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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

#141

Post by ndiscussion »

detaro wrote: post #92
ndiscussion wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201... Unless I'm misreading something, 64% of their expenses in 2018 went to salaries.

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?

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#142

Post by jrochkind1 »

kemayo wrote: post #107
jrochkind1 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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,…

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).

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#143

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#144

Post by smsm42 »

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…

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#145

Post by smsm42 »

jahlove wrote: post #11
iso8859-1 wrote: post #2

I didn't know my Wikipedia donations funded parties in Accra, Berlin and Chandigarh. I think that should be been in the fundraising statement.

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)

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#146

Post by smsm42 »

dlubarov wrote: post #140
pwinnski wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ma…

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#147

Post by smsm42 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #19
vorpalhex wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are welcome to, just declare it upfront.

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?

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#148

Post by cameldrv »

doc_gunthrop wrote: post #119
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Why don't you just donate to to something else then? Wikipedia obviously has more than enough money to keep the website running.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#149

Post by the_duke »

nickpp wrote: post #126
sph wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

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.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#150

Post by throwaways885 »

the_duke wrote: post #149
nickpp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

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.

Political content is a landmine, articles are often locked because vandals are often indistinguishable from those with better information but still controversial.
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