One of the issues here is this funding goes toward some of the more hidden work that folks using and even contributing to Wikipedia don't see. Let's take two examples:
1) Automatically identifying, reporting, and perhaps removing spam, hate speech, advertising, conflict of interest, etc. content. That's done in part by a system called ORES which was designed, built, and is managed by folks working for Wikimedia. Could volunteers have built such a system? Of course. Did they? No.
2) Identifying, blocking, and reporting child pornography. Like any site on the Internet that allows users to upload images, thousands of images of child pornography are uploaded to Wikipedia (and its sibling projects) on a regular basis. There are tools designed to catch most of these. However, humans still have to moderate a lot of this content. Would you volunteer to do that work all day long? I wouldn't. And that's why someone needs to be paid to do it.
So, while there is likely bloat in the organization (as in any group of humans endeavoring toward a shared goal), there is a lot of work done that volunteers wouldn't or couldn't or simply shouldn't do.
1) Automatically identifying, reporting, and perhaps removing spam, hate speech, advertising, conflict of interest, etc. content. That's done in part by a system called ORES which was designed, built, and is managed by folks working for Wikimedia. Could volunteers have built such a system? Of course. Did they? No.
2) Identifying, blocking, and reporting child pornography. Like any site on the Internet that allows users to upload images, thousands of images of child pornography are uploaded to Wikipedia (and its sibling projects) on a regular basis. There are tools designed to catch most of these. However, humans still have to moderate a lot of this content. Would you volunteer to do that work all day long? I wouldn't. And that's why someone needs to be paid to do it.
So, while there is likely bloat in the organization (as in any group of humans endeavoring toward a shared goal), there is a lot of work done that volunteers wouldn't or couldn't or simply shouldn't do.