[HN Gopher] Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation
___________________________________________________________________
Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 178 points
Date : 2021-02-04 18:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (diff.wikimedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (diff.wikimedia.org)
| stoicanalyst wrote:
| Sad to see him go. I use wikipedia all the time. I imagine not
| much will change?
| netrus wrote:
| *her
| lifty wrote:
| It's a she, Katherine Maher.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > the launch of our Universal Code of Conduct ... are all
| milestone moments of solidity and strength.
|
| ffs. Our grandparents fought and won world wars, but today a
| Universal Code of Conduct is a "milestone moment of solidity and
| strength."
|
| This is how Rome fell, with navel-gazing.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I can easily imagine ways that wikipedia could be better, but the
| reality is that compared to any other online resource, it is the
| best. I wish it were less political sometimes, but when I look at
| any other online resource, they are way more polarized.
| Periodically I read something (usually in HN) about wikipedia
| controversy, and I admit to some trepidation about their ability
| to stay objective as they have become so widely consulted (i.e.
| powerful), but if compared to any other real-world existing
| resource, given the current state of the internet, actually they
| are often by far the best.
| nickpp wrote:
| Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it
| got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested
| in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information.
|
| Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am
| familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I
| know nothing about. I tried contributing and fixing but nothing
| got through.
|
| Even worse, the level of writing makes it almost impossible to
| comprehend. Articles are badly organized, unclear and
| explanations are missing or hard to understand. Again, any
| attempt to fix the _form_ was rejected. Editors are much more
| interested in citations and levels of notability.
|
| I gave up. I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by
| actual experts, I see a tremendous value in something like that,
| but alas the market was killed by the free Wikipedia.
| iNic wrote:
| Of course Wikipedia has some unique problems due to its
| fundamental structure, but on the whole it is roughly as
| accurate as other Encyclopedias [1]. But not every study agrees
| [2]. See also [3]. It seems to be also be field dependent, and
| I have to say that personally, as a mathematician, I have never
| seen anything wrong in any article about mathematics.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a
|
| [2]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249362832_Compariso...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
| bzbarsky wrote:
| I don't know that I've ever seen anything strictly _wrong_ in
| an article about mathematics, but I've certainly seen
| articles giving equations without defining what any of the
| variables are and using using very field-specific notation
| without defining or referencing it, making them impossible to
| read unless you know enough about the topic to reverse-
| engineer what they're talking about.
|
| And I'm not talking something like using a Dirac delta
| without referencing it; I'm talking about pretty esoteric
| notation that is really only relevant to the topic of the
| article.
|
| And of course plenty of the math articles are just not very
| coherently written (and yes, plenty are quite good).
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Will definitely second math articles (some, not all) having
| a "X is the result of X'ing" circular definition
| antipattern coursing through them.
|
| But I suppose that's an epistemological question, as to
| whether an article is a definition or an educational
| method.
| danaliv wrote:
| I'll go ahead and admit that I'm a dummy: I find anything
| related to math on Wikipedia to be an incomprehensible
| nightmare. There's a consistent failure, in my view, to
| consider the audience. It's like people are writing to
| impress a technical in-group rather than to inform the
| general public.
|
| Maybe I should try the Simple English pages instead. :-/
| bzbarsky wrote:
| I think you're spot on, for what it's worth. The context
| for my comment above is that I have a math PhD, and even
| then a lot of the articles are an unnecessarily tough
| read. For the general public they are pretty
| impenetrable...
| ptero wrote:
| Can you point to a few examples just to make sure we are
| talking about the same thing? I use wikipedia for math,
| physics and engineering topics frequently and generally do
| not have too much trouble understanding it, possibly with a
| few cross-referenced articles.
|
| I _have_ seen occasional weird writing, but this is usually
| either some esoteric subject or just an initial writeup on
| a narrow topic -- that is, an inexperienced author trying
| to fill a void, not someone staking out territory or
| looking for recognition. Just my experience.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| If I had examples off the top of my head, I would have
| cited them. I'll see if I can find time to do some
| digging through my browser history, but this is a multi-
| hour endeavor that you're asking for here, so I might not
| be able to get to it.
|
| And to be clear, I am not talking about people staking
| out territory or looking for recognition. I am talking
| about articles being so badly written they are
| functionally indistinguishable from being "wrong". Yes,
| you can decipher them with enough outside knowledge and
| some other references, but it's pretty tough. And this is
| not a majority of mathematics articles by any means. But
| the problem is that if you don't know enough you can't
| tell whether you're looking at such an article or not,
| unfortunately...
|
| P.S. I just took a quick look at just my recent-ish
| Wikipedia edits, and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php
| ?title=Limit_superior_an... was correcting a small but
| obviously wrong claim. Which is, to be clear, not the
| sort of issue I was referring to in my comment about
| badly-written articles.
| mountainb wrote:
| If you try using Wikipedia as a research aid in almost any
| field and try to follow footnotes a lot of the time you will
| wind up with broken links or a garbage source. It's not that
| there are not some Wikipedia pages that are not good. It is the
| case that it's very challenging to tell when a page is good or
| bad without following the footnotes. Sometimes you will find a
| good source, but at least in my experience most of the time you
| will try to follow citations and see it ends in either 404 or a
| trash pit.
|
| There are also lots of situations like if you are looking for
| things such as statistics related to a war, if you use
| Wikipedia to start your research you will wind up clicking
| through to all kinds of trash sources that waste your time when
| there are compendiums of statistics through either government
| reports or print references that you could have just used with
| library access in a fraction of the time that you spent sifting
| through a sea of web feces.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors
|
| You're assuming this is not enabled and supported by the
| WikiMedia foundation. I believe you are wrong. That is, what
| you see when you try to edit values are those "entrenched
| editors", but those are just the front lines.
|
| Certainly, some policy and customs are set by virtue of being
| an active editor; but more fundamental and site-scale issues
| are just as certainly discussed, decided and acted upon -
| infrastructurally - by the foundation.
| [deleted]
| tokai wrote:
| You can still pay for Encyclopaedia Britannica if you really
| want to.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I don't really bother to contribute to any prominent pages on
| main Wikis, because in my experience it almost always required
| fighting with people with huge egos following arcane rules and
| procedures which they certainly took a lot of time to design
| and develop but which don't seem like productive use of my
| time, especially when people who designed them are going to
| fight me on every step.
|
| There are some younger and less entrenched projects where one
| could make a difference without wasting time on BS (like
| Wikidata or Wiktionary) and there are less popular areas which
| aren't controlled by wikifeudals, but changing something
| otherwise requires too much effort for what it's worth, IMHO.
|
| And yes, if there's any conflict of interest (usually political
| or ideological), the only thing you can trust is the links, and
| even those should be presumed to be selected in a biased
| manner. Of course, this also applies to any random article in
| 99.999% of the press, so it goes... It's still a valuable
| resource for topics not consumed with public controversy.
| kayxspre wrote:
| > _in my experience it almost always required fighting with
| people with huge egos following arcane rules and procedures
| which they certainly took a lot of time to design and develop
| but which don 't seem like productive use of my time_
|
| This echoed my experience before I left a Wikipedia project
| (one of its language variant). I have been vocal with the
| direction one of its most active admin is trying to head the
| project to, as well as the not-so-positive treatment of
| inexperienced users. Many of the legitimate complaints
| against this admin was pretty much ignored or stalled.
| Ultimately, I decided that it's not worth my efforts to try
| to push for a more friendly environment, and I have decided
| to leave. I still help with some offline activities and
| movement-related function, but chances for me to return to
| being the contributors again are slim.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| > I don't really bother to contribute to any prominent pages
|
| That's one of the secrets for being left alone. Improving
| jealously-guarded pages - or bio pages that are overseen by
| PR folk - is like walking on thin ice.
|
| Stay away from politics and celebs. There are lots
| (millions!) of pages in hundreds of topics that have been
| rated as high-importance and need lots of TLC ... and don't
| attract turf-guarders. There are lots of pages where people
| have added 'citation needed' (so easy) ... when they could
| have just added a good citation instead. Correct a spelling.
| Clarify a passage. Add a high-quality external link ... might
| save someone some research and let them spend that time
| improving the article. Might be better than the article will
| ever be. None of those are likely to attract attention, all
| improve the article.
|
| Start small, build over time. You can draft something in a
| sandbox, then ask for an opinion before you invest hours.
| Yep, there are (many, many) rules - and they change over
| time. There are pages where you can ask for help. If someone
| reverts something, calmly discuss it. A copy of your work is
| never gone, it's in the history. Come back in a year and try
| it again!
| smsm42 wrote:
| The thing is, I'd like to help, but I'm not dedicated that
| much as to mount a multi-year siege campaign to fix some
| error in Wikipedia, even if I know it's wrong. Life is
| short, TODO list is ever-growing and I have only so much
| attention to be spent on fighting petty bureaucrats. I just
| know Wikipedia is not to be trusted in any controversial
| subject, because the advertised idea of finding truth by
| consensus is false in practice - it's pushing the point of
| whoever knows the arcane bureaucracy best and is most
| obsessed and out-games everybody. The factual truth plays
| very small role in these games.
| 1_player wrote:
| > Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning.
|
| > I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual
| experts.
|
| While you're entitled to your opinion, this is a case of "the
| grass is always greener on the other side".
|
| I'm not a fan of the Wikipedia internal politics, but as a
| user, Wikipedia is one of the best showcases of the Internet
| and in my opinion the greatest collaboration project in human
| history.
|
| For the first time we have knowledge available to all, for
| (almost) free. You want to pay because you're privileged, but
| that's not the way of improving humanity as a whole, rich and
| poor, privileged and stuck in a mud hut with a crappy phone.
|
| Of course we can do better, but I find it incredibly dismissive
| not to recognise the incredible achievement Wikipedia is.
|
| Blame the fact that as a species we're quite tribalistic and
| selfish, not the collective effort we're making while trying
| the hardest limit our biases and shortcomings as much as
| (humanly) possible.
| nickpp wrote:
| Honestly I feel where you're coming from, I used to think
| exactly like you. But I slowly came to my current sad
| realization.
|
| Right now I do believe that free wrong info is actually more
| damaging than paid correct info. But I am open to and wish
| for a third option or a solution which is more inclusive and
| less "for the privileged".
| the_duke wrote:
| Could you cite specific examples of wrong or actually
| harmful information?
|
| That would give more credence to your arguments.
|
| Maybe also link to your rejected contributions to show that
| you are not just disgruntled because your edits were
| reverted.
|
| I do agree that there are lots of inaccuracies in articles,
| but having Wikipedia with at least somewhat helpful
| information is infinitely better than having nothing at
| all.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Political content is a landmine, articles are often
| locked because vandals are often indistinguishable from
| those with better information but still controversial.
| Macha wrote:
| One example: Britishfinance/"Ireland as a tax haven"[1]
|
| Summary: A user, Britishfinance (believed to be Paddy
| Cosgrave, disgruntled founder of the web summit, a major
| EU tech event that moved from Ireland to Lisbon as the
| Irish government wouldn't give him what he wanted) spent
| about a year primarily editing articles related to
| Ireland to make a link of claims about the country being
| a tax haven the most prominent feature of them. Case in
| point, look at the overview for the article on Ireland
| after the user edited it [2]. It's since been rolled back
| somewhat by other wikipedia editors who felt that was a
| disproportionate amount of space given to that
| discussion.
|
| But Wikipedia isn't so well equipped to handle this kind
| of dispute.
|
| 1. Ireland certainly has benefited from its tax policies,
| including both competitive but undisputed to be the right
| of the country, like having a lower corporate headline
| tax rate than its neighbours, and
|
| 2. Ireland has been involved in tax loopholes, such as
| the now defunct double irish/dutch sandwich stuff
|
| 3. You can find sourced articles for all of this.
|
| So at what point does putting this information as the
| most prominent information in a wide variety of Ireland
| related articles cross from being just adding facts to
| encyclopedia articles to being politically motivated?
| When one side is an active wikipedia admin and the other
| side is a bunch of casual editors or users who don't
| edit, who gets the benefit of the doubt?
|
| 1: https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_t
| heres_...
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of
| _Irela...
| andrepd wrote:
| All very well and true, but isn't this also a problem in
| closed encylopedias?? Surely even a paid editor has her
| biases, and at the very least would have to make a
| judgement call on whether or not to include that
| information in the opening paragraph and so on. Wikipedia
| actually has the advantage here as the discussion is
| completely open and you can see the all arguments and the
| process that led to a decision.
| buran77 wrote:
| > at least somewhat helpful information is infinitely
| better than having nothing at all
|
| Maybe, at least as long as we still have a good ratio
| between reliable and unreliable info (whatever that ratio
| may be). But as long as someone can piggy-back on this
| reputation, and most people simply take all that info for
| granted, the effect of a disingenuous Wiki article is far
| higher than your average FB "fake news". It's that
| implicit trust that makes a Trojan horse more dangerous.
|
| There is no action being taken to make this process of
| correcting information more open and transparent, and out
| of the hands of a few people. Especially since it's been
| shown in the past that this kind of power was sold for
| money in PR campaigns, or used for revenge edits.
| bitstan wrote:
| > the effect of a disingenuous Wiki article is far higher
| than your average FB "fake news"
|
| Wikipedia doesn't profit by weaponizing misinformation.
| That's FB's business model.
|
| All those people who stormed the capital. You think they
| were FB users or Wiki users? The thought of them
| diligently reading encyclopedia entries and becoming
| radicalized has me cackling.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Well, they could have been reading conservapedia
| will4274 wrote:
| Sure. The article for Bill Ayers describes him as an
| "elementary education theorist." That's not what he's
| notable for.
| jjk166 wrote:
| And the article for John Wilkes Booth describes him as an
| "American stage actor" even though that's not what he's
| known for. If you keep reading the article, however, it's
| almost completely about what he is known for (a statement
| true for both cases). That's just standard wikipedia
| formatting.
| mountainb wrote:
| I think if you just read the articles without following the
| footnotes you can easily get the impression that Wikipedia
| is a good encyclopedia. The writing quality is often pretty
| good, which unfortunately makes it more deceptive as to
| information quality.
| pixl97 wrote:
| There is plenty of paid correct info out there. You just
| need to look in the field of data that you're interested
| in.
|
| I'm pretty sure the days of a general data encyclopedia are
| past us. The amount of data to gather to make it useful is
| going to insanely expensive, and will in general be
| available from many sources for free, thereby decreasing
| its value.
| r00fus wrote:
| What examples do you have of this? I also feel Wikipedia is
| a success, but I'd like any data points of failures as
| well.
| Kiro wrote:
| > Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I
| am familiar with.
|
| Do you have any examples?
| dessant wrote:
| I was quite happy to see one of my projects mentioned on
| Wikipedia for the first time, in the reCAPTCHA article. I've
| discovered it from the list of referring sites shown by GitHub
| Insights, and then the mention disappeared.
|
| Looking at the edit history of the article, someone added it a
| year ago, and then 204.132.216.84 has decided recently that a
| genuinely informative section must be removed from the article,
| because they thought it's "self-promotion for browser
| extension".
|
| Dear 204.132.216.84, you're wrong.
| andrepd wrote:
| Then add it back? Or at least engage in discussion in the
| Talk page and find a compromise, like rewording.
|
| Btw, I'm a user of your extension ;)
| dessant wrote:
| Hi, I'm glad you found it useful! I don't feel that
| strongly about the issue to make a case for it, it was just
| a bit sad to see an article become less informative because
| of an editor's paranoia, and me being denied immortality
| :P.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Just read articles in several languages on historic events.
| You'll see how they differ and draw your own conclusions.
| andrepd wrote:
| Every time the post title contains "wikipedia" out come the
| same complaints. I say what I always say: can you please point
| out a _specific_ incident where you saw wrong information,
| tried to correct it, and were overturned?
| wpietri wrote:
| It's an important question. Sometimes I see rejection of
| actual good material,so it happens. Often it's well-meaning
| noobs running afoul of either the essential complexity
| (encyclopedias are hard) or the incidental complexity
| (Wikipedia's a bit of a beast). And sometimes it's people who
| are sure that THEY ARE RIGHT and HOW DARE THOSE PEOPLE. So we
| always need to look at specific incidents.
| oldev wrote:
| If you are a deployment engineer/Windows desktop dev, check
| out the article on installers. [1] Most of those are
| obsolete, small and pretty much useless. The one we've been
| using for 15 years is not listed. Check out the article
| history. Every time someone tries to update it and add
| modern, actually useful tools, someone else comes from the
| woodwork and deletes it. Some of the deletionists don't
| know what a repackager is.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_soft
| ware#...
|
| Just an example, in my area of expertise. Some of the
| rejected edits were mine.
| jjk166 wrote:
| There was extensive discussion on the talk page about
| criteria for inclusion and one of those criteria is that
| only software that has a dedicated wikipedia page or with
| citations showing notability should be included on the
| list. It doesn't matter that you know something belongs
| on a list, you need to show that it belongs on the list.
| wpietri wrote:
| Which I'm sure is a reaction to self-promoters trying to
| edit the page in hopes of boosting their thing to
| prominence. People who don't edit Wikipedia have no idea
| how much of a problem spamming attempts are. This can
| easily lead to beleaguered editors who are inclined to
| stomp on anything that looks like it might possibly be
| spam. That's a terrible experience for well-meaning
| first-time contributors and I'd love to see it improve.
| But I get how they end up that way.
| cabalamat wrote:
| And the maths articles only make sense if you already
| understand them, which restricts their usefulness somewhat.
| swiley wrote:
| Wikipedia has always suffered from inaccuracies. IME it's
| gotten better, not worse, over the past few years. I don't read
| many of the politically interesting articles though, maybe
| that's what you're complaining about? Wikipedia has never been
| the right platform for that though.
| seanhunter wrote:
| > I would gladly pay for an encyclopedia written by actual
| experts, I see a tremendous value in something like that, but
| alas the market was killed by the free Wikipedia.
|
| There are definitely pros and cons. My wife is a professional
| musician and teacher so at home we have a copy of the "New
| Grove" encyclopedia of music, which is the industry standard
| "proper encyclopedia" for music. Each article is written by a
| specific expert in that subject, This leads to them being
| tremendously detailed and informative. The downside is the
| process of compliation is slow and so even if you have a
| subscription to the electronic version it will be behind
| (sometimes years behind) the very latest research.
| Veen wrote:
| That's true, but including the very latest research isn't
| really what encyclopedias are for--there are other places for
| that.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Yes, like Wikipedia.
| Loic wrote:
| As a chemical engineer, I must say that I was never
| disappointed with the content of the Wikipedia pages. Of
| course, as I have spent 3h/day for the past 15 years improving
| fluid phase equilibria calculations for the chemical industry,
| I see where the articles have limits for this stuff, but what
| is available is sound.
|
| I would be interested in knowing your field of expertise where
| you find errors.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning.
| Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more
| interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages'
| information.
|
| Then there are also the people with ideological axes to grind,
| and the community's seeming belief that it's fine to merely
| reform a problematic user to just the barest level of
| acceptability.
|
| Unless you find some forgotten corner, being a Wikipedia editor
| requires an inhuman level of patience or obsessiveness, which
| probably ends up turning off a huge number of potential
| contributors.
| [deleted]
| nickff wrote:
| Wikipedia also has the Stack Overflow problem of
| 'deletionists' (who mark everything as already described
| somewhere else, or not notable).
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| I've encountered this on both of those sites.
|
| A Wikipedia deletionist resulted in a movie going without
| an article for months, despite my efforts to at least give
| it a stub page. The film was by no means an obscure
| arthouse production or anything like that, the _not
| noteworthy_ objection was pure nonsense. Someone other than
| me eventually won that battle.
|
| A StackOverflow deletionist deleted my question,
| fortunately after I got a decent answer, on the grounds
| that it was a duplicate of an existing question. The
| explanations in the answers were indeed similar, but the
| symptoms were quite different, especially from the point of
| view of someone who doesn't already know the answer. (It
| turned out I had made a false assumption about the way
| parentheses are treated in regex. Unlike in many contexts
| in many languages, it doesn't only affect precedence.)
| vngzs wrote:
| For more on what's wrong with this, see gwern's "In Defense
| of Inclusionism" [0], an essay on this topic.
|
| [0]: https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism
| exporectomy wrote:
| I would expect that to happen and be appropriate since
| eventually most questions will have been asked and most
| articles written. If you put aside information on new
| things in the world, those two sites are approaching a
| "finished" state so there's surely not much of value that
| anyone can add anymore. Of course, they may still be
| overzealous in deleting.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > the launch of our Universal Code of Conduct ... are all
| milestone moments of solidity and strength.
|
| ffs.
| Zababa wrote:
| > We have a deep and stable financial position that will help us
| grow and protect us from any storm, and the trust in our projects
| has never been higher.
|
| They earned 9 millions more than last year, from 120 millions to
| 129 millions, and spent 21 millions more, from 91 millions to 112
| millions [1], with an increase of 10 millions in "awards and
| grants". The donations grew by 10 millions. If I read the
| financial statement correctly (feel free to correct me, I'm not
| an expert), they currently have 180 millions in assets, which
| means if donations stop they can't even last two years. I don't
| see how this is a "deep and stable financial position that will
| help us grow and protect us from any storm".
|
| Edit: as tux3 pointed out in their comment [2] there is a
| Wikipedia Endowment. I think I can now agree on the "deep and
| stable financial position".
|
| [1]:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikim...
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26028968
| not2b wrote:
| Most nonprofits can't last long "if donations stop". Why would
| they stop? I give every year and so do many others.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Indeed, and I'm not sure it would be a defensible position to
| just be stashing your donated funds into a gigantic rainy day
| war chest-- the money is there to spend on growing and
| fortifying the service in other ways, so it should be spent.
| tristor wrote:
| The proper way for non-profits to do this is to start an
| endowment fund, which provides consistent residual income
| that can help fund operations. Usually by identifying
| specific large donors who would wish to be named in the
| fund.
| hinkley wrote:
| I guess we're "disrupting" foundations too.
| tristor wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand your meaning?
|
| Endowments and foundations are different things with
| different objectives. Many foundations may have
| endowments of their own, and may use them to issue grants
| to non-profits. From a legal and financial perspective
| though, there's a difference between a non-profit having
| an endowment itself which provides restricted funds for
| specific operational activities vs how foundations
| typically create and structure endowments for external
| giving.
|
| Both concepts have been around for decades, so I don't
| think either is particularly disruptive.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| It looks as though they do indeed have such a fund:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/15/wikipe
| dia...
| hinkley wrote:
| I think you do have to ask yourself if the need for the
| charity can outlast its time in the sun.
|
| The Red Cross needs to stay frosty all the time. They get
| money every time there's a disaster, but the money to deal
| with the current disaster needs to have already been spent
| before the checks clear. If we haven't had a big disaster in
| a while, we all know there's one coming, because they always
| come, and when that shoe finally drops it might be huge. But
| donations are down because nothing is blowing up.
|
| We still need Wikipedia even if someone cures cancer. Because
| you don't cure cancer, you cure _a_ cancer, the moment you've
| cured two or three, an avalanche of money will arrive to fix
| the others. Money that might have gone to something else like
| the Red Cross, WWF, PP, Wikipedia, or really all of the
| above.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's funny, because the Red Cross is famously one of the
| least effective deals in charity.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think they are running a charity on hard mode. If I
| were feeding homeless people (any year except last year),
| I have a pretty good idea of what I have to accomplish
| and for how many people. I could run a pretty lean
| operation.
|
| Meanwhile RC "has to" stash supplies 12 hours from
| everywhere in the world and then let most of them rot.
| Their overheads are huge, even before you get into any
| discussion of mismanagement.
| tptacek wrote:
| You can Google to quickly get a bunch of different
| articles about how ineffective the Red Cross is; we don't
| need to recapitulate them all here, it's just a little
| funny that they were your example of an obvious recurring
| charity donation.
|
| If I have a real point here, it's that people all have
| different definitions of what important charities are.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > You can Google to quickly get a bunch of different
| articles about how ineffective the Red Cross is
|
| Do you have a particular one in mind? I found [0] but as
| far as I can see, GiveWell.org doesn't advise against
| donating to them in general.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/05/red-
| cross-hait...
| hinkley wrote:
| If you're making a simile it's good to pick something
| everyone has heard of.
|
| I'm honestly not sure I've ever donated money to RC.
| UNHCR, yes, RC I don't think so.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| My Japanese colleague told me with no humor, that I should
| never work for free, end of sentance. I was at the offices of
| $Giant_90s_NonProfit when a group from Japan was on tour of
| the two story office in San Francisco. They were full of
| energy and had questions, but someone told me the reason they
| sent a large and important group for the tour, is that they
| have no "non-profit" in Japan.
|
| I suspect that the non-profit goodwill in the USA is changing
| a lot in the last year.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Something like a global pandemic that removes their job?
| mhh__ wrote:
| I think a loss of 100% of one's income is probably a risk so
| deep into the tails that planning for it is by definition a
| little stupid.
|
| Edit: For a company - apart from Welfare you should have a plan
| as an individual
| reaperducer wrote:
| Every large company I've worked for has planned for a "zero
| revenue" scenario. It's hardly stupid.
| mhh__ wrote:
| In Wikimedia's case, 0 income basically means they've
| probably been legally dissolved, what more can they do?
|
| I was being a little facetious, but the point was more in
| response to the PC than as a standalone argument.
| [deleted]
| xyzzyz wrote:
| That's okay, if they go bankrupt, someone more competent could
| take over, and easily run Wikipedia on less than a tenth of
| their current budget. Look at their financials: Wikimedia
| Foundation is part jobs program, part grift.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Lots of people reading these comments believe that every cent
| not spent on frontend or backend engineers at Wikipedia is
| wasted in someway.
|
| I don't agree.
| kemayo wrote:
| Reading it, I think some people feel that any money not
| spent on the pure hosting costs is wasted, which seems even
| more extreme to me.
| Jonnax wrote:
| Everytime Wikipedia comes up on hacker news there's always
| comments about how they're wasteful and incompetent.
|
| What is this self righteous anger for? They're incompetent
| but somehow Wikipedia exists.
|
| Is it jealousy?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| It is anger at the collapse of every institution of our
| society, most of which have transformed away from their
| original purpose, and into sinecures for well-educated and
| well-connected professionals, who, under false pretenses,
| skim the surplus by lying about what they do, and shaming
| the productive masses into supporting them.
|
| I admit that I'm also full of wishful thinking. I said that
| once they go bankrupt, someone more competent will take
| over, but there's no guarantee of that -- instead, it is
| highly likely that some other skilled and well-connected
| grifter will assume control, will keep the "crying Jimbo
| Wales" ads to shame people into giving them money they
| spend on salaries and travel expenses of people doing
| things that do not need to be done, and often things that
| Wikipedia community doesn't even want done.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| I have to admit I was unaware until this thread that the
| call for urgent donations was despite this endowment and
| their expenses other than directly operating
| wikipedia.org.
|
| Thanks for that eye-opener.
| lancesells wrote:
| I don't know why you're calling it grift. According to the
| definition a non-profit is not conducted or maintained to
| make a profit. I'm guessing most of us agree that Wikipedia
| is an asset to society and I'm hoping the people that work
| there get paid well. Why would I not want more people working
| at Wikimedia compared to something more detrimental to
| society like Facebook?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Because the people paid the to do (or pretend to do)
| useless busy-work in Wikimedia Foundation could instead be
| doing something productive elsewhere. The point here is
| that the resources in the society at large are not
| infinite, and if they are wasted at Wikimedia, it's a real
| waste even if Wikipedia is otherwise a valuable thing worth
| of support.
|
| Imagine you have a city, which has a non-profit foundation
| dedicated to maintaining and improving the city parks. The
| foundation has 20 people on payroll, $2M in annual spending
| on wages and materials, and is generally though to do
| exemplary job. In fact, people like it so much that they
| keep donating money to it, while the new directors of the
| park foundation use that money to advertise everywhere that
| they are starved for cash, and if every park goer donates
| just $10, they can meet their fundraising budget. After a
| few years, the revenue of the park foundation is
| $120M/year, they are still doing pretty good job
| maintaining and improving the park for $2M/year, and the
| rest is spent on C-level executive salaries, analyst
| reports, conferences, travel expenses, shovel R&D, and all
| kinds of stuff that the parks foundation doesn't need to
| do, and which provides little benefit to the actual parks
| or park goers beyond the $2M they have always been
| spending, while enriching the employees and executives in
| the nominally non-profit organization. That's roughly where
| the Wikimedia Foundation is today. I see this as profoundly
| bad state of affairs. I also find it pretty ironic that the
| goal of the nominally non-profit organization apparently
| seems to be to maximize the donations and the spend.
|
| > compared to something more detrimental to society like
| Facebook?
|
| Why would you compare it to Facebook? The choice is not
| better Wikimedia and Facebook. There are plenty of other
| projects that could use money better than either Wikimedia
| or Facebook.
| macksd wrote:
| If an individual had no desire to ever retire and was able to
| pay all of their bills for the next 2 years with no further
| paychecks and no adjustments to their lifestyle, I'd call that
| a pretty deep level of financial stability. Especially since in
| this case their income sources are somewhat diversified across
| people, unlike a single paycheck from an employer.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Do you know of many businesses which could sustain their
| operation without any revenue for two straight years?
|
| If you do these are really inefficient businesses.
|
| If you do however decide to say they non profits should do
| that, then what's the point of having that money in non profits
| if you could just put that money in a savings account and
| supply the non profit every year?
| hinkley wrote:
| When I hear "Foundation" and "stable financial position" I
| think endowment.
|
| They seem to be making the same mistake as the Mozilla
| foundation. You're living on your nest egg instead of the
| interest. Spending 4 times as much as you should.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| Why should Wikimedia need a significant nest egg?
|
| What do you do with the money, when people have stopped
| valuing Wikimedia enough that they are no longer paying for
| it to exist?
| hinkley wrote:
| Donations are not a zero sum game but they aren't terribly
| elastic either. Try as you might, every dollar you get as a
| donation is taking some of that money from someone else.
|
| There will be times when Wikipedia is not sexy, but taken
| for granted. That's when you need the endowment.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| If Wikipedia becomes unfashionable to the extent it is
| highly dependent on its savings, it will no be longer
| valued for being Wikipedia (by definition).
|
| It might be valued as an institution with modest economic
| power, which doesn't seem to me to add anything to the
| world that isn't already there.
|
| 2 years of all current spending as a cushion seems like
| plenty to me (for Wikipedia, which has not faced any
| unexpected financial shocks, even in 2020). If you can't
| navigate shocks and downward trends with that cushion,
| then you probably ought not to exist.
| hinkley wrote:
| Only if you believe that market economies are always
| efficient.
|
| Plenty of things have a huge impact on your life and yet
| nobody wants to pay for them. They're important, but
| they're not important. If you have an endowment, you
| don't have to keep wrestling with keeping the two in
| sync.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| I think our perspectives are different because I'm
| thinking about what the board of Wikimedia might look
| like later: when it controls a bunch of money but is
| essentially dying as a service.
|
| I imagine a political mess, of people trying to extract
| personal benefit from the remaining endowment.
| tux3 wrote:
| The foundation set up a Wikipedia Endowment some five years
| ago, which has now reached 90MM of a 100MM goal.
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
| hinkley wrote:
| Is that enough to pay salaries and hosting costs? Sounds
| like the dividends will only cover 20% of their current
| expenses _if they stop making grants_. At it is it's less
| than 10% of their burn rate.
|
| That's a very excellent start but I suspect someone will
| want to grow that later on. In fact they're at 90% of their
| goal and less than 60% of their target date, so they could
| be looking for $150M as the stretch goal.
| Zababa wrote:
| Thanks, I wasn't aware of this project. I have edited my
| comment to include it.
| leetcrew wrote:
| why did expenses rise by $21mm though? is the organization
| fortunate that donations rise fast enough to cover an annual
| increase in necessary spending, or does the spending grow as
| much as necessary to consume the donations?
|
| WMF spent $52mm in FY 2014-2015. it spent $112mm in FY
| 2019-2020. is the core project really twice as expensive to run
| as it was five years ago?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| No, core project costs less than $5M/year to run. They spend
| more on processing donations (credit card fees etc) than they
| do on web hosting.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| No law of physics says they must continue pouring tens of
| millions into outreach programs if all revenue ceases. Hosting
| wikipedia is their one true cost and is relatively tiny
| compared to everything else they spend money on.
| doc_gunthrop wrote:
| Hosting wikipedia accounts for roughly 2% of their total
| expenses. I've been donating annually, but it would be nice
| to have the option for the entirety of my donations go only
| to running wikipedia and none of it going to wikimedia's
| discretionary spending.
| kemayo wrote:
| I do think it's hard to draw the line there, just because
| "running wikipedia" is kinda fuzzy and could mean different
| things to different people.
|
| There's pure hosting costs (servers and bandwidth), then
| there's staff to maintain those servers, staff to handle
| legal issues around a large community-contributed project,
| staff to do moderation and other community-relations work,
| staff to improve the mediawiki software that wikipedia runs
| on, staff to manage administrative stuff for those other
| staff, etc.
|
| There's room to debate which of these are necessary to "run
| wikipedia", and how much of each of them is needed, but
| it's a lot more complicated than just keeping the servers
| turned on. (And if you do think that the Foundation could
| be just-paying-for-hosting, you're implicitly hoping that
| some people are going to be donating their skilled-work for
| maintenance.)
| cameldrv wrote:
| Why don't you just donate to to something else then?
| Wikipedia obviously has more than enough money to keep the
| website running.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _if donations stop they can 't even last two years. I don't see
| how this is a "deep and stable financial position that will
| help us grow and protect us from any storm"._
|
| It depends on the company and the industry.
|
| One industry I worked in, six months was considered the minimum
| cushion.
|
| In a post-COVID world, though, I bet a lot of those industries
| will increase their padding.
| cwyers wrote:
| > For now, I want to share with you why I'm moving on, and what
| comes next.
|
| I read this twice just to make sure I didn't miss something, and
| I don't actually see a reason why.
| natex wrote:
| > I read this twice just to make sure I didn't miss something,
| and I don't actually see a reason why. I don't actually see a
| reason why.
|
| (Stated right in the sixth paragraph.) I'm going to take a
| break, and a research fellowship, as a place to think about
| what's next. It's hard to think about your future when you're
| fully in your present, and for the past seven years, I've been
| fully present for this movement. But as I look around, I see
| global challenges such as polarization, inequality, and climate
| change, as well as opportunities for generational renewal and
| optimism. As a Wikimedian, I lean toward optimism, and plan to
| head in that direction.
| nickff wrote:
| That's not really a reason why, it's the (vague) plan going
| forward.
| natex wrote:
| They want a break from their present situation so they can
| concentrate on planning for their future plans since it's
| hard to plan for the future when they are fully involved in
| the present. That's why. Not vague at all.
| nickff wrote:
| That may be what you think is going on, but isn't
| necessarily true. They might have been forced out, or
| quit because of stress or interpersonal conflict. There
| is no 'because' in the former CEO's statement.
| natex wrote:
| OP didn't ask what was true. Just what the stated reason
| was. The CEO did state reasons. Can't believe I have to
| say this on HN, "because" is implied.
| nickff wrote:
| You inferred this motive, from the former CEO's plan. The
| CEO did not explicitly state that they were quitting
| _because_ they wanted time and space to plan their
| future.
| natex wrote:
| > The CEO did not explicitly state that they were
| quitting because they wanted time and space to plan their
| future.
|
| Yes they did.
| nickff wrote:
| Which word in their statement indicates causation? I
| generally look for the word 'because'.
| harperlee wrote:
| Natural language tends to assume the receiver of the
| message shares sufficient context with the emmiter as to
| be able to infer their communicative intention even if it
| lacks some key word, or logical stepping stone.
| Person5478 wrote:
| seriously, this is a common problem online for some
| reason.
|
| Why do so many people try to act as if implication isn't
| a thing in online interactions?
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Can I ask, why are you using "they"? The article lists
| the author's name as Katherine Maher and you can see a
| picture of a woman when you click it.
|
| Edit: her wikipedia page also uses "she" and "her" etc
| throughout.
| casi wrote:
| I know when I talk about someone I don't know I use
| "they". It isn't to do with not knowing preferred
| pronouns, more like a type of formal speech about an
| unknown person. Maybe it is a regional/dialect thing? I
| would read an article about a person, and then still talk
| about them/they rather than he/her. I think it is tied to
| them being unfamiliar, as I wouldn't do that with a
| celebrity.
|
| If i replace she in op's line "She wants a break" it
| feels like they are writing about someone more familiar
| to them. "They" implies distance between the observer and
| observed.
| cwyers wrote:
| To me, that is "what comes next." If she didn't leave, she
| wouldn't need to think about her future, because her future
| would be "keep doing this."
| samizdis wrote:
| If my reading of the statement was correct, the reason given
| was this:
|
| _" As for me, I'm going to take a break, and a research
| fellowship, as a place to think about what's next. It's hard to
| think about your future when you're fully in your present, and
| for the past seven years, I've been fully present for this
| movement. But as I look around, I see global challenges such as
| polarization, inequality, and climate change, as well as
| opportunities for generational renewal and optimism. As a
| Wikimedian, I lean toward optimism, and plan to head in that
| direction."_
| exolymph wrote:
| Probably the actual reason is conflict with the board, or being
| fed up / burned out with running the operation.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Or perhaps "just" the wisdom to understand that organisations
| _need_ a change in leadership from time to time, and that
| such change is best made (as stated) at a time when the
| organisation is strong and the pressures low. Every leader
| eventually runs out of steam.
|
| My own opinion is that leaders ought to pre-announce their
| resignation date on the day they take the job in the first
| place, and that date should be not more than 5 years after
| they start. Five years on and you're running on empty. Time
| to move on.
| rapht wrote:
| You're right, it's not there. There's vague paragraph about
| some plans going forward, but nothing that says why she is
| actually leaving. -- a disappointment, considering this was my
| only motive for reading the article...
| desmap wrote:
| I rarely use Wikipedia, only for stuff not from my domains and
| where I need a brief tldr and then, I just skim the first few
| sentences. Once I want to get more into that topic, I check other
| sources. Would love to see competition to Wikipedia and less use
| of Wikipedia from other parties as their default definition
| provider.
|
| Wikipedia is anything but not an open platform.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| I didn't know my Wikipedia donations funded parties in Accra,
| Berlin and Chandigarh. I think that should be been in the
| fundraising statement.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| For profit entities use parties to bond teams and accomplish a
| goal. Non profit entities ought to have that freedom as well.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| They are welcome to, just declare it upfront.
| ben_w wrote:
| Do shareholding and dividend statements generally say such
| things upfront?
| medicineman wrote:
| Do share holders donate or do they expect returns?
| wittyreference wrote:
| I have a hard time imagining something more destructive to
| the ability to run an organization than putting forward all
| managerial initiatives for public consent, just in case
| some portion of the public disagrees with that choice. Talk
| about design by committee.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| > _Talk about design by committee._
|
| aka Wikipedia.
| medicineman wrote:
| >I have a hard time imagining something more destructive
| to the ability to run an organization
|
| How about eroding public trust? I can think of a lot
| more. Perhaps your imagination is subject to a hidden
| bias.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think you should assume that every charitable
| organization you are donating to might throw the occasional
| party for their administrative employees and will
| _certainly_ throw parties to attract donations.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Having worked for both a small and a mid-size charity
| (~50, ~500 employees), and known people at others, in my
| experience an annual "staff party" or similar is usually
| fairly low-key. People are very aware that the money
| comes from donations.
|
| Why have the party at all? Because spending EUR20 or
| whatever per employee/volunteer on an annual party has
| benefits beyond increasing everyone's salary by that
| amount: job satisfaction, employee/volunteer retention,
| knowledge sharing etc.
|
| Fundraising events are parties for the guests, but work
| for the charity staff. (Attend the party, introduce Rich
| Person X to Foreign Princess Y who promotes our work and
| went to the same university, mention the proposed project
| in Country Z if she doesn't, etc.)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| None of this is in contrast with what I'm saying, no? I
| would expect an international organization (like
| Wikimedia) to throw small "staff" parties all over the
| world, and maybe the CEO would come to some of those to
| give members at that location recognition.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| What does "declaring it upfront" look like, what are you
| asking for? Like, a copy of their budget before donating? I
| think you can probably get that?
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| I can't find any line-item in the Foundation Audit
| Reports named "parties" though. Is it under "other
| operating expenses"? How can I know how much of those $9M
| was spent on parties?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Do you want a line-item for how much they spend on office
| coffee-per-person too? Surely parties can't be the only
| thing you are concerned about.
|
| There does seem to be a line "Special event expense,
| net". I would guess parties go in there? It was reported
| as around $300K, or 0.2% of expenses, in the most recent
| fiscal year.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wi
| kim..."
|
| I cannot tell you how much they spend on office coffee
| though. I bet they're wasting it on unecological kuerigs
| and gourmet brands. It's probably a reason not to donate.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| It really depends how much the coffee costs. Like with
| Putin's palace, people wouldn't complain about the toilet
| brushes if they weren't gold-coated. Is the coffee bought
| from Mahers cousin? Sure, I'd like to know that.
|
| Parties do not have to be funded by the company. During
| my lifetime, I never went to a company-funded party. But
| I have been doing fine, funding my own parties. What do
| you need? A stereo and a disco ball. Anyway, how can you
| spend $9M on stereos and disco balls? It warrants
| scrutiny.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| And how can we know how much the coffee costs without a
| line-item?
|
| It is clear you don't trust how wikimedia is going to use
| your money, so you shouldn't donate to them. Nobody is
| forcing you, certainly.
|
| I don't think any line-items or "declaring it up front"
| is going to satisfy you though. Most people don't seem to
| agree with you. I don't think it's really a reporting or
| "declaring it up front" issue.
|
| Where is your "$9 million" figure coming from though?
| kemayo wrote:
| I think the $9m they're talking about is the 2019 expense
| for "other operating expenses" in that budget statement
| you linked.
|
| It's... probably not the category that's relevant, since
| they're complaining about parties that happened at
| conferences, which would presumably be accounted under
| "travel and conferences" which is just $3m for 2019.
|
| "Other operating expenses" _would_ probably include
| things like a staff party, based on the definition at the
| end of the document, but that's not where the complaint
| started. More to the point, it also includes "facility
| expenses, funding of the Wikidata project, staff related
| expenses, insurance and personal property tax expenses,
| and other general administrative expenses", so claiming
| it as a party slush fund feels rather weird when it's
| almost certainly the category that includes things like
| office rent.
|
| (I know nothing at all about the WMF's accounting
| practices, so I'm just reading the document and
| extrapolating.)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I'm not sure where the idea that there were fancy parties
| came from in the first place?
|
| Just the line "so many memories of so much dancing, from
| Accra to Berlin to Chandigarh"? When I read that, i was
| imagining her dancing just in clubs or at someone's house
| with other wikipedians, in the evening after a conference
| or meeting. I certainly do expect the CEO of wikimedia to
| do international travel to meetings and conferences of
| various sorts, it is a global organization! When I travel
| for conferences and meetings, there is usually
| entertainment in the evenings, whether formal (part of
| the program) or informal (people going out on their own
| with fellow meeting/conference attendees). That's a
| normal thing, I think?
|
| But maybe the complainer has more info to think there
| were expensive parties going on? (I also expect wikimedia
| to have banquets and parties and such, yes, around the
| world, so that wouldn't especially disturb me, but not
| sure where the idea even came from).
| smsm42 wrote:
| Wikimedia budgets are pretty public btw. Much more public
| than for many other NGOs, IMO. But I think the poster
| wants personal explanation of every single expense and a
| line-item veto power for their $30 or however much they
| donated. This of course is impossible for any
| organization. In fact, it's good that it's not possible -
| imagine how would it be to run the organization of this
| size subject to the whims of any random commenter on the
| internet.
| _jal wrote:
| Yeah, not going to happen, and for good reason.
|
| This is really no different than people who whine about
| what people receiving public assistance buy. It is an
| attempt to leverage money in to control, and it is gross.
|
| If you don't like what Wikimedia does, don't give them
| money. If you do, great, but donations don't buy line-item
| veto privileges.
| [deleted]
| umvi wrote:
| Yeah, I wish there were a way to support _just_ Wikipedia. I
| don 't really care about a lot of Wikimedia Foundation's other
| pet projects, but the way they phrase their banners and emails,
| you'd think we are always a razor's edge from Wikipedia servers
| shutting off...
| [deleted]
| jacobr1 wrote:
| And a few wikipedia-like sites: wiktionary and wikidata in
| particular.
| Aunche wrote:
| You can support _just_ Wikipedia by contributing ;)
|
| I think that Wikipedia just doesn't need that much money. If
| people just let them fail their fundraising goals, the core
| service will likely continue to get the same budget, but
| they'll cut their pet projects and parties.
| 93po wrote:
| I tried contributing and there are so many entrenched
| "don't touch my stuff" senior editors or moderators that
| it's often hard to do much of anything depending on where
| you are. I gave up after spending 40+ hours attempting to
| help clean up little known articles of a genre of music
| only to have 90% of what I did get reversed even though I
| am very confident it was within wikipedia guidelines. I was
| also harassed and accused of racism (by the subject of the
| article) after nominating his article for deletion because
| it didn't meet notability requirements.
| h_anna_h wrote:
| Sadly this is not what happened with Mozilla.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Isn't it? Mozilla has cut or spun-off basically
| everything other than Firefox.
| Macha wrote:
| The most prominent project on mozilla.org at time of
| writing is Mozilla VPN. Pocket also gets substantial
| screen space dedicated: https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Pocket and Mozilla VPN are prominent because they drive
| revenue which is useful to limit dependency on Google,
| thus greatly helping Firefox.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Fair, though I would argue that those services are much
| more closely tied to the core experience of Firefox (and
| in particular the promise of safer, more private internet
| access) than something like Sunbird ever was.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Pocket generates revenue for Mozilla.
| [deleted]
| eitland wrote:
| Same as with me and Mozilla then:
|
| I deeply dislike that these four things happens almost
| simultaneously :
|
| - firing the people who create their biggest contributions to
| the free and open web ab also their main source of income
|
| - supporting other efforts all over the place
|
| - begging for money from the "community"
|
| - while brushing me of in tje comments when I ask about
| progress on a 4 year old bug
| gggtt wrote:
| - and the boss paying herself massive salary while Mozilla
| is dying
|
| You can support Servo Project independently now :
|
| https://crowdfunding.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/projects/servo
|
| While it doesn't directly contribute to Firefox itself (for
| now) I think this is worth supporting
| eitland wrote:
| > You can support Servo Project independently now :
|
| Already do :-)
|
| As for her salary, I won't make a point out of that: she
| has already negotiated orders of magnitude more than that
| in income to Mozilla.
| andrekandre wrote:
| i have felt the same many times... i think the "bug in the
| program" is: donation doesnt give you a vote/ownership.
|
| i sort of feel like an interesting experiment might be an
| idea where donating above a certain amount (say 5 dollars)
| should give someone "a years ownership" and a vote in major
| policy decisions for that year, sort of like a consumer
| cooperative
|
| also, in that model, a company couldnt just buy more shares
| and get more votes (like a stock)... that might be a better
| model... maybe
| awhitby wrote:
| I have no connection to and don't know Wikimedia Foundation,
| and the context for these references is not totally clear.
| (Maybe it was related to these
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events.)
|
| Regardless, do you really begrudge the CEO visiting these
| places?
|
| I get where you're coming from: it's easy to roll your eyes and
| dismiss this kind of thing as political correctness, pointless
| "diversity and inclusion" work, pandering to liberal friends
| etc.
|
| But step back: Wikipedia aims to be the world's encyclopedia.
| I'm as much in awe as anyone of what a fairly narrow group of
| pretty obsessive contributors has been able to achieve (I just
| checked: I've made five tiny edits in 15 years, so not me). But
| Wikipedia will never succeed in its aim unless it has active
| contributors in places like Accra, Berlin and Chandigarh.
|
| I honestly don't remember what the donation banners have said
| in past years. Did they imply they were funding servers and
| bandwidth only? Maybe they did. But if you actually believe in
| the mission of Wikipedia, you have to consider that servers and
| bandwidth will not be enough and that community--maybe
| including the odd party--is a core part of it.
|
| In that respect, I'm not sure it's too helpful to lump it with
| Mozilla.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| Wikipedia doesn't need that kind of attention. Writing for
| Wikipedia is like journalism, it is not automatically better
| just because you have more eyeballs.
|
| What kind of people do you want to attract? Do you think the
| best writers are attracted by the best parties?
|
| Wikipedia has loads of contributors in Germany. That is
| because of a long history of German intellectualism, it is
| not because Wikimedia is throwing parties. If Wikimedia were
| as global as you suggest, where are the parties in Iran and
| Russia? Are these parties without alcohol? I hope so, because
| we wouldn't want to exclude the muslim world, right?
|
| I say this as a Wikipedia contributor since 2005 with 16k
| edits.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| > Are these parties without alcohol? I hope so, because we
| wouldn't want to exclude the muslim world, right?
|
| What? They aren't a fraternity, so I don't think drinking
| is mandatory.
|
| If you look at any large organization it has these kinds of
| frivolous events. Among other things, they let the
| leadership get a sense of the social environment and how it
| reacts to some of their ideas with less filtering. I
| personally don't attend most of these events, but it is
| really a silly direction to assume everything that is not
| technically necessary is a waste of money.
| fastball wrote:
| Most large orgs don't beg for my money after I've already
| given them my time for free though.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Wikimedia is free for its users and doesn't do ads, you
| need to pay the server bills and find development
| somehow.
| fastball wrote:
| Right, it is not like most large orgs. So the excuse
| "most large orgs throw parties" is not a good one, imo.
|
| Though tbh "other orgs do it" is never a good argument,
| but it is especially bad here.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| I've attended a bunch of Wikimedia/Wikimania conferences.
| These are held on a shoestring budget, and any drinking
| and dancing is on participants' own dime.
|
| WMF's per-employee T&E cost is apparently $7k/year.
| Working in sales at a company you've heard of, I've flown
| single flights and attended single dinners that cost more
| than that.
| fastball wrote:
| Yes, except WMF should not be doing _sales_.
|
| They're an online wikipedia. Their costs keep ballooning,
| and not to pay for things that I care about when I donate
| money to support their core mission.
| m3at wrote:
| It absolutely does, and Wikipedia gets my donation yearly
| for that. However there are legitimate questions about
| how much/few of that is dedicated to its core tasks: http
| s://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has.
| ..
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Should they have put logic into their banner ads and
| email to exempt any logged-in user who ever made an edit?
|
| If you have a new point to make, it's best to make it as
| a top level comment rather than trying to prop yourself
| up as opposing a point someone never made.
| ndiscussion wrote:
| Sadly just like Mozilla. Most of these charities are a lavish
| waste.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| "Lavish waste" my arse.
|
| You people will be dissatisfied so long as there is a
| nonprofit worker out there who isn't subsisting on gruel.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| This is exactly it. Somehow providing something for free
| means that every cent someone throws at you is scrutinized.
| ndiscussion wrote:
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-
| fdn-201...
|
| Unless I'm misreading something, 64% of their expenses in
| 2018 went to salaries.
| detaro wrote:
| And that tells you what exactly? Do you think they should
| spend less on salaries, or more? What should they spend
| on instead/what should they cut?
| ndiscussion wrote:
| I think I can agree to disagree with most people
| replying, I consider it highly misleading that they prod
| users to donate when using Firefox, and don't mention
| that Firefox is not funded by donations:
| https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/
|
| A few years ago, I certainly thought the funds went to
| development. And I can't say I'm a big fan of most of
| their initiatives (most of which have been abandoned
| Google-style).
| [deleted]
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Can you answer the question that was posed? Is the amount
| of spending on salaries too high, or too low? It's
| impossible to tell what point you are trying to make.
| detaro wrote:
| Hypothetically, Development funds would be ... salaries.
| Misleading presentation seems to me as a different issue
| than "but they spend X% on salaries", so where did you
| want to go with that.
| ndiscussion wrote:
| I'm sorry, on further consideration, you're right about
| the salaries.
|
| I think with some charities (like feeding children), my
| expectation would be that the salaries would be very low,
| and the costs of providing the "good" would be the bulk
| of the expense.
|
| But in the case of an advocacy/software platform, you're
| right that salaries would be expected to be a large part
| of the expense.
|
| As someone who's used Firefox for close to 20 years,
| their recent activities have left a sour taste in my
| mouth, and I suppose I'm a bit biased as a result. For
| the last five years as everyone switched to Chrome, I
| continued to use Firefox, and encouraged others to use
| the same.
|
| I believe that the Firefox project has been somewhat
| mismanaged, which has resulted in a large drop in users.
| For example, they could have started including an ad
| blocker by default - they would probably have killed
| Brave's business that way. If they care so much about
| privacy, it seemed like a no-brainer.
|
| I guess I was reaching for reasons that their budget was
| lavish... but that wasn't true. My real concern is with
| the fact that donations to the organization don't, and
| cannot, go to the browser.
|
| When I first saw a notice to donate in my browser years
| ago, I certainly thought my money was going to
| development. They want to encourage an "open web",
| privacy, etc, and I think those goals are all very
| important. The continued dominance of Firefox was
| probably the best way to actually achieve those goals.
|
| Talk is cheap, and I'm a bit sad that the browser share
| is now dwindling. We have many other organizations making
| blog posts/activism for the open web, but Firefox was the
| only one actually doing something about it, which is
| 1000x as valuable as far as I'm concerned.
|
| So when they encouraged me to donate, and I thought it
| went to development, and realized it was going towards
| this kind of "activism", I felt betrayed and tricked. I
| still stand by that sentiment. We have plenty of
| activists and journalists who fight for the open web via
| words - all for free.
|
| I feel that by existing, Firefox took up most of the
| market share for that, and by encouraging donations, they
| created a desert for other browsers to rise up. If
| another organization had forked Firefox and taken over
| with hundreds of millions in donations, I doubt the
| market share would have dropped so sharply. For example,
| they wouldn't have been "forced" to do privacy-bad things
| like selling ads on the new tab page. By claiming to be
| "the" privacy-focused browser, they soured any efforts to
| make a new one.
|
| And now it's probably too late:
| https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-
| scope....
|
| All this to say, I'm mostly sad about it. I miss Firefox,
| and I wish we had a strong fighter still in the arena.
| I'm doubtful Firefox can turn it's product and reputation
| around at this point given their corporate structure.
| Cheers.
| gruez wrote:
| Yeah, afaik firefox development is carried out by mozilla
| corporation (the for-profit subsidiary of mozilla), but your
| donations goes to mozilla foundation, which spends the money
| on "advocacy".
| craigsmansion wrote:
| > Sadly just like Mozilla.
|
| Hmm. Maher earned about 375K in 2018 for presiding over a
| foundation with 145M in assets. I don't feel that's
| exorbitant in any way.
|
| Looking through https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/founda
| tion/3/31/Wikim..., wikimedia has enough income from
| investments to keep the wikipedia site running indefinitely
| should donations collapse.
|
| I don't like these big budgets for foundations and groups for
| the public interest either, but in my opinion Wikimedia
| definitely shouldn't be compared to Mozilla here.
| tomca32 wrote:
| I've been involved with some non-profit organizations that do
| work in post conflict countries, mostly Africa.
|
| From my experience, these organizations throw parties because
| they have to. This is how non-profits fundraise. I don't think
| there is a non-profit organization on the planet that has a
| significant impact and is funded only by small individual
| donations. Money is raised by throwing a party, presenting all
| the great work you're doing, and getting rich people drunk so
| they either give you right there and then or secure you a
| meeting with someone who will on the spot.
|
| These events are funded by your small donations.
|
| This sounds like a horrible amount of overhead, and it is, but
| that's how the world works. Most NGOs will say they have very
| small overhead, something silly like 5%, but that's because
| they don't count fundraising as overhead, or they put
| fundraising events into "programming" which again doesn't count
| as overhead.
| hinkley wrote:
| Because shame is a shitty motivator, and for some people it
| shuts them down entirely.
|
| You get many more people to participate by giving them hope
| for a better future, whatever form you're pandering to.
|
| Asking people to help divert a disaster smells of lack of
| planning, too. Even if it's not your disaster you're cleaning
| up, people start to wonder if they need to go up the chain to
| prevent the next one instead of fixing the current one.
| jahlove wrote:
| They also spent $2.8m on travel and conferences in 2019 [0],
| which is more than they spent on internet hosting...
|
| [0]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/3/31/Wikim...
| (page 13)
| jonas21 wrote:
| This seems like the typical HN meme of looking at something
| and assuming the technical piece is all there is to it.
|
| Wikipedia's biggest challenge over the years hasn't been
| building or hosting its website. It's been convincing the
| world that an encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone on
| the Internet is a credible and neutral source of information.
|
| One of the ways you do that is by speaking at conferences,
| traveling to meet with people, etc.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| > It's been convincing the world that an encyclopedia that
| can be edited by anyone on the Internet is a credible and
| neutral source of information.
|
| This is not wikimedia's job at all. The public can decide
| if they trust the content.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Are you suggesting that in the face of existing
| encyclopedia companies, generations of people who had
| always used print encyclopedias, and the general public
| still figuring out what the internet is all about,
| Wikimedia should be restrained from answering criticisms
| or making a case for their value?
|
| That seems... odd.
| dlubarov wrote:
| Eh, Wikipedia is 20 years old, and has been a top 20 site
| for the past 15 years. At this point, they don't have
| much serious competition. Britannica stopped printing
| physical encyclopedias in 2012.
|
| The WMF can certainly make their case and answer
| criticisms, but there are cost-efficient ways of doing
| that. I don't see much value in funding parties,
| conferences, etc. for a product that has already
| dominated in most markets.
| ckoerner wrote:
| Most markets? That's a very privileged view. Research by
| the WMF in 2019 shows incredibly low rates of awareness
| in large parts of the world. I doubly you will read it,
| nor to I seek to argue this with you, but here are the
| findings: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers/Awa
| reness#Awaren...
| dlubarov wrote:
| > That's a very privileged view
|
| > I doubly you will read it
|
| Why do you feel the need to use ad hominems rather than
| simply making your point?
|
| > Research by the WMF in 2019 shows incredibly low rates
| of awareness in large parts of the world
|
| I wasn't claiming that Wikipedia is near peak global
| usage. My point was that there is no meaningful
| competition left, so usage should grow organically, as it
| did for EN-WP back when the WMF had a shoestring budget.
|
| Can you identify some markets where Wikipedia is losing
| ground to an inferior competitor with more aggressive
| marketing? I'm not sure there are any.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Yes, in the US at least, wikimedia has been very
| effective. That doesn't seem like "most markets" to me.
| In fact, not so much the rest of the world at all, and
| even in the US, now does not seem like the time to stop
| and let that decline.
| dlubarov wrote:
| Maybe my wording was a bit strong, but the US is a pretty
| small minority of Wikipedia's usage. If we look at
| article counts, about 12% of articles are in English
| (5.8M of 49.3M):
| https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesTotal.htm
| pwinnski wrote:
| Right, so more than twice as much as #2 (2.3M), at least
| in December 18.
|
| And more recently, the US has more than four times as
| many pageviews as #2 (4B to Japan's 1B)[0].
|
| So no, I don't think the work is done outside the US, and
| I think maintaining a leading position doesn't happen
| automatically, so I don't think the work is entirely done
| inside the US, either.
|
| 0. https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-
| projects/reading/page-view...
| smsm42 wrote:
| The conferences are not to suppress competition, it's to
| enable cooperation. Wikis are very distributed projects,
| and conferences are the only place where people could get
| together, discuss things, exchange experiences and ideas,
| and so on. And no, it's not the same via teleconference
| or mailing lists, those do exist but it's completely
| different mode of operation.
| jahlove wrote:
| The only reason I checked was because of Jimmy Wales' past
| controversy regarding use of the foundation's credit card
| [0]:
|
| > Wool wrote that Wales had asked the foundation to
| reimburse him for costly items like a $1,300 dinner for
| four at a Florida steakhouse. Wool alleged that at one
| point Wales was short on receipts for $30,000 in expenses
| before settling the matter with the foundation's lawyer and
| paying the organization $7,000.
|
| > Wool added that Wales' foundation credit card was taken
| away in 2006.
|
| [0] https://www.smh.com.au/technology/wikipedias-jimmy-
| wales-acc...
| jononor wrote:
| 14 years ago, and sounds like they handled it well.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Is that all that bad considering that Wikipedia is arguably
| one of the most important organisations on earth?
|
| If it was as corrupt as the NRA (which is why NY is moving to
| dissolve them), then I would agree with the sentiment but a
| few million sounds about right (About 9k per employee)
| triceratops wrote:
| How do they spend so little on internet hosting? They're one
| of the top 10 websites in the world. Are servers and
| bandwidth really that cheap? It's not like it's all text
| either - they serve images, audio, and video too.
|
| Anyone know if someone donates hosting resources to them? I
| simply cannot imagine serving that much traffic on < $3m.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| It's because a large portion of traffic to Wikipedia, that
| is a response to google serving a search request with
| results involving Wikipedia, is served to the client with a
| Knowledge Graph box. A large portion of viewers ingest the
| text of the Knowledge Graph box and don't click through to
| a page served by Wikipedia's servers.
| triceratops wrote:
| Wikipedia counts that as "their" traffic? I'd find that
| surprising.
| kemayo wrote:
| I think that what etc-hosts is saying is that it's
| traffic to Wikipedia-information that _isn 't_ reflected
| as traffic that Wikimedia has to pay for.
|
| I.e. that it has siphoned off a whole bunch of pageloads
| that otherwise would have cost money.
| smsm42 wrote:
| That doesn't include salaries of the people who run it - and
| WMF doesn't just rent servers from AWS, like it's in fashion
| now, they run everything by themselves from the bare metal
| up, and they run it over multiple data centers over the
| globe. This probably also doesn't include the cost of the
| hardware (this likely is part of "depreciation and
| amortization" since the cost of a server usually is amortized
| over several years).
|
| And if you've been on any of those conferences (it's not hard
| to get in, there are a lot of people invited) - they aren't
| exactly luxury affairs, they usually happen in a library or
| university and constitute of a crowd of geeks sitting in
| groups arguing or staring at computer screens, or sometimes
| presenting slides to other geeks. Those aren't exactly lavish
| affairs. Of course, some people get their hotel bill and
| travel paid for, but given those people help building such
| enormous site as Wikipedia, it's not that huge of an expense.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Which is 3% of their total expenses that year. Considering
| how much exposure and grants conferences can bring to a non-
| profit, it seems fair.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I can understand that, but the more surprising thing was
| that hosting is even less...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Hosting a static site doesn't sound that expensive, plus
| they're likely not paying for a premium & costly cloud
| provider like AWS/Azure.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Wikimedia isn't completely static...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Okay, sure - but many, many more reads than writes. That
| is cheaper to implement with caching, CDN, etc.
| Igelau wrote:
| I mean, if you really want to see the schedule for WikiIndaba
| 2017 that took place in Accra, here you go.
|
| http://2017.wikiindaba.net/index.php/Programme
|
| Try not to tear the armrests off your chair in rattles of
| indignation.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Why does this make you feel indignant? It seems like a very
| typical three-day conference schedule.
| [deleted]
| Igelau wrote:
| > Why does this make you feel indignant?
|
| It doesn't. That was the point.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| My chair doesn't have armrests, I do not squander my money
| like they do. I dedicate my time to editing Wikipedia, where
| is my reward?
|
| > There will be live performances, karaoke and some pleasant
| taste of good music. This night promises to be super fun
| filled. Are you ready to sing and dance in representation of
| your country at a thrilling battle with the Ghanaians?
|
| Yes, please invite me to your next party. I am a fun person.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Perhaps you should invest yourself by getting a chair with
| armrests.
| jackTheMan wrote:
| If you read the book of the book Work Rules! of Laszlo Bock (HR
| in google) you will learn that parties and group binding is
| appreciated more than salary by workers.
|
| So if you see from the money side of things, you can get/keep
| (more) highly talented people for less money.
| trhway wrote:
| >If you read the book of the book Work Rules! of Laszlo Bock
| (HR in google) you will learn that parties and group binding
| is appreciated more than salary by workers.
|
| it is written by an HR - it is their job to sell such a
| proposition and they get recognition for supposedly
| successfully substituting larger expenses like salaries by
| the lower expenses like the parties.
|
| > get/keep (more) highly talented people for less money.
|
| exactly - HR is trying to sell themselves as those magicians
| who can do it, who can beat the power of raw compensation by
| some tricks and gimmicks and thus supposedly save company
| money.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| >parties and group binding is appreciated more than salary by
| workers
|
| I'd be surprised if this is true for more than a tiny
| fraction of workers. Given the high salaries at Google, maybe
| it's more true there than at other places.
| leetcrew wrote:
| why do so many companies throw holiday parties then?
| according to the top few google results, a typical company
| party costs somewhere in the vicinity of $75/head. they
| could instead just add $75 (minus additional tax
| liabilities) to everyone's bonus and call it a day. is it
| just to be nice, or do executives believe that throwing a
| few parties is a cheaper way to boost retention?
| axguscbklp wrote:
| I don't know. I can think of some possible reasons, for
| example: the people who decide to have a company party do
| want to be nice, and/or maybe they want to party
| themselves, and/or maybe they see it as an opportunity to
| get publicity and network, and/or maybe they do it
| because other companies do it and so it's just "what is
| done", and/or maybe they do it because they think it'll
| raise morale and team bonding.
|
| But I don't know. Maybe someone who has personal insight
| into the matter can chime in.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you're only in it for the money, you are a mercenary in
| all but title.
|
| People quit because nothing at the company is enough to
| make them stay. "Enough" is a complex thing and often the
| oddest details can be the last straw.
|
| I like to go to going away parties for people and listen to
| their reasons for leaving. I doubled down on better
| onboarding experiences when I noticed how often people were
| uncomfortable from day one on the job and they never shook
| that feeling. At a good employer, the only one who expects
| anything from you in your first week is yourself, but those
| feelings of alienation can stick around.
|
| You don't have to go to the parties, but other people need
| to. And really, you should go too. You're missing out and
| driving yourself to burnout.
|
| In nonprofits, burnout is the boogeyman.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| Yes, I'm only in it for the money. So are almost all
| other workers. I've been to work parties. I'm a very
| social person but work parties never did much for me
| because you can't talk freely at them. I don't need work
| parties. If I want to go party with coworkers, I can
| organize that myself, I don't need the organization to do
| it for me. Or I can go party with people who are not
| coworkers. I do understand that maybe some people are too
| shy to party outside of work, but I think that they would
| probably benefit from becoming less shy. Work parties at
| almost all organizations are not events where people can
| really be themselves, and I don't think it's a good idea
| to have all your eggs in the one basket of work anyway.
| But as for people who like work parties, I'm certainly
| not saying they shouldn't go to them. More power to them.
| hinkley wrote:
| I seem to find a lot of people on HN who aren't just in
| it for the money.
|
| Mind you, they wouldn't do this for free, and the money
| certainly helps. A lot. But it's not enough.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| HN probably disproportionately attracts people who are
| well-off enough that they can afford to be choosy about
| work. There also might be some bias because working just
| for the money is the default and working for things other
| than the money is the exception, so people in the latter
| category are more likely to write about it than people in
| the former category. Also, some people who claim to be
| working for more than just the money might just be saying
| what they want to be true rather than what is true. It's
| not that they're consciously lying, cause there would be
| little reason to do that on HN, it's more that to believe
| that they are working for more than the money makes them
| feel good. Also, admitting that you're working just for
| the money is taboo in a large subset of corporate culture
| and, while there is not much reason to avoid violating
| the taboo on HN, the taboo may nonetheless spill over
| into outside-of-work thinking.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm currently working for the money[1]. I still couldn't
| tell you if it's crushing or liberating. Given the
| Pandemic, all options are on the table. I know I've
| invested about 800 hours in a passion project in the last
| year, which may turn into 2 or hopefully not 3 this year.
| I don't know if that would have happened if I loved my
| job, pandemic or no pandemic.
|
| I think the working for more than money thing goes back
| to the 'do what you love for a living' advice that many
| of us think is actually pretty bad. Or at least a good
| way to get exploited, and ultimately burnt out.
|
| 1. I have relatives whose lives fall apart if they aren't
| working. One ended up working through retirement despite
| not needing the money. I appear to be somewhat similar.
| So I say I'm working 'for the money' but it's also to
| keep the wheels from falling off.
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