Asklemmy

I think NATOpedia gets sufficient funding from NGOs, endowments, and rich people tax breaks.

I don’t think they are running inefficiently. I do think they have more than enough money to keep themselves going for many years to come. Also, the lack of inclusiveness in the editing is the reason I don’t donate. Nothing like making an article contribution only to have it quickly reverted by some control freak editor from the inner circle. Wikipedia is not actually what it claims to be. It’s slightly more open than a real encyclopedia, but not much.

Wikipedia makes most of its money from donations, with some money coming from other sources like commercial API access. It consistently raises more money than it spends and has been building an endowment. However, that income mainly comes from the fundraising drives.

Wikipedia has an endowment, but it isn't enough to run the website for more than a few years.

In terms of expenses, the largest expense is in having staff to run the various websites and foundation. Charity auditors rank the foundation highly on expenses, so the foundation is likely not overpaying staff.

Wikipedia needs donations to survive, but it isn't struggling. If you feel like you have better things to donate to, it is probably ok for now.

No, they don’t.

As of December 31, 2023, [Wikimedia has] annual revenues of $180.2 million, […] net assets of $255 million and a growing endowment, which surpassed $100 million in June 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation

Wikipedia will keep running, even if you don’t donate. The Wikimedia foundation (which runs Wikipedia) gets a lot of donations and fund a ton of other stuff apart from Wikipedia, so you’re donation will rather have a chance to decide if these keep running.

Lucky for you the wikimedia foundation files annual reports https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2022-2023-annual-report/

I think this is the latest one available.

As to whether they need your money or not I’m a bit conflicted. They have raised and spent more and more money every year. They have a lot of money and some have argued they spend it poorly.

On the whole though, besides asking for donations, they have maintained their goal of being ad free. If you’ve ever used a fan wiki for a video game or hobby you have likely experienced how bad a wiki larded down with ads can be.

I think for myself as someone that has worked as a software engineer for my entire life building out massive infrastructure that is on a similar scale to Wikipedia, I don’t really know how they justify such high development spend when the tech isn’t really evolving very much. I’m sure it’s not cheap to host, so that spend is fine by me, but I’m not sure what all they are building. That doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile, I just have a hard time imagining it.

I would encourage you to look at numbers and decide if they make sense to you. Also people have written on the subject, so some googling will likely bring you to more opinionated pieces than my own.

As far as I know, I don't know.

AFAIK they tend to overdramatize their lack of money.

As far as i know yeah without the donations they don't exist