The problem isn't that there isn't enough income to cover expenses.
The problem is that expenses have grown along with rapidly increasing income.
The two best explanations for this are:
a) Wikipedia has spent that money in ways that add commensurate value
b) Wikipedia is adding projects that sound reasonable, but don't add tons of value, in order to soak up the increased revenue (possibly unintentionally; intentions are irrelevant in bureaucracies).
It's not binary, of course. People who have a problem with that chart aren't saying Wikipedia has added NO value from the spend.
They're just noting that (b) is a very very common failure mode of large organizations that have easy access to money. In fact, I'd argue that it's common enough as the failure mode that the burden of proof should always be on the party who asserts that it's NOT happening, rather than the other way around.
The problem is that expenses have grown along with rapidly increasing income.
The two best explanations for this are:
a) Wikipedia has spent that money in ways that add commensurate value
b) Wikipedia is adding projects that sound reasonable, but don't add tons of value, in order to soak up the increased revenue (possibly unintentionally; intentions are irrelevant in bureaucracies).
It's not binary, of course. People who have a problem with that chart aren't saying Wikipedia has added NO value from the spend.
They're just noting that (b) is a very very common failure mode of large organizations that have easy access to money. In fact, I'd argue that it's common enough as the failure mode that the burden of proof should always be on the party who asserts that it's NOT happening, rather than the other way around.