[HN Gopher] Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia...
___________________________________________________________________
Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and
must be saved
Author : akolbe
Score : 200 points
Date : 2022-09-14 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| verisimilitudes wrote:
| That's strange. It's not in the nature of Wikipedia to repeatedly
| mislead others with falsehoods. Say, should I translate the
| article on SNES emulator Near (RIP) to the Scots language?
| koprulusector wrote:
| I don't understand the point of this tweet. Is this a bad thing?
| If this is a bad thing, why?
| jhbadger wrote:
| The point is lots of people (including myself until about a
| year ago) were under the impression that Wikipedia was on the
| verge of bankruptcy, and would likely either stop existing or
| be purchased by Microsoft or Google if it wasn't for our
| donations, so I gave every time they asked. Learning that they
| are swimming in money makes us seem like we've been fooled.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Do you just donate to places without looking into their
| finances and how they spend their money? It's not like
| wikipedia hides it. It's right on their website:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances
|
| I tend to only donate to places that seem to spend the money
| well and efficiently, for example.
| netsharc wrote:
| Not OP, but probably a lot of people had faith that if the
| foundation behind Wikipedia says they need money to keep
| the servers online, they just believed them without trying
| to find details behind a "Beware of the Leopard" sign. It'd
| be similar to if a trusted family member said they needed
| some help.
|
| But guess what, maybe their faith that this organization is
| misplaced.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I think most people would agree that it's a bad thing to
| mislead people, yes.
| 10g1k wrote:
| Wikipedia is a dumpster fire and should be tossed into a black
| hole.
| pella wrote:
| OpenStreetMap:
|
| https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/...
| dbingham wrote:
| This is an extremely misleading take.
|
| Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent
| financial report.
|
| They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating
| budget, and came out of the year with $240 million in assets.[1]
|
| So they had about half a year's surplus, and wound up with ~2
| years worth of savings. And yes, that's a simplification, a good
| chunk of those assets are necessary to continue operating and
| cannot be liquefied to cover operating expenses.
|
| In 19-20, they took in $120 million against a $111 million
| operating budget.[2]
|
| [1]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
|
| [2]https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu..
| .
|
| So, yes, Wikipedia is doing well - _as we should hope they would
| be_. But no, they are not rolling in it, and yes they do depend
| on our continued support to continue doing well.
|
| Edit: The article linked in the tweet asks valid questions and
| puts the stats in better context, but the twitter thread presents
| the numbers in a way that is very, frustratingly, misleading.
| akolbe wrote:
| Thanks for the edit.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| _$111 million operating budget_
|
| Where does it all go?
| jefftk wrote:
| They have an "$111 million operating budget", but that's
| because they've decided to spend money on lots of things other
| than "serve Wikipedia":
| https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe...
|
| Note that "Direct support to websites" includes things like
| designing and implementing more intuitive article editing UI,
| which while potentially worth it isn't the kind of "obviously
| we must do this" that keeping the site serving is.
|
| For example, in 2016 Wikipedia served a similar amount of page
| views as it does today [1] on an operating budget of about half
| [2]. Go farther back and my impression is it's much more
| dramatic, though I'm not finding good page view statistics for,
| say, 2010.
|
| [1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-
| pag...
|
| [2]
| https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...
| vs
| https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...
| dbingham wrote:
| Yeah, I think it's valid to ask whether Wikipedia's expenses
| are too high, or whether they are spending on the right
| things.
|
| But that tweet and thread are sensationalist and not doing it
| in a way that will lead to a reasonable dialog around that
| question. The linked article is better - but still
| sensationalist.
|
| Compare that budget and the scale of Wikimedia foundation to
| the organizations that are running websites of a similar
| scale. Wikimedia is still tiny. And they are doing a ton of
| good.
| akolbe wrote:
| The question to me is what donors are told. The Wikimedia
| Foundation built a $100 million endowment in five years,
| half the time it had budgeted:
|
| https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-
| fundrais...
|
| It's gone through a phase of planned, aggressive growth of
| its headcount. Its salary costs have increased tenfold over
| a decade:
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salari
| e...
|
| As you can see on that page, individual executives'
| salaries have risen by 20, 30 percent in the space of two
| years. And all the while people are told the Wikimedia
| Foundation needs money "to keep Wikipedia online", or "to
| protect Wikipedia's independence".
|
| No. If you want to grow your headcount, tell people why. If
| you want ten times as much money from the public ...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financia
| l...
|
| ... then say what you are going to do with it. Don't hide
| behind "keeping Wikipedia online".
| dbingham wrote:
| > No. If you want to grow your headcount, tell people
| why. If you want ten times as much money from the public
| ...
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Fina
| ncial...
|
| > ... then say what you are going to do with it. Don't
| hide behind "keeping Wikipedia online".
|
| Fair. I'm with you there. I would like clearer
| documentation of Wikimedia's organizational breakdown and
| where they are spending that budget.
| akolbe wrote:
| I would also like to see public audited statements for
| their endowment, now holding about $115M.
|
| Nobody has ever seen one in all the six years the
| Endowment has existed.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Seems a bit silly to me. Working on the UI that enables
| expanding and maintaining wikipedia feels like a reasonable
| top priority of the organization responsible for maintaining
| wikipedia. If they just "served" it, it would collapse.
| jefftk wrote:
| I agree it's a reasonable thing for them to work on, but
| not to fundraise for under the banner of "keep Wikipedia
| online".
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why not?
| jefftk wrote:
| Because it doesn't contribute to Wikipedia remaining
| online.
| themitigating wrote:
| So netflix should have only paid for DVDs and shipping?
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| If we agree that a poorly designed experience will become
| obsolete over time, then how does this expenditure not
| increase Wiki's chances of staying online?
| endisneigh wrote:
| If they get more donations it does, though.
| dbingham wrote:
| I don't know. Here's where I start to break with some of
| the ways people are thinking about this.
|
| When you pay a fee to a website - do you question how
| they spend that money to this level of detail? Do you
| ask, I dunno, lets go with Slack, to break down their fee
| by how much of it is necessary to keep Slack online "as
| is"?
|
| I don't think I've ever seen someone do that. There's a
| level of entitlement that comes with donations that
| people just don't attach to services they purchase.
|
| Wikipedia isn't a charity in the traditional sense - IE
| it's not taking those donations and redistributing them
| to those in poverty.
|
| It's an organization building and maintaining a platform
| that provides pretty a vital service to society. Almost
| everyone who donates to it will have gotten far more
| value from Wikipedia than the cost of their donation.
| Maybe, instead of thinking of it as "donation", people
| should be thinking of their contributions as a "sliding
| scale fee".
|
| On the other hand, I do believe Wikipedia should be open
| and should be accountable to its community. I just
| believe the community should be reasonable when
| exercising that accountability.
| antasvara wrote:
| I certainly think it's reasonable to donate money without
| a breakdown of where it's going to go. I also think that
| the things that Wikipedia is doing are perfectly
| reasonable.
|
| Where I have an issue (and I suspect many others do) is
| when Wikipedia phrases donation requests as "keeping the
| lights on" or something to that effect. I suspect there
| would be a lot less hate if the requests were phrased
| like "help Wikipedia grow" or something like that.
|
| It's more of a framing issue than an issue with where
| money is being spent. If Slack was claiming that they
| needed my fee to "keep the lights on," I think most
| people would have issues with that language/framing.
| jefftk wrote:
| When I pay money for a service I compare the benefit I'm
| getting to the cost of the service and decide whether
| it's worth it. This works pretty well!
|
| When I donate to a charity I compare the altruistic
| benefit my marginal contribution will produce to the
| amount I'm donating. This doesn't work very well, because
| it's really hard to estimate the benefit to society. But
| it still worth doing, because there are a lot of really
| valuable things that aren't going to be funded unless we
| put up our money.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| A nonprofit should always be held to a higher standard.
| Slack is a profit making concern valued by its utility,
| not its cost.
|
| Nonprofits are cost centric and it's both valid and
| essential to question the cost structure. $100M turnover
| seems like a lot of opex
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Redesigning the article editing UI is pretty darn important
| when the only thing that ensures the site stays up to date is
| attracting new editors to work on it. Nobody wants a dead
| Wikipedia with hopelessly obsolete and misleading
| information, even though it would be incredibly cheap to
| host. And the Wikipedia partner projects are just as
| important as Wikipedia itself to the broader ecosystem of
| open content and open knowledge. Wikipedia needs its sister
| projects, and money spent on them is in no way "wasted".
| Miraste wrote:
| Yes, Wiktionary, Commons, and the other sister projects are
| very useful, to various degrees integrated with Wikipedia
| in value-adding ways, and generally serve the foundation's
| mission and the few remaining vestiges of an open internet.
| If you want an example of an open source nonprofit wasting
| all their money on inflated salaries and pointless vanity
| projects no one uses, compare Mozilla.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I think the barriers for new editors are cultural rather
| than technical.
| tuatoru wrote:
| If they want to recruit new editors, the most urgent thing
| to do is fix the existing editor clique's reputation for
| being neophobic, vituperative, and ad hominem.
|
| That's where money should be going.
| esperent wrote:
| Are you feeling vituperative because your edits got
| rejected for using obscure words?
| z0r wrote:
| I appreciate this kind of thinking being shared by someone
| who I recall from previous HN postings spends a lot of time
| thinking about how to give to charity effectively. I've been
| turned off from donating to Wikipedia for the better part of
| the last decade.
| samsquire wrote:
| I think this kind of thinking is negative and an example of
| the free rider problem.
|
| Wikipedia provides a good service for the money it charges
| you. It doesn't charge you anything.
|
| The thing about free things is that they aren't really
| free, someone is paying for it and the people doing the
| work to keep Wikipedia online are the best skilled and
| placed and experienced to decide these kind of spending
| decisions, not people with no personal investment orwho do
| not donate and don't even edit or do any work but somehow
| have opinions how other people should do their job for
| free.
|
| If you use Wikipedia and getting value from it then you
| can't really complain, it's not positive.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Charitable giving is important to me personally, and I
| have a relatively limited budget to donate.
|
| I get a lot of utility from Wikipedia, but is my marginal
| dollar helping the mission or paying for dinner at a
| conference? Perhaps I'd be better off donating to an open
| source foundation for that part of the charity portfolio,
| which may actually have more impact on Wikipedia!
|
| I think this org doesn't communicate what it does well.
| akolbe wrote:
| That "Where Your Money Goes" overview was particularly
| derided by Wikipedians in the Village Pump poll. It's so
| fuzzy it could mean anything.
|
| In particular, "32% direct support to communities" was seen
| as complete pie in the sky. 32% of $163M revenue would be $52
| million.
|
| But once you deduct the $68M salary bill and $6M in donation
| processing expenses from the $112M expenses total, you only
| have $38M left!
|
| So how can 32% of revenue be "direct support to
| communities"??
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim.
| ..
| jefftk wrote:
| Sounds like most of the direct support to communities is
| the work of salaried Wikimedia employees? Which seems
| plausible to me!
| akolbe wrote:
| Is that what most people would understand by the term
| "direct support"?
|
| "Direct support to communities", to me, is when you give
| something "directly" to a community member, such as a
| travel grant, or a grant for equipment, or pay for
| reference material.
|
| The Wikimedia Foundation does things like that too, to be
| fair, but it accounts for about 3% of its expenditure,
| not 32%.
|
| It's in the $9.8M "Awards and grants" item here:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wi
| kim...
|
| However, $5.5M of that $9.8M is money the Foundation paid
| into its own Endowment (which, by the way, has never
| published audited accounts). So only a little over $4M
| are left for "direct support to the communities".
| jefftk wrote:
| They list as examples "grants, projects, trainings, tools
| to augment contributor capacity, and support for the
| legal defense of editors". I agree that it's a bit
| misleading to put 'grants' first if that's only a small
| part of what they do.
|
| I'm not sure what they intend to communicate with the
| word 'direct', either in "Direct support to communities"
| or "Direct support to websites".
| mcguire wrote:
| Google had a 2021 operating cash flow of $92B, and they've
| decided to spend money on lots of things that aren't "serving
| ads". And yet nobody complains.
| tus666 wrote:
| No-one donates to Google, nor does it ask for donations.
| foobarian wrote:
| > No-one donates to Google
|
| Wellll that's an interesting topic in and of itself. But
| OK I get what you mean.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Nor does Google solicit donations with misleading claims
| that it's on the cusp of going defunct.
| woodruffw wrote:
| From your link: 25% overhead doesn't really seem that bad? If
| those numbers are accurate, 75c of every dollar goes directly
| to hosting, development, and community support (things like
| grants and legal aid for editors). That's probably on par if
| not better than most nonprofits.
| jefftk wrote:
| The important thing isn't how much of a project is
| "overhead", it's what you get for your donation. A project
| distributing lollypops might have 5% overhead, but I would
| still prefer to donate to one that distributed vaccines
| with 30% overhead.
|
| In this case their program expenses are a mix of incredibly
| valuable things ("keep wikipedia online") and more
| borderline things ("redesigning the article editing UI").
| When their fundraising talks about the former as if it's
| what the marginal dollar will be spent on, that's pretty
| misleading.
|
| (I don't think this marketing is unusually misleading for a
| non-profit, and likely better than average; the bar for
| honesty in fundraising is depressingly low.)
| magicalist wrote:
| > _and more borderline things ( "redesigning the article
| editing UI")_
|
| You keep harping on this, but improving the article
| editing UI seems like an absolutely valuable thing for
| wikipedia to invest in. Retaining existing and attracting
| new contributors is essential to wikipedia's future, and
| the editing experience is an essential part of that.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Have you noticed any actual development on Wikipedia? Only
| thing that changes from the user perspective is that the
| donation request get more and more annoying every year.
| bawolff wrote:
| You shouldn't notice much of it.
|
| Sysadmins are paid to make sure wikipedia doesn't have
| random downtime. Time spent on bugfixing should only be
| noticed if someone screws up.
|
| If you want to see what people are doing - the git repo
| is public. https://github.com/wikimedia
| lapinot wrote:
| I've noticed that now the language selector is a two
| seemingly random places depending on ?? (the classical
| places is on the left, an exhaustive list ordered
| alphabetically; the new place that is sometimes there is
| on the top right, in a drop down list, ordered by some
| obscure relevance metric).
| themitigating wrote:
| How does the donation request get more annyoing each
| year?
| autoexec wrote:
| I have noticed some changes like in how they handle
| media, but most of their development must be backend work
| because for the most part you shouldn't notice a bunch of
| changes. The site should be kept as simple and
| unobtrusive as possible. The only feature I really want
| them to have that they don't is dark mode.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I noticed the new editor. I can't say I'm a huge fan of
| it, but I _did_ notice it.
|
| I don't know how long ago they added the hover infoboxes,
| but I also noticed those. But that's a relatively small
| feature, at least from my perspective.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| wikimedia labs built a world-class setup with many new
| services and tech, for one example
| bayindirh wrote:
| 25% overhead is what EU/EC project funds allow & provide.
| This is not a huge percentage. It's pretty normal.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating
| budget,
|
| The giant operating budget is what people take issue with.
|
| People see these banners on the website and assume that their
| donations are going to fund _the website_. However, the
| Wikimedia Foundation has been inexplicably expanding their
| budgets to match whatever amount of money comes in each year,
| leading them to this endless cycle of needing ever-increasing
| amounts of donations because they 're doing ever-increasing
| amounts of spending on various activities unrelated to serving
| the website.
| akolbe wrote:
| Bingo. You can't grow your revenue tenfold and still claim
| you are asking for money to ensure your bare survival.
|
| Remember: the WMF less than ten years ago themselves said
| they could survive quite well on "$10M+/year".
|
| https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March.
| ..
|
| Now they ask for $160M+.
|
| At some point the message has to change. It has to become
| something a little more like: Look, so far we've done this
| which you thought was cool. Now we want to do X, Y and Z.
| Will you support us?
| musicale wrote:
| Well $10M in 2012 would be more like $13M today, so their
| budget has only expanded 12x in constant dollars, and they
| probably have more articles and users than they had in
| 2012.
| morsch wrote:
| Total page views have been pretty stable since 2016.
| Presumably the number and size of articles has increased,
| but I don't know by now much. https://stats.wikimedia.org
| /#/en.wikipedia.org/reading/total...
| fluoridation wrote:
| Induced demand and Parkinson's law.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| I think there's a disconnect in what people believe is the
| mission of the Wikimedia Foundation. The WMF is an ideologically-
| driven movement. It is much more than simply a benevolent public
| service. The WMF has social-justice based goals in the world, and
| the public-facing Wikipedia projects are simply the friendly face
| of this movement. They're building an endowment to keep the
| movement alive, not merely to keep the lights on for their server
| racks.
|
| The most useful thing that a typical user can donate to WMF is
| their time. So edit a few articles and get involved with the
| process if you're so inclined. It's volunteer labor, over and
| above all else, that keeps the projects running. If you're a
| minor donor then you need to understand that your money goes to
| support the movement, not simply the service.
| rad88 wrote:
| What are you talking about?
| yupper32 wrote:
| Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish
| is strange. That seems low for an executive at one of the most
| important (or at least, most viewed) websites on the planet.
| ryan_lane wrote:
| It's lower than total comp of senior engineers in the bay area,
| just to give a point of reference.
| karencarits wrote:
| It's about twice the salary of the Nordic prime ministers
| (not combined though) as another point of reference
| triceratops wrote:
| Is the PM's salary before- or after-tax? Do they get free
| housing as the prime minister? How's the housing market in
| their cities? In SF, where Wikipedia is based, it's
| completely whack. What else does a PM get? Household staff,
| personal assistants, drivers etc?
| ryan_lane wrote:
| The executives don't live in Norway, they live in the bay
| area; hence my (relevant) particular point of reference.
| akolbe wrote:
| I guess you have to compare it to the salary of the donors who
| feel compelled by these heart-wrenching fundraising messages to
| donate. Here is a senior with $18 to his name promising to
| donate as soon as his social security check arrives:
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#S...
|
| The Wikimedia Foundation has also just been fundraising in
| India and South Africa, again asking people there to donate so
| Wikipedia stays online for them, ad-free, subscription-free and
| independent.
|
| None of these executives have anything do with the Wikipedia
| content. All of that is written by unpaid volunteers in their
| spare time. When Wikipedia first became a top-10 website, the
| Wikimedia Foundation had less than a dozen staff, and annual
| expenses of $2 million. I am not saying lets go back to that;
| I'm only saying this to make the point that the success of
| Wikipedia was not dependent on highly paid executives. It
| happened when there weren't any. The main value of the site
| comes from the volunteers.
| bawolff wrote:
| Being envious of something doesn't make it cheaper.
|
| Most in-demand, skilled labour is much more pricey than what
| the average person makes.
| fluoridation wrote:
| You're answering a point no one made. It has nothing to do
| with "being envious".
|
| Imagine you were asked to donate to "keep the animal
| shelter open", and went you went there you found that they
| were using gold water dishes for the little critters. You
| would be within your right to complain. You thought you
| were donating to keep it operating, but now you find that
| they're using funds on frivolous expenses. Is there
| something a dish made out of gold does that one made out of
| plastic doesn't, to justify the expense? Is there something
| a $350k executive does that a minimum wage one (or even
| none at all) doesn't?
|
| Any organization that asks for donations would be subject
| to criticism if it doesn't optimize its operations as much
| as possible.
| bawolff wrote:
| > You're answering a point no one made. It has nothing to
| do with "being envious".
|
| Then what is the relavence of saying "I guess you have to
| compare it to the salary of the donors who feel compelled
| ..."? The donors dont do work similar. The only reason i
| could possibly imagine bringing this up would be
| something to do with envy between the average person's
| salary vs the salary of a high skill position. If not
| that, what was this sentence trying to say?
|
| > Is there something a $350k executive does that a
| minimum wage one
|
| 350k executives exist. Minimum wage one's don't.
|
| Imagine you were donating to an animal shelter, but you
| discover that they spend more on dogfood than you do on
| feeding your family. You imagine the reason is that they
| are feeding the dogs caviar, but the real reason is it
| costs more to feed 150 dogs than it does to feed 4
| people.
| fluoridation wrote:
| The relevance is that some of those donors are donating
| the little money they have because they think there's a
| chance Wikipedia might cease to exist otherwise, not
| knowing that the WMF is actually using that money on gold
| water dishes rather than saving it for a rainy day.
|
| Simply put, if Wikipedia asks for donations to continue
| operating, 100% of those donations should go towards
| server costs. That can include the hardware costs, the
| power, the bandwidth, and the people who maintain those
| servers. Using the money that was raised to keep it
| running for any other purpose is at least deceptive.
|
| >Imagine you were donating to an animal shelter, but you
| discover that they spend more on dogfood than you do on
| feeding your family. You imagine the reason is that they
| are feeding the dogs caviar, but the real reason is it
| costs more to feed 150 dogs than it does to feed 4
| people.
|
| Now imagine that the shelter spends only 10% of its
| donations on dog food and other dog-related costs, and
| the rest goes to salaries for people who aren't caring
| for the dogs and to awareness campaigns. (I'm not
| implying this is the breakdown in Wikipedia's case; it's
| just an example.) Even if you think these are worthwhile
| uses for those funds, don't you think donors should know
| that their donations will be spent this way before they
| donate?
| akolbe wrote:
| I honestly question the value added by these execs. The
| other day, you and I discussed some of the expensive
| C-Suite disasters Wikimedia has bought. They actually set
| Wikimedia back by years. Dozens of valuable, experienced
| staff left.
|
| And Wikipedia became a top-10 website in 2007, when there
| was no C-Suite. There seems to be little awareness these
| days that the main value of the site to the public was and
| is built and maintained by unpaid volunteers.
| bawolff wrote:
| Whether or not a particular set of executives (who have
| all left at this point) are shit at their jobs is a
| totally different question to what is a reasonable salary
| for an executive.
|
| As far as early days of wikipedia. I agree the community
| is what provides value. But at the same time i think
| there is a lot of rose coloured glasses for that era. I
| remember there being a lot of downtime and slowness on
| the site in that era.
| akolbe wrote:
| Sure. And I complained about how ArbCom volunteers had to
| deal with child protection issues etc. A lot has become
| better. But there seems to be an automatic assumption
| that any executive has to be someone in SF, with the
| salary costs that go along with it. If they work remotely
| what does it matter? Wikimedia wants to become more
| global. Why then not a European, Asian, African,
| Australian, South American ...? None of them will have
| salary expectations like someone in SF.
| parkingrift wrote:
| It's pretty lavish for a nonprofit.
| JohnFen wrote:
| $350k salaries _are_ lavish, though. It seems strange to me
| that people would argue otherwise.
| mcguire wrote:
| Sundar Pichai gets ~$250M. Parag Agrawal gets something like
| $30M.
| zihotki wrote:
| Apples and oranges, you should instead compare it with
| other non-profits. According to top links in search for
| 'non profit ceo salary' give me average salary numbers
| about $150k
| kemayo wrote:
| I'd say it's still a tricky comparison because the WMF is
| (reductively) a tech company, and tech sector salaries
| remain pretty high. For a lot of roles they need to fill,
| they're competing with other tech companies for those
| employees, not just other nonprofits. A salary that's
| fantastic by average-nonprofit standards might be vastly
| underpaying someone who's deciding between a job at the
| WMF or Google.
| akolbe wrote:
| Why not hire in Europe, or Asia? Almost all of them work
| remotely.
| LegitShady wrote:
| WMF is not a tech company, and their value is not in
| their tech. Their value is in their user created and
| populated content .
| themitigating wrote:
| So youtube isn't a tech company?
| themitigating wrote:
| Compared to other non profit tech companies
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| People working for them earn 100k+, Wikipedia has
| volunteers writhing the content for free.
| yupper32 wrote:
| If you want to compare it based on the people working for
| each company:
|
| Parag has around 3900 employees. Wikipedia has around
| 550. Around 7x multiplier.
|
| $30m / 7 = ~$4.3mil
|
| Sundar has around 135k employees. 245x multiplier.
|
| $250m / 245 = ~$1mil.
|
| $350k seems like a steal no matter how you put it.
| akolbe wrote:
| How about comparing it to the Internet Archive (2019)?
| 169 employees, $11M salary costs:
|
| https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/
| 943...
|
| Wikimedia Foundation (2019): 291 employees, $56M salary
| costs.
|
| https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/
| 200...
|
| Less than twice the US employees, more than five times
| the salary costs. (Both orgs also have some non-US
| employees included in the salary costs total, but they
| are a small minority of the staff.)
| yupper32 wrote:
| $11mil / 169 = ~$65k / employee. So average pay at
| Internet Archive is barely over the median salary in the
| US? That's not good.
|
| Salary costs don't need to be looked at as something to
| aggressively push down. You can treat your employees well
| while still being a non-profit.
|
| (Though I'm not claiming wikipedia treats their employees
| well, I have no idea.)
| akolbe wrote:
| Well, ask yourself which org needs donations more
| urgently. (Last I looked the Internet Archive were being
| sued for lending scans of books - books they had
| physically bought - to one user at a time online.)
| dane-pgp wrote:
| It may be lavish, but if an executive paid $350k is 35% less
| likely to make a mistake that would cost the organisation $1m
| (which is about 1% of their budget), compared to a volunteer
| working for free, then maybe, from the organisation's point
| of view, the expenditure is cheap.
|
| Of course, judging performance like that is very difficult,
| and predicting it in advance is even harder, so it's possible
| that the highly paid executive would actually perform worse
| than a volunteer (or a random number generator), but if the
| complaint about "lavishness" is really about inequality (i.e.
| the executive's standard of living being much higher than
| they need / the median citizen's) then that criticism should
| probably be directed at the tax policies of the relevant
| governments.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > if an executive paid $350k is 35% less likely to make a
| mistake that would cost the organisation $1m (which is
| about 1% of their budget), compared to a volunteer working
| for free, then maybe, from the organisation's point of
| view, the expenditure is cheap.
|
| True, but I'd be hard-pressed to believe that's a realistic
| hypothetical at all.
| akolbe wrote:
| Some of the most expensive WMF execs have been complete
| disasters, exiting after a year or two and leaving the
| entire organisation in disarray.
| themitigating wrote:
| Can you provide an example?
| yupper32 wrote:
| Maybe they should spend more than $350k and find someone
| more competent.
| akolbe wrote:
| That reminds me of the saying, "We have the best
| politicians money can buy."
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| > from the organisation's point of view, the expenditure is
| cheap
|
| But from any normal person's perspective, it's expensive.
|
| The difference is who is in control and what are their
| priorities and influences. Since "the organization" is
| making the decisions - and, completely incidentally, "the
| CEO" is the head of "the organization" - it just so happens
| that "the organization" finds that "the CEO" should be paid
| lavishly.
|
| Rich people gonna prioritize rich people.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > But from any normal person's perspective, it's
| expensive.
|
| Why does it matter what that hypothetical "normal" person
| thinks? Does that "normal" person have insight into how
| much it costs to hire a competent executive?
| JohnFen wrote:
| It matters because "normal" people are the ones paying
| those extravagant salaries in the end.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Those normal people should know that $350k is a steal.
| tomrod wrote:
| Indeed.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The normal person knows that just having big paycheck
| does not make an executive more competent. We have all
| seen people with huge paychecks fail spectacularly.
| themitigating wrote:
| Are you saying there's no correlation between salary and
| performance?
| zihotki wrote:
| I don't see any reason for an executive to be less likely
| to make a mistake. And considering that the core business
| is rock solid and didn't change much in last many years, I
| don't even see a potential for such mistake.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > It may be lavish, but if an executive paid $350k is 35%
| less likely to make a mistake that would cost the
| organisation $1m (which is about 1% of their budget),
| compared to a volunteer working for free, then maybe, from
| the organisation's point of view, the expenditure is cheap.
|
| They're not though. Especially not multiple of them
| providing the same service.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| In a sense they are, but comparable to executive salaries at
| companies with roughly comparable tech/services, those
| salaries are probably very low.
|
| Probably any tech company of note is paying "executives" far,
| far more than that, at least in the US.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't think it's valid to think extravagant pay rates are
| not extravagant simply because other executives are also
| paid extravagant rates.
|
| They are all a bit over-the-top.
| themitigating wrote:
| Extravagant is a subjective term and for pay it's
| relative to the location, position, experience, etc.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| I suppose they meant relatively speaking. Taking into account
| how massive of a project Wikipedia is and hence how much
| responsibility the position has.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't understand this. Do you think that an executive's
| responsibilities scale with the size of the enterprise? I
| don't think that's true.
|
| In fact, I would argue that an executive at a small
| operation has more responsibility than one at a large
| operation.
| random314 wrote:
| Not in SF. Maybe there is a case to be made to move Wikipedia
| operations outside Bay area.
| akolbe wrote:
| Maybe there is a case for moving much of it outside the US?
| Lots of staffers work remotely anyway.
| cheeze wrote:
| Uh, what?
|
| SDEs with a few YOE are getting this no problem at top
| companies. Why wouldn't the CEO of the fifth biggest website
| on the internet?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Those SDEs are also paid extravagantly.
| jhbadger wrote:
| But that's apples and oranges. People who work at those
| companies are presumably being paid that because they are
| (or at least believed to be) making more in profit for the
| company than they are being paid. It's the same reason why
| professional football players and movie actors make so
| much. But consider ballet dancers or stage actors -- they
| may be just as athletic or as good actors as the football
| players or movie actors are, but they are in a far less
| profitable field. So they make less. The people in these
| jobs are just motivated by their passion rather than by
| salary.
| oh-4-fucks-sake wrote:
| 100% agreed. $350k salaries for people that have basically
| built and maintained the modern-day Library of Alexandria is a
| pittance. These people deserve it.
| mysterydip wrote:
| What do they do, though?
| coding123 wrote:
| that's a lot of salary for something that is going broke and
| needs donations now.
| mcguire wrote:
| Is requesting donations better or worse than selling
| advertising?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| How about they start spending their money wisely instead of
| growing infinitely? That way they can keep Wikipedia up and
| running for the next decade or so without bothering us with
| these solicitations.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Better. The real question is, is this way of soliciting
| donations better than another way of soliciting donations?
| Answer to that is not clear.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow
| lavish is strange.
|
| It's not, really. It's about how you frame things, and the
| follow-up tweets touch on that:
|
| >You wouldn't think so from the fundraising emails currently
| being sent out, telling people to donate "to keep Wikipedia
| online", saying it's "awkward to ask", etc. A recent poll of
| Wikipedia volunteers condemned these emails as unethical and
| misleading
|
| >If people want to throw money into a bottomless pit, fine; but
| let's not pretend that the money is needed "to keep Wikipedia
| online".
|
| >And that story is not the story told to prospective donors.
| Wikipedia and its unpaid volunteers - the people who actually
| write and curate Wikipedia - deserve better.
| yupper32 wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with the overall premise of the tweet
| chain. I'm just saying that $350k is pretty cheap for an exec
| at one of the most viewed/important websites on the planet.
| [deleted]
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| The Wikimedia foundation has a ton of money, the constant
| badgering is a bit much. I got turned off by Jimmy Wales early on
| and swore I'd never give a dime to Wikipedia.
| mcguire wrote:
| Sounds fine, if you don't use Wikipedia either.
| bool3max wrote:
| Wikipedia is a very effective medium for reinforcing the spread
| of false information and as such will never be "broke".
| feoren wrote:
| If you see false information on Wikipedia, go and correct it!
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| There is an entire industry of fact checkers and editors
| highlighting the side of the news their party like and hiding
| the opposite's viewpoint.
|
| Wikipedia's bias is well known.
|
| From the page on abortion: > When properly done, induced
| abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine.
|
| Mind you, not too safe for the baby.
| y42 wrote:
| Not gonna work. Has to be re-viewed first.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Who's got more time and capacity to play the wiki game, me or
| the PR firm hired to edit a politician's wiki page?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| All you have to do is find a bored wikipedia nerd "editor".
| They will gladly take on the bureaucratic battle to get
| that PR firm banned from editing wikipedia content.
|
| The people who make editing wikipedia their identity have A
| LOT of time on their hands, and LOVE fixing these kinds of
| things because it makes wikipedia better, and _look_
| better.
| Akronymus wrote:
| And A LOT of those people have ideological motivations on
| their own.
| orlp wrote:
| With the financial situation being how it is I, paradoxically,
| would currently consider donating to Wikipedia to be actively
| harmful to the future of Wikipedia. The larger its dragon hoard
| of money grows (which is already way beyond any sort of costs to
| keep up Wikipedia for decades), the larger the incentive for
| unscrupulous individuals to corrupt the Wikipedia mission to tap
| into this money for personal benefit. I can't help but conclude
| that if you love Wikipedia and what it does... don't give them
| any more money for the time being.
| amelius wrote:
| Wow, that almost sounds like "don't feed the dog, because it'll
| become a beggar".
| loeg wrote:
| This metaphor is broken. Dogs (and their appetites) don't
| grow exponentially.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Right, I've seen many, many projects in the for-profit sector
| fail because the budget was too high.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Anyone remember cost disease[1]? My favorite hypothesis for
| _one of_ the major causes is an excess of funding
| /resources/money without pressure to efficiently make use of
| those resources - which includes not siphoning them off for
| personal gain, as you point out here
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-
| cost...
| reflexco wrote:
| The bigger threat to Wikipedia is people who want to corrupt
| its information content. People wanting to get their treasure
| chest is not an existential threat. The existing employees and
| collaborators are more likely to get corrupted by nefarious
| actors if they don't have independent revenue sources.
| Kinrany wrote:
| > People wanting to get their treasure chest is not an
| existential threat.
|
| For the organization, sure. For the content it may very well
| be.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > if they don't have independent revenue sources.
|
| Nobody is saying wikipedia should have zero donations. Just
| that people piling on _extra_ money should cool it.
| tootie wrote:
| It's completely normal for a successful nonprofit to have an
| endowment that grows in good years and can be spent when
| needed. They don't pay dividends or anything like that so it
| sits in a cash reserve.
| xwdv wrote:
| The reason Wikipedia is so important is because a project like
| this could likely never be created again from scratch in our
| current times. It is a relic from a kinder past, that can still
| serve for generations to come if we take care of it. It will be a
| dark day for humanity when Wikipedia shuts down for good. Just
| donate, they don't even ask for much. $5 or $10 is enough for
| your part.
| throaway913249 wrote:
| The issue is not whether Wikipedia is important or not. It is
| indeed very important, despite it's many faults, and that's
| exactly why many donate even if they struggle financially.
|
| The issue is that in the world we live in every organization
| has as its primary goal to stay alive and grow - the primary
| goal of the WMF is to get more money, to pay themselves better.
| The knowledge curated by volunteers became merely a product
| they can use to profit from.
|
| Not even 5% of their annual expenses are for hosting. It would
| be entirely possible for them to cap their donations to 50
| million, and wikipedia itself would still be the same. But
| hundreds of people would stop receiving money for what is
| likely a privileged and secure job that doesn't require lots of
| effort. A secure bubble to live in and feel good about. Sadly,
| this is technically parasitic - others are doing the work, and
| these people leach on both the work of volunteers, and money of
| donors.
|
| The sad truth is that emotionally manipulative messages are
| essential to the survival and growth of the WMF. It's simply a
| complacent strategy to get the biggest financial return with
| the least amount of work. If they published a message that said
| "This year we need 10 million to survive, everything extra is
| optional and you don't need to donate if you don't have spare
| money. No matter what happens, Wikipedia will stay online,
| because we will always manage to collect enough money to cover
| the hosting", then many privileged people at the WMF would lose
| their secure job.
|
| And that's why the WMF will NEVER change the strategy, even
| though they pay lip-service to keep the volunteers in line.
|
| If one day they get 500 million per year in donations, their
| expenses will rise accordingly, to something like 400 million,
| as putting away 100 million is in their best own interest.
| What's not in their own interest, though, is respecting the
| wishes of the volunteers and donors.
|
| When we look at it from the outside, we can understand the
| donation campaigns as the work of a self-serving entity that
| takes the free knowledge of the world hostage for their own
| advantage.
|
| Now, no one can blame them - in the system we live in, this is
| the only way how organizations can exist. They always try to
| survive and grow and sustain itself.
|
| The bigger problem is that society hasn't yet figured out how
| to create structures that don't devolve into money-grabs, but
| continue to serve the public good.
|
| The problem is with the incentives and lack of transparency. A
| traditional corporation has an incentive to be economical - at
| least small and middle sized companies do. If you have 10
| employees, and one of them has 0% productivity, you have to
| fire him.
|
| WMF has what to them likely feels like an endless money flow
| based on nothing but a banner. They can use as much money as
| they receive, and there won't be any negative consequences at
| all in the short-term.
|
| What the WMF calls "expenses" is actually simply the decision
| to transfer most of the income immediately into the hands of
| the employees of the WMF.
|
| In a world of ads, affiliate links and profit-driven
| journalism, Wikipedia, despite its faults, is essential, even
| in the state it's currently in. It should be scrutinized, but
| be kept in mind that it's still one of the best things that
| exist on the world wide web.
| akolbe wrote:
| Single-page:
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1570072717931552770.html
| avg_dev wrote:
| Once again, I'm grateful for your message. (I did end up
| getting my refund. I hope you remember me.)
|
| On a completely unrelated note, I was looking at a somewhat
| complicated Wikipedia page yesterday and noticed a piece of
| text I would like to edit. It had some stuff (citations and
| references) I felt I didn't understand how to edit without
| being sure I wouldn't break anything. Is there a good forum or
| place where I could ask for help with my edit?
| akolbe wrote:
| I do, and glad to hear it. :)
|
| To ask questions, a good place to start is the Teahouse:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse
|
| Good luck!
| kragen wrote:
| My advice is:
|
| 1. preview changes until the result looks the way you think
| it should
|
| 2. have faith that if you broke something non-obvious, then
| the WikiGnomes will fix it (and then you can look at the page
| history and see the change and learn)
|
| 3. be bold! If you've never had an edit reverted you aren't
| contributing enough.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| not that I am aware of; and Wikipedia has spent tens of
| millions of dollars over the past decade on a more user-
| friendly UI with nothing to show for it to date. Which is a
| good reason to question how well they allocate their hundred
| million dollar annual revenue.
| Hayarotle wrote:
| They're testing out the new UI in the other language
| Wikipedias. It adds a nice collapsible topic structure to
| the sidebar and sets a text width limit, but hides the
| available languages for the article behind a button on the
| header. This makes it harder to tell whether the article is
| available in specific languages, and to switch the
| language. It's a bit unwieldy as of now, as you now have to
| jump to the top of the page and click the "languages"
| button just to check if the article is available in your
| desired language, but they are showing some effort. They
| plan to make the header sticky and add direct links to the
| user's most frequently used languages. I just hope a sticky
| header doesn't take away much of the space dedicated to the
| page's content.
|
| Here's a link to the ideas page discussing the change:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propo
| s...
|
| And a link to a page describing the changes:
|
| https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvem
| e...
| akolbe wrote:
| That Village Pump page, incidentally, is also where the
| poll about the fundraising emails is, a few sections
| further down.
| leokennis wrote:
| I might be too simple of a person, but I donate EUR10 per year to
| Wikipedia which is nothing. In return, I get immediate access to
| a veritable wealth of accurate and up to date knowledge on more
| or less everything.
|
| It's such an amazingly great deal that I honestly think, who the
| F cares that they could have spent that money in a slightly more
| optimized way? Who cares that Jimmy Wales drives a BMW instead of
| a Volkswagen?
|
| Who is the loser here? Do we really need to get this level of
| angry online because an already amazing situation isn't perfect?
| akolbe wrote:
| Arguably, Wikipedia is the loser, because you are rewarding a
| management mindset that thinks manipulating the public for
| financial gain is okay.
|
| Wikipedia is the most widely read reference source on the
| planet. Wouldn't you rather it was stewarded by an organisation
| that was honest with the public?
|
| There are other losers. This man, guilt-tripped into donating
| to Wikipedia when all he has is $18 to his name is a loser:
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#S...
|
| Actually, that sounds wrong. He is a wonderful man, but one
| that really should not have been put in this invidious
| position.
|
| What about her?
|
| https://twitter.com/tizzie/status/1570095249044967424
|
| There are other losers still. People in India and South Africa
| are scared into donating to Wikipedia by emails that raise the
| spectre of a subscription fee, or of Wikipedia blinking out of
| existence for lack of funds.
|
| There are other charitable causes they could have donated to in
| their own country, rather than sending money to the US, money
| that might have saved lives in their own country, rather than
| added another treat to a US employee's benefits package.
|
| Those are some of the "losers".
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| > guilt-tripped into donating to Wikipedia when all he has is
| $18 to his name is a loser:
|
| If Wikipedia didn't "guilt-trip" him into it I'm sure some
| Nigerian prince would have.
| chess_buster wrote:
| What a smug dismissal of a comment obviously crafted with
| care.
| themitigating wrote:
| What "treat" are you referring to? Employees need to be
| compensated for a company to be competitive.
|
| Speaking of manipulative your augment takes a complex
| situation and turns it into "poor people using the last of
| their money to pay for US employees extra benefits"
| dyeuegdudjd wrote:
| lapinot wrote:
| > Who is the loser here?
|
| When you have big money then you think like big money. What
| people are angry about is WMF becoming too big and the heads
| managing this budget becoming independent of the actual foot
| soldiers. It's not about starving wikipedia, it's about not
| making it bigger than it needs to be, because the bigger you
| are, the more problems you have.
|
| > who the F cares that they could have spent that money in a
| slightly more optimized way?
|
| It's not about optimizing stuff, it's about not growing into a
| monster.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah I've looked into this before and it's basically true. They
| have way more money than they need. They justify it by saying
| "look at all the outreach projects we do!" but really nobody was
| asking for those. The people donating don't know they exist.
|
| If they had spent wisely they could easily have a $0.5bn
| endowment by now and basically be self-sustaining without
| donations.
|
| It also feels like a massive waste for one of the few open source
| organisations that is actually well funded. Where are the
| technical improvements to Wikipedia? The only thing I remember
| changing in the last 10 years is the link hover box which is very
| nice, but is that it?
| Macha wrote:
| They've built several GUI editors, and a more forum like
| discussion experience (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A
| 9dia:Flow/Bac_%C3%A0...) which the community on larger wikis
| has pretty forcefully rejected
| user3939382 wrote:
| I've come to see Wikipedia as the enemy in many cases, where its
| editorial policies, intentionally or not, result in entrenching
| corrupt establishment political narratives propagated by the
| White House, State Dept, corporate media, etc.
|
| I remember looking at the vote history where they decided The
| Greyzone (one of whose journalists was called to testify at the
| UN on their investigative journalism) wasn't a "credible source",
| the very first vote I checked belonged to a unique username that
| was used on other sites for an anti-Palestinian think tank
| academic.
|
| For completely uncontroversial topics it's fine, for everything
| else you have to read all the dismissed/shut out outsiders
| complaining on the talk page to get any real sense of the topic.
|
| Wikipedia has little legitimacy which is the purpose of an
| encyclopedia, I'll never donate $1 to it and if it shut down
| tomorrow I wouldn't care.
| r00fus wrote:
| Is it the case that other encyclopedias handle controversial
| topics well? If school textbooks are an example, we taught all
| sorts of historical nonsense as facts that are now completely
| debunked.
| themitigating wrote:
| How else should they run the service?
| loeg wrote:
| Obligatory link to "Wikipedia has Cancer:"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
| with slightly more historical context than a twitter thread.
| elil17 wrote:
| I'd really like to seem them get an endowment for keeping the
| servers up and running, then let them fund raise to cover the UI
| improvements, community grants, and whatever else. I think those
| are important and useful but it should really be a different pot
| of money.
| akolbe wrote:
| They already have an endowment of over $100M:
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
|
| Hosting costs them $2.4M a year:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
|
| Less than ten years ago, one of their VPs said they could
| sustain their mission on "$10M+/year":
|
| https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March...
|
| What he actually said in 2013 was this:
|
| "WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very
| minimal staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host a high
| traffic website on an absolute shoestring. But I would argue
| that an endowment, to actually be worthwhile, should aim for a
| significantly higher base level of minimal annual operating
| expenses, more in the order of magnitude of $10M+/year, to
| ensure not only bare survival, but actual sustainability of
| Wikimedia's mission. The "what's the level required for bare
| survival" question is, IMO, only of marginal interest, because
| it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible, to
| raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity."
|
| Total Wikimedia assets (Foundation + Endowment funds at Tides)
| stood at about $400 million in March 2022.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-14 23:01 UTC)