Comments on: Wikimedia Foundation’s Sue Gardner named to World’s Most Powerful Women list by Forbes

By: jolison

jolison — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 16:08:38 +0000

“in 2007, the organization had under 10 employees and was raising less than $3 million dollars annually. In 2011, Wikimedia’s number of donors had increased ten times over, raising $23 million.”

Are we expected to believe that this 700%+ increase is something good or bad? I would rather have the foundation raise the same as it did back in 2007 but maintain some of the user base that has been lost in these five years. Sometimes it seems like the foundation is just raising money for the sake of spending it.

The foundation should be kept as small as possible and its goal should be to spend as little as possible. I’ve seen some wikimedia reports mentioning that the fundraiser should reach 50M$+ in the next few years and I don’t understand why… the goal of the foundation is in the wrong direction. It’s not about getting the foundation bigger but to improve Wikipedia. And throwing money in a contributor-based project seems just useless.

By: Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 05:52:34 +0000

You know that Forbes just releases these lists in order to promote itself, right? When you post something like this, you are endorsing Forbes and what it stands for. Was that your intent?

By: Bodnotbod

Bodnotbod — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 02:08:37 +0000

Congratulations Sue. And although I haven’t seen the article/list I hope this will encourage some new editors (especially female) to get involved.

By: Web

Web — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:13:18 +0000

Congratulations to Sue. Her work, and the work of thousands of Wikimedians around the globe, has made the public view Wikipedia a basic necessity, like water and electricity. This is a testament to everybody’s dedication and hard work. For the upcoming years, Sue, and the staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, have identified specific areas for improvement and have been focusing resources on those areas in an effort to make the Wikimedia projects an even more valuable resource for humanity. It has been encouraging to watch Sue and the foundation staff at work and they have been an inspiration to many people thus making their effort multiplied many fold. I congratulate Sue, the foundation staff and all the Wikimedians around the globe for pursuing our common goal, “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.” It is a very noble cause and I thank everybody for their continued support.