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:Whether '''Wikipedia''' (not the WMF) has ''too many pages'' is an interesting thought, but has zero to do with this essay, which is about whether '''the WMF''' (not Wikipedia) is spending ''too much money''. You might want to consider turning the above into an essay titled "Too many Pages" with some statistics about how the ratio of editors vs. pages has changed over time. --[[User:Guy Macon|Guy Macon]] ([[User talk:Guy Macon|talk]]) 17:53, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
== Alternative title: Money is the Root of All Incompetence ==
I suspect that your essay may explain the latest misguided acts by the Foundation: the attempt by T&S to enforce their version of a Code of Conduct. What we have in the Foundation are a surplus of people with no real purpose to their jobs, so they are constantly attempting to justify being employed, which leads to stuff like [[WP:FRAMGATE]]. And their endless process with creating their Plan 2030: they are dragging it out, either intentionally or unintentionally, because once its complete people will need to either find a new project or a new job. As far as I can see, whatever this visioning thing they are creating will never effect my editing stats one way or the other. (More likely factors include the amount of spare time I have, family demands, & amount of material I can find with a reasonable effort to write articles with.) Or anyone else's.{{pb}}However, I can come up with useful ways they could use resources to enhance -- & yes, funding to editors for research is one, but there are many more. What about research into UX, & sharing it online so we volunteers could use it? What about training in matters such as copyright & plagiarism? One project that would solve an issue plaguing en.wikipedia at the moment would be research into the effectiveness of cross-article ties? Right now I know of five ways to link articles to each other: hyperlinks, categories, navboxes, outlines, & portals. If someone were to analyze which of these produce the most traffic -- & why -- we could develop guidelines to make use of them. (And maybe determine objectively whether to keep portals as a general thing.) I bet such an analysis of Wikipedia data would take a month & at most $15,000 to accomplish, & might just head off a dispute from being handled by ArbCom.{{pb}}I'll close with this thought: I bet if the Foundation were to lay off 20% or more of their staff, at worse no one would notice; at best, I bet those who were left would focus more on supporting the needs of the communities rather than chase after aspirational but abstract & unobtainable goals such as supporting diversity. (Last time I checked, regardless of our editor base no one seriously advocates an exclusively white cis-male hetrosexual computer-oriented Euro-American viewpoint for Wikipedia. Our membership is far more open & tolerant than we are given credit for.) -- [[User:Llywrch|llywrch]] ([[User talk:Llywrch|talk]]) 23:14, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
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