It switched from a charity-like operation, with barebones staffing and incredible benefits for users per dollar spent, to a 'splash the cash and hope' strategy.

I personally don't want my money spent like that, so I don't donate.

Wikipedia has Cancer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

From the page:

In 2005, they were doing 1.6 billion pageviews monthly, with a bandwidth budget of $5000/mo and a staff of 1.

By 2015, their pageviews had gone up 11x. Their bandwidth costs had gone up 33x, and their staffing costs 1250x.

In my view, both bandwidth and staffing costs should be nearly linear with pageviews - and ideally a little sublinear.