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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?

#341

Post by zhdc1 »

kaba0 wrote: post #318
sorenjan wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average software developer salary in Germany is €50 000 per year, just to take one western country as an example. I doubt Wikipedia would be much worse with European developers. American IT salaries are not the norm, and they're a bit insane. When your budget consists of donations, I think it's disrespectful to spend it on frivolous things like San Francisco salaries. The average programmer salary in Sweden is $5…

You are not donating to a person. Also, how much does a company CEO make in Sweden typically? Also, how is it relevant? Should every company move to Thailand because it is cheaper there?

I don't know if it's accurate, but several sites have it at 1,908K krona, which is about 230K USD. Add in the sector - I would imagine that tech CEOs earn more, even in Sweden - and cost of living, and 300K USD doesn't really seem that over the top.

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

#342

Post by kaba0 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #306
afc wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> English Wikipedia gets about 250M page views per day, which is only about 3,000 per second. If they used an efficient language instead of PHP, that's well within the capability of a single modern server! This type of comment betrays a complete lack of knowledge about how large scale internet systems operate (which is something I've worked on for the last 10+ years) and comes across as incredibly naive. I can immedi…

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I would host a site like Wikipedia on a single server, I'm saying that it's more than possible. Also, don't assume I'm speaking from a position of ignorance here, I know more than a little about how Wikipedia works. I've perused the source, played with the database dumps, etc... I find comments like yours amusing, because I hear similar things in the industry all the time! People…

Come on.. you are being ridiculous. Also, how is your 500ms ping?

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

#343

Post by humanlion87 »

sorenjan wrote: post #310
hugi wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's absolutely great that Wikipedia is able to pay competitive salaries in a good location. It's probably one of the reasons why they can run such an amazing site. I consider my donations well spent.

The average software developer salary in Germany is €50 000 per year, just to take one western country as an example. I doubt Wikipedia would be much worse with European developers. American IT salaries are not the norm, and they're a bit insane. When your budget consists of donations, I think it's disrespectful to spend it on frivolous things like San Francisco salaries. The average programmer salary in Sweden is $5…

If the employees/CEO live in San Francisco I don't think paying them European salaries will be fair right? They wouldn't be able to afford rent with ~50k range salary. I think your argument makes sense if Wikipedia had been founded/has their HQ in Germany and was paying San Francisco salaries with their donations.

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

#344

Post by FredPret »

sorenjan wrote: post #339
FredPret wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it’s Eurpoean incomes that are insanely low, why not get outraged about that? Your attitude creates a race to the bottom.

We get by just fine. Education, health care, vacation, parental leave, child care, a house and two cars. What else do you need? It's not about a race to the bottom, it's the vast differences in pay in the same society. If the median real salary is $35 000, why should a 25 year old web developer make 3X that? Some software engineers act like what they do is so much more important and difficult than what everyone else…

Well... maybe. But maybe, it is that much more important? Most jobs just add value locally and incrementally.

Software and finance are high-leverage jobs where improvements are instantaneously rolled out to large sections of humanity all at once and the potential change isn't incremental, it's epoch-defining.

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

#345

Post by kaba0 »

roelschroeven wrote: post #274
zozbot234 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archive.org is a lot less people intensive than what WMF does. Even the book scanning work they support is mostly done by third parties, and they largely focus on hosting the resulting content. Wikipedia can't work like that, no matter how much some people wish it could.

As opposed to Wikipedia where the content is written by third parties, and Wikimedia largely focuses (or should focus) on hosting the resulting content?

How often is archived pages edited? It is a very different problem hosting static and dynamic data.

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

#346

Post by bluescrn »

apercu wrote: post #332
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything above 100K is sky-high, and you need to have drunk a lot of the SF kool-aid to think anything else. That the cost of living in SF is so high that a wage like that doesn't cover basic living costs is not because the wages aren't high enough.

Hold on there, cowboy. 100k was maybe "sky high" 20 years ago. 100k in most large cities is not. When your modest house costs $800k USD, a car costs 30k, auto insurance is $1600 a year, groceries are 10k a year (looking at you, Toronto), just how in the hell is 100k "sky high"? $80k was a decent salary in a mid-size city 15 years ago. Just because six figures seems like a lot of money to you doesn't mean it's a lot o…

It's still sky-high to most of the world outside the US

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

#347

Post by TomVDB »

NoOneNew wrote: post #314
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…

I survived by doing landscaping and construction labor. You really know you're earning your nickels and dimes in the Florida summers when you work those jobs. Imaging a universe where people make $500k+ is pretty easy. I mean, let's be serious for just a minute. This is a tech focused community. Programming, IT, computer science, you didnt really get into this line of work because of the glamour, the guaranteed spot…

Have you considered the possibility that there are those who were drawn to that screen, and making it do what they want, at very young age, and never lost that sense of wonder and accomplishment when it did?

I do think that the sky high salaries are ridiculous compared to societal contributions of, say, a nurse or a teacher. But I also like very much that I get them for doing a job that I still do with a small on my face.

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

#349

Post by derangedHorse »

dlandau wrote: post #213
NeoVeles wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wish archive.org fundraised like WMF. Archive.org is super slow when it doesn't plain timeout with some message about server load.

I really don’t think that would be needed. I’ve never had a timeout on archive.org and the rise in costs probably wouldn’t be worth the value add.

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

#350

Post by exdsq »

NoOneNew wrote: post #314
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…

I survived by doing landscaping and construction labor. You really know you're earning your nickels and dimes in the Florida summers when you work those jobs. Imaging a universe where people make $500k+ is pretty easy. I mean, let's be serious for just a minute. This is a tech focused community. Programming, IT, computer science, you didnt really get into this line of work because of the glamour, the guaranteed spot…

I'm in tech because I enjoy it. There's something fun about programming - it's similar to the logic puzzles I play in my own time. If we're on HN, probably on a bank holiday for most of us, then I assume if you read this you enjoy it too. I don't know anyone who got into tech for the money - much easier to earn more in IB/Quant Trading.
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