just fine with a fraction of that amount. But these questions and their > answers all need to be thoroughly explored, in my opinion. >
Based on what the foundation is willing to pay for engineers, you're probably right that it doesn't have a lot of benefit, since it's not a major consideration for a lot of tech folks in the area. Wikimedia also isn't a very active member of the tech community in San Francisco. When I attend meetups and conferences, the thing I hear the most is "Wikimedia is in San Francisco?". Really, though, based on the salaries paid, it doesn't matter where they're headquartered, since that cost would likely be similar anywhere. From a cost perspective, I'd be looking at the ratio of management and non-management. I'd also ask how much is being spent on management and executive training events (aka retreats). - Ryan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
