Talk:Wikimedia budget/2005/Q4
Daniel, what do you mean by "fundraising costs"? Are we talking about bank fees, paypal fees etc? If not, I think it would make sense to really show those on the budget as a single line as I think it's important that people are aware of what those cost. notafish }<';> 16:44, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
- PayPal and bank fees, yes. PayPal alone takes 4 to 5%, which means if we take in $200,000 in a fund drive through PayPal, then we could easily reach the $10,000 figure just through PayPal. --Daniel Mayer 20:24, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
We should separate hardware and trademarks from "Hosting related". While hosting charges and domains are regular expenses, Hardware is an investment. Trademarks don't have anything to do with hosting at all. If trademark costs are small we could put them together with the legal stuff. -- Arne (akl) 07:50, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
- Hardware is an asset, but it depreciates so quickly that it is hardly an investment. The budget as-is shows things in a fairly straightforward function-based manor. Rest assured that our accounting software has been and will continue to track assets. Pinning a monetary value to our trademarks and domain names will be near impossible, since the real value behind those is a community that can’t be bought. --Daniel Mayer 12:57, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
- I'm still not convinced about the hardware issue. Can you tell me, how many servers were put out of service until now? I think you got me wrong on the trademark issue: I meant the costs for trademarks (and domains), not their value. -- Arne (akl) 14:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Recurring office expense needs to be increased now that we have moved to the new office. Rent is approx $1,700/mo. We need a one-time budget item to cover setting up the office, i.e. printer, fax, copier, furniture, supplies. We are currently using whatever old furniture was left behind by the former tenant. (There's a reason they left it behind.) Walls need patching and painting. We need to decide if the foundations wants its office to be presentable to the public or look like a college dorm room. --mdavis 13:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
- Well it depends. Are the people who work there going to sleep there? ;-). No, ok, how many people are *actually* sitting in that office and should have a desk there? notafish }<';> 11:06, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
- While I have no plans to sleep in the office, it should be presentable to the outside world, like Michael saidWe should be able to host guests, including prominent guests, in our office. There should be a place for them to sit comfortably in meetings. There are four people working here, and we have already had a number of volunteers, so that adequate workspace is essential. Danny 22:40, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Actual hosting charges (Tampa colo) for 6/13/05-9/13/05 was $18,000. The most recent invoice shows recurring fixed costs $3,000 and bandwidth $4,000. I don't expect fixed costs to change much next quarter but bandwidth costs may grow. Jimbo has more details on this. --mdavis 13:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
- Just a precision, the fixed costs you mention are quarterly, right? Oh, and 3,000+4,000 is only 7,000 where does the rest come from? notafish }<';> 11:13, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
- Clarification - $7,000 is a monthly number taken from last month's invoice. We need to budget $21,000 + growth for next quarter. mdavis 12:00, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
Why do we have office space? --lotsofissues
How come domain names cost $2,000/year? You only own 7 domain names (wikimedia.org, wikipedia.org, wikibooks.org, wikinews.org, wikisource.org, wiktionary.org, wikiquote.org), and the highest price for a domain is $70. 62.0.90.116 08:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
- the budget also includes trademarks. Anthere 10:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I would echo others concerns that money is being spent on items that are not really needed. For example, I still can't see how 7-odd domain names can cost $500 - it should be closer to $100. And it would be a good thing to see where the trademark money goes, too.
I also looked at the hardware section and noted that you're getting several Opteron based machines when Athlon 64's are almost as good - if not as good - in single and dual CPU setups, and significantly (factor-of-2) cheaper.
Finally, while I'm sure Jimmy would like to have 7 or 8 people at WSIS, is it really necessary?
My concern is not perhaps these specific items, but the general trend towards spending money in ways that the donators would not agree with.
R.
Q4 hardware purchases edit
1) What are the traffic statistics for wikipedia? Maybe it can be broken down into a hourly, daily, weekly basis.
2) What is the trafficload per server that can be handled?
The details page of the Q4 budget mention 50 opteron servers being purchased for apache purposes (serving webpages). Your server farm is either highly inefficient or someone is flushing the servers down the toilet when they're purchased.
paypal edit
please .. get your facts straight. paypal incurs a charge of 2.9% for transactions within the usa. foreign transactions are 3.9% or 4%. the average is not the 4 or 5 percent mentioned.
and, if the a charity/donation drive were for 3-5 months timeframe ... you could easily ask for a lower merchant rate which comes to about 1.9 or 2.2%
plus, if you guys were serious about donations ... a merchant account not through paypal could be easily setup to bring your fees down to 2.2% ... on the volume of 200k or more per year, that figure could easily be brought down to under 2%.
plus, people who pay with checks/money orders -- you incur no fee cashing them out.
Fishy Domain Spending edit
At least two other individuals in this thread have commented on how owning a few domain names does not obligate you to spend ~$500 a quarter on them. That's $2000 a year.
Above it was mentioned that this also included the cost of Trademarks and other associated costs. What makes no sense about this argument is that on the actual budget page you have trademarks broken out into its own category. I really think that you need to either re-think these categories or at least offer some sort of explanation on where the money is going.
Also, I am still trying to figure out how come there are no itemized income reports listed for Q3 and Q4 of 2005. There is brief mention of money coming in, but that is all. Are you planning on releasing these statistics?