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Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

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Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#291

Post by nebulous1 »

paxys wrote: post #75

> But keeping Wikipedia online is a task that the WMF could comfortably manage on $10 million a year This part is disingenuous and bordering on malicious. The linked email ( https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March... ) has so much more nuance, and in typical fashion a single number from it is taken completely out of context to push a certain narrative. It is also an estimate from almost a decade…

> paxys 4 hours ago [–]

> But keeping Wikipedia online is a task that the WMF could comfortably manage on $10 million a year This part is disingenuous and bordering on malicious. The linked email (https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March...)

He has editorialized the word "comfortably" and he should have discussed how the estimate might have changed since 2013, but overall I don't see why you think it's a disingenuous relating of the original email. I don't see any relevant nuance in the email that would significantly change my view of the estimate. However, I haven't gone through the preceding emails at all

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#293

Post by zeckalpha »

NeoVeles wrote: post #165
Clewza313 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 10 years earlier WMF's expenses were $10M/year, and it's pretty debatable if they're delivering 10x more today than they were back then.

The thing that gets me is the Archive.org only has approximately $20 million USD of revenue and they run a system that is much more data intensive. The wayback machine alone is a data crunching monster and it is done for a small fraction of WMF.

Archive.org has a tons more work to do (they have many side projects beyond Wayback...) and definitely could scale to a Wikipedia size organization, if they had the fundraisers.

Otoh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive#Ceramic%20a...

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#294

Post by nlitened »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #290
bomdo wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For others interested in this, Wikimedia salaries are all public [0]. [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...

As someone who worked in a sandwich shop to survive while going to college($7.5/hr, 30 hrs/week), I can't imagine the universe some people live in where an income of $375,000 doesn't seem sky high. It's like there is a section of people who live in a different world. I understand that it isn't much for an executive, but then that stuns me even more. Edit: median US salary is around $70k. This executive's pay is over…

On the same HN front page there has _just_ been a "senior developer drunk post", where a guy was complaining that full stack developers are being paid peanuts, and they deserve a compensation of at least 500k USD—and the comments were cheering "amen to that".

I don't understand anything about US IT salaries anymore.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#295

Post by sorenjan »

zhdc1 wrote: post #284
jiofih wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The expenses for operating Wikipedia.com would be around $10m. Their $112M expenses include the sky high executive compensation, money sent to the fund, millions spent on fundraising itself, and financing a host of programs not directly related to Wikipedia. I stopped donating because of this - definitely want to contribute to keeping Wikipedia online, I don’t necessarily want to give my money to a larger foundation…

I was expecting to see semi-outrageous, border line unjustifiable executive salaries after reading this comment and clicking on the direct link below. I guess there's a chance that executive compensation went up significantly after 2018, but nothing I saw looks out of place for an organization as large as Wikipedia. ~300k for a San Fransisco-based CEO and an average salary of ~120k for all employees employees seems f…

What exactly is that CEO doing for that money? What important strategic decisions are there to make at Wikipedia? Why do they have to be San Francisco based?

The annual real median personal income in the US in 2019 was $35,977[0], how can anyone think that $120k isn't a lot? Why should people around the world donate their hard earned money so that some employees in America can have Silicon Valley salaries?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#297

Post by AmericanChopper »

SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #287
AmericanChopper wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment would make sense if moderating wikipedia cost that extra $102,000,000 we’re talking about. But it doesn’t. Wikimedia has one project I’m slightly interested in, and spends most of their money on other projects that I’m completely uninterested in, and would personally consider to be largely a useless waste of time. They aggressively fundraise with a message that implies their single product that everybody…

What are the “other projects” you are referring to?

Everything on this list that isn’t Wikipedia, along with essentially all of the research they fund.

https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Complete_list_of_Wikimedia...

You don’t have to put it in air quotes like you’re making some sort of point. Calling everything they fund a “project” is the language Wikimedia use in their budgets and governance documentation.

If you were actually having trouble thinking of a single project they operate other than Wikipedia, then perhaps you might also have some questions about what they do with 90% of their revenue.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#298

Post by etempleton »

Non-profits are all prioritizing growing their endowments to ensure their future capital and not rely on one time donations. I don’t have a problem with this.

I do think as organizations grow they become increasingly inefficient and competing priorities are introduced. It must be carefully managed, but is difficult.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#299

Post by kaba0 »

saurik wrote: post #239
kaba0 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about running a freely query-able database https://www.markhneedham.com/blog/2020/01/29/newbie-guide-qu... Or hosting all the images? Or paying developers, devops, managers? Like sure, some middle manager may be unnecessary but a big company will have inefficiencies. Also, it is a good decision to not stop accepting funds once a monthly quota is reached since donations are fickle. An article like this may sudden…

> What about running a freely query-able database [link to Wikidata] When someone goes to Wikipedia and feels "this was awesome; I want to support this... and OMG, they say they might fail if they don't get money from people like me!" it is absolutely unethical to take their money and spend it on Wikidata, a product this user might have no clue exists and may or may not care at all about. Maybe Wikidata is a great th…

Wikipedia actively builds both on Wikidata and their media hosting solution. But if you feel like using wikipedia without any media or a significant part of the factoid tables, go on..

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#300

Post by MonkeyClub »

nlitened wrote: post #294
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who worked in a sandwich shop to survive while going to college($7.5/hr, 30 hrs/week), I can't imagine the universe some people live in where an income of $375,000 doesn't seem sky high. It's like there is a section of people who live in a different world. I understand that it isn't much for an executive, but then that stuns me even more. Edit: median US salary is around $70k. This executive's pay is over…

On the same HN front page there has _just_ been a "senior developer drunk post", where a guy was complaining that full stack developers are being paid peanuts, and they deserve a compensation of at least 500k USD—and the comments were cheering "amen to that". I don't understand anything about US IT salaries anymore.

Oh, but US IT salaries are very easy to understand!

They're too high, though not high enough.

We've become the new priesthood. People who complain that sacrificing one calf to us each year would do well to be reminded that we're not demanding one child per year.

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