That "prudent reserve" argument is really a red herring the WMF loves to employ, because as long as you find ways to inflate your annual spending you can justify any reserve amount as "necessary".
And that's exactly what's happened. Today WMF spend twenty times what they used to spend ten years ago, when Wikipedia was already a top-10 website.
So naturally, the reserve they say is necessary today ($100 million) is twenty times the reserve they said was necessary ten years ago ($5 million). If that pattern continues, then in another ten years they will say that they need a reserve of $2 billion. Twenty years from now it will be $40 billion. You get my drift.
I wouldn't mind if readers and contributors saw palpable value from that spending, but is Wikipedia's software really 20 times more useful for the reader and contributor than it was ten years ago? I don't think so.
And that's exactly what's happened. Today WMF spend twenty times what they used to spend ten years ago, when Wikipedia was already a top-10 website.
So naturally, the reserve they say is necessary today ($100 million) is twenty times the reserve they said was necessary ten years ago ($5 million). If that pattern continues, then in another ten years they will say that they need a reserve of $2 billion. Twenty years from now it will be $40 billion. You get my drift.
I wouldn't mind if readers and contributors saw palpable value from that spending, but is Wikipedia's software really 20 times more useful for the reader and contributor than it was ten years ago? I don't think so.