Wikipedia is swimming in money—why is it begging people to donate? : opensource

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 years ago

Wikipedia is a democracy (the board is elected by the editors), so it's not like there is no oversight, it also basically competes with google and facebook which have a lot more money (google alone is at almost 200 billion a year), A competitor can appear and use more aggressive monetization to create a better website using wikipedia's freely license data (i am pretty sure there is already a startup trying to do that).

The WMF’s financial independence is clearly not at any risk. So what is going on? The official answer is that the WMF thinks you can never have too much money put aside for a rainy day

I actually read the link and I may be tired but i am pretty sure it doesn't say what he says they are saying (they just want more and more money), it makes me question the trustworthiness of the whole article.

If you write such a critical article i think you should request a response from the foundation (that's just good journalism IMO).

But if someone thinks they can run a more efficient operation at the wikimedia foundation by all means run in their elections.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 years ago (3 children)

I'd really like to see the breakdown of their budget. One of their VPs estimates that they could be fine on $10M USD / year, even that sounds high... how many people work for WMF?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

Any nonprofit should be required by ;aw to publish their revenue and expenses. Change my mind.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 years ago (2 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer Has some more details.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Mirror in case it gets taken down: https://web.archive.org/web/20210410163603/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

I mean it's been up for like 5 years i doubt it's gonna dissapear now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

Perfect, thx.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago

yeah, and h0sting and shit shouldn't be too high, they have mostly text [even if it's a looot of text] and low quality images

[+] [email protected] 7 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago

Or see it the other way why should surveillance capitalists benefit and build service use by billions without giving back to the community?

I assume they will provide a free api key with a fair use policy. If not it's a dick move.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 years ago (1 children)

But keeping Wikipedia online is a task that the WMF could comfortably manage on $10 million a year, according to a casual 2013 estimate by Erik Möller, its VP of engineering and product development at the time.

Couldn't this be outdated as it's nearly a decade since?

I feel like this article doesn't really evaluate what organizational priorities and processes that Wikipedia is deal with. Also doesn't talk about the need for high skill employees that you can't get if you don't have the salary to pay for such skills.

Having only 40 people working on fundraising internationally is very little for a fundraising campaign, not only that but some of these can be hired freelance or their contracts can be short time. In contrast smaller organizations will hire much more people working for less money and and a smaller region.

I'm talking from my own experience here though, and don't really have any sources for what is usual for fundraising campaigns.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

I recommend reading this in addition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

IDK, there is only a 13.8% 'profit' margin. Expenses are growing as well. But I do think the campaign rhetoric can be a bit hard, but I trust the decisions made by the board. It would be interesting to hear the reasoning from the general secretary or whatever Wikipedia has.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Well the question really is what kind of expenses there are? 400k/yr salaries for executives for example are a bit excessive for a non-profit I think.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

Not really. Non-profits also needs people of the right skills to make such a big organization as Wikipedia is run well. There are very few in the world who have that skillset, and that skillset therefore has a big pricetag if you want someone who can make the organization improve and do well.

I wouldn't hire just about anyone for a type of job like that, and very few with the right skillset would settle for less of a pay if there are other jobs they can go for instead.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

Yeah this is the same argument you usually hear also in relation to IMHO excessive salaries of Mozilla executives for example.

But I am not sure of that is really true.

I see two main counter-arguments:

Large companies in other countries do not pay nearly as much for their top level executives and yet seem to be doing fine? Extreme case would be many Japanese conglomerates that pay only really modest sums to their top level staff.
A non-profit usually has completely different values and requirements, and at least in my experience having people there that would otherwise work at top-level commercial firms is rather counter-productive that they really fail to understand the organizational culture and purpose.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 years ago (1 children)

400k pr year a sallary for these top positions aren't a lot at all in my opinion, particurarly when compared to other businesses. But we can agree to disagree.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Sure depends on the country and the living costs and all that. Probably doesn't sound that much from a Norwegian perspective ;)

But a good way to look at it is how many times the executives make compared to the median employee. Which is probably not a good ratio at the WMF.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

It might be a joke. Although we have good social programs and a good economy it's not like the average Norwegian is loaded and everyone has a high-skill job.

And again you don't take in relation the skill difference between the jobs. In addition a wage of 400K pr. year is a drop in the ocean among it's large budget right, it's not a lof money and not to big corporations and non-profits. How much "a lot of money" is relative to it's context, and here we are talking about a giant organization that is growing each year by tremendous bounds while it's success wouldn't have happened by itself.

I find

Sure depends on the country and the living costs and all that. Probably doesn’t sound that much from a Norwegian perspective ;)

a bit ignorant TBH

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

What I meant is that due to various factors the typical Norwegian earns (but also has to spend) much more than pretty much anyone else in Europe. This of course means that they are not rich in their own country, but when looking at salaries from other places 400k may not seem as much as it is in reality.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

It would be a lot.

I don't think there is a country except maybe like Dubai where 400k a year as a sallary 'is nothing', but even there it would be a lot.

But in an organization were talking about about 130 million USD in pure income, 400 thousand USD a year as a leader sallary isn't that much.

If you want context about Norway: Because of unionization, the social democratic regulations it means that the country's wages are much more even. Specialized jobs which would otherwise have a incredulous salary is brought down while most job salaries are brought up, and jobs that don't really have much benefit can't exist in the economy, and therefore you can't have 'grocery packers' in Scandinavia for example. This builds a strong economy, but there still must logically be different value to different jobs as skills can be more rare or more difficult to get.

There is ofc as you say the difference in valuta, but 400K pr year would be 'a hell of a lot of money'. A very high earning job would be more like 100K pr year, and the median yearly salary for people are between 20 and 30K. Those under at the limit at being poor get's state funds so they can have at least a almost a minimum income lifestyle. (Although things have gotten worse since we've had a right leaning government for 8 years now)

I don't even earn a median yearly sallary myself, but I hope to one day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

According to Wikipedia a non-profit:

A nonprofit organization (NPO) is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit... ... A nonprofit is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties.

Which to me just sounds like a business for profit just with extra steps.

Since non-profit organizations provide a social benefit and literally their name says non-profit then workers shouldn't be paid more than they need or rather, shouldn't be paid based on their skillset or shouldn't be expected to pay high like that. Seems counter-intuitive that an organization that wants to provide a benefit somehow still has to make the same money as a for profit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago

Well, there are many different kinds of non-profits and the above definition is kind of the minimal legalistic one. Most "non-profits" are founded for a different purpose then just the tax-benefits the "non-profit" legal status gives them in most countries.

[+] DrBenjamin1 1 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

It's simple. Who writes this article really Don't know how a big entity (company/foundation) in the tech industry works.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago (1 children)

This article is actually based on a long standing page on Wikipedia made by a Wikipedia insider.

And honestly, if that is your criticism of the article then I don't know what to say, because if Wikipedia is the same as GAFAM then that is exactly their problem then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago

Well, sometimes is like GAFAM, specially with political issues. https://www.timesofisrael.com/wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-likes-israel-but-stays-neutral/ Where's the Palestine wmf tag?.

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