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Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#121

Post by hinkley »

axguscbklp wrote: post #110
hinkley wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ju…

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#122

Post by [deleted] »

ardy42 wrote: post #91
nickpp wrote: post #80

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 leve…

> 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 c…

[deleted]

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#123

Post by MaxBarraclough »

nickff wrote: post #108
ardy42 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Wikipedia also has the Stack Overflow problem of 'deletionists' (who mark everything as already described somewhere else, or not notable).

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.)

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#124

Post by nickff »

natex wrote: post #120
nickff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#125

Post by natex »

nickff wrote: post #124
natex wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> The CEO did not explicitly state that they were quitting because they wanted time and space to plan their future.

Yes they did.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#126

Post by nickpp »

sph wrote: post #115
nickpp wrote: post #80

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 leve…

> 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 hist…

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".

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#127

Post by nickff »

natex wrote: post #125
nickff wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The CEO did not explicitly state that they were quitting because they wanted time and space to plan their future. Yes they did.

Which word in their statement indicates causation? I generally look for the word 'because'.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#128

Post by etc-hosts »

triceratops wrote: post #99
jahlove wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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.

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#129

Post by etc-hosts »

xyzzyz wrote: post #76
Zababa wrote: post #24

> 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 statem…

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.

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#130

Post by pwinnski »

alisonkisk wrote: post #73
jonas21 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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.

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