Ebay has an Alexa rank of 20. According to Money It has a net worth of 53 billion dollars, annual revenues of $4,500,000,000 and annual profits of over $1,000,000,000. Ebay employs 12,600 persons. It is ranked 458 in the Fortune 500.

Wikipedia has an Alexa rank of 8. It employs, as best I can tell, 12 people. It hopes to have an annual budget in 2007-2008 of $4,600,000.

Is it just me or does this add up to a lost opportunity?

* edit by Nathan: typo

If it were ever sold to a profit-making company, its Alexa rating would drop like a rock.

So, I don't think that this no. 8 rating could be used as a selling point....at least, if one was honest about it...

I'm not suggesting that WP should be operated on a for profit basis, although others might be pleased if this were to happen. I believe that WP should remain a non-profit. I am making the comparison to get some kind of perspective on the magnitude of the opportunity. WP ought to a jewel of the non-profit community. It should command sufficient resource to assure a quality encyclopedia. Instead it has insufficient resources to assure minimal social responsibility. It is the strangest of creatures, both hopelessly understaffed and bloated and top-heavy with a new cadre of corporate types directing resources toward their own offices while ignoring the need for program related staff (4% of WMF budget). Ten times more is spent for administration than program staff. They simply have chosen to walk away from responsibility and leave it in the hands of a dysfunctional social networking community.

If Ebay was ran in the same fashion it would be nothing but a haven for spam and scams.