That article is typical of The Register - typical nonsense. The number of falsehoods in it is substantial, so in the interests of time, I will cover just a few of the highlights.
1. "The vast potential for advertising attracted venture capital firm Elevation Partners (whose investors include Bono from U2) to court Wikipedia" - at no point in our conversations with Elevation was there ever a suggestion that Wikipedia should take advertising. Indeed, Roger McNamee was quite adamant that Wikipedia should not do that.
2. "Bono also urged Wales to drop the volunteers and hire professionals instead." This is absolutely and utterly false. Bono has never suggested any such thing nor anything even remotely resembling it. He's always been in awe of the community and how it all works.
The Wikimedia Foundation (and associated chapters) are incredibly transparent about our spending, hiring policies and practices, etc. The idea that the Foundation should restrict itself to the tiniest possible budget just to keep the site running is frankly idiotic.
And the idea that the Foundation has steadily increased our reserve position is bad is also idiotic. There can be such a thing as having too large a reserve, but we aren't close to that level yet. One think we know our donors are interested in (because of their response to banner messaging) is that we keep Wikipedia safe - and that means, in part, being fiscally responsible and building up a cushion for the future.
His response:
That article is typical of The Register - typical nonsense. The number of falsehoods in it is substantial, so in the interests of time, I will cover just a few of the highlights.
1. "The vast potential for advertising attracted venture capital firm Elevation Partners (whose investors include Bono from U2) to court Wikipedia" - at no point in our conversations with Elevation was there ever a suggestion that Wikipedia should take advertising. Indeed, Roger McNamee was quite adamant that Wikipedia should not do that.
2. "Bono also urged Wales to drop the volunteers and hire professionals instead." This is absolutely and utterly false. Bono has never suggested any such thing nor anything even remotely resembling it. He's always been in awe of the community and how it all works.
The Wikimedia Foundation (and associated chapters) are incredibly transparent about our spending, hiring policies and practices, etc. The idea that the Foundation should restrict itself to the tiniest possible budget just to keep the site running is frankly idiotic.
And the idea that the Foundation has steadily increased our reserve position is bad is also idiotic. There can be such a thing as having too large a reserve, but we aren't close to that level yet. One think we know our donors are interested in (because of their response to banner messaging) is that we keep Wikipedia safe - and that means, in part, being fiscally responsible and building up a cushion for the future.