Wikimedia Foundation exec Sue Gartner criticized the current system

Oct 19, 2013 12:11 GMT  ·  By

Wikipedia is one of the largest sites in the world and, even if edits are in decline, it's still growing. It's a very peculiar site too, one of the very few that don't have any advertising or any type of monetization in fact.

It relies on donations to survive but, unlike most charities you've heard of, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind it, is loaded. Wikipedia donations have amounted to tens of millions over the past few years.

However, just like most charities, the foundation hasn't been that great at spending the money wisely.

While Wikipedia is huge, only a small portion of the funds goes towards operations and infrastructure. Most of it is used for various Wikimedia projects or is handed out to various local chapters which operate independently.

But Sue Gartner, the outbound executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, is concerned that this state of affairs has led to too much money being sent to local chapters that provide very little value to the site.

In fact, she argues, that money may be better spent on the people actually contributing to the site, the volunteer editors that spend hours adding or improving content.

"I believe that currently, too large a proportion of the movement's money is being spent by the chapters. The value in the Wikimedia projects is primarily created by individual editors: individuals create the value for readers, which results in those readers donating money to the movement," Gartner said in a report earlier this month.

She is also worried that those handing out the grants, the Funds Dissemination Committee, are too close to the chapters that get most of those grants. This while the chapters haven't really done much tangible good. They're great for raising publicity, but not so great at getting more people involved, which is Wikimedia's biggest goal.