Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

dailydot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 619 posts

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

#521

Post by jiofih »

jiofih wrote: post #260
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…

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…

Everyone is focusing on salaries (my mistake to list it first), but really that’s a minor expense and I have no qualms with people being paid market rates in a non-profit.

90%+ of the cash goes to fund the other foundations’ programmes, that’s the core of the issue.

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

#522

Post by cedilla »

throwaway438 wrote: post #417
cedilla wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than twice the median salary. It is quite high. Upper class income only seem lackluster compared to the perverse 0.1% incomes and the housing bubble.

There isn't a housing bubble when the government does everything possible to prevent the bubble from bursting. The median salary in the USA is a joke for people that are without any relatives supporting them financially for a mortgage, that will never afford a decent home that's actually located somewhere desirable and until in they reach their 40s.

Half of people live with less than that joke by definition, and most don't have the privilege to be supported by wealthy relatives, either.

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

#523

Post by [deleted] »

depressedpanda wrote: post #201
throwaway2037 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I also notice the coverage dedicated to women vs men is extremely imbalanced. I know they have a separate team working on the issue and big advert banners about it... but the issue remains: Much more is written about men (living or dead) than women.

The beauty of Wikipedia is that nothing prevents you (or other people) from writing those missing articles.

[deleted]

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

#524

Post by cutemonster »

pydry wrote: post #240
bostonsre wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short term it does kind of look like they have now money than they need and it may seem a little disingenuous, but I'm not sure that they amassing a large pool of money to ensure for their survival for the long term is all bad. They provide an invaluable tool to the world that allows anyone from anywhere to easily learn about anything. I would say that they are doing a great service to the world by ensuring their exi…

The budget will expand to consume the additional funds. It did before. This will make it more financially tenuous, not more. Added to which, once the insitution is addicted to money it becomes that much easier to corrupt.

> The budget will expand to consume the additional funds

And the organization will grow? (More people)

How can one stop such things, generally, in an organization? (If it was large enough already)

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

#525

Post by denton-scratch »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #515
denton-scratch wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO of Twitter has the task of maximising profit for shareholders; he needs to constantly be on the lookout for new opportunities to exploit. Apparently Twitter made a profit for the first time last year. The CEO of Wikimedia needs to hire and manage maybe 50 people, of whom about 5 need executive pay. I have no idea why Wikimedia needs 500 staff, if they could build the site with a team of 20 or so. It looks lik…

How is he doing in finding opportunities, has he found one yet? Whats the most revolutuonary thing they've done in the past five years, increased the character limit? You cannot possibly be serious, assigning twitter CEO some super demanding nebulous task of 'looking for new opportunities' but somehow downgrading Wikipedia one to that of a middle-manager. Both websites have a massive audience, both have new intiative…

I ditn't mean that he deserves his pay; I meant that's what he's paid for. He's paid to make money for shareholders.

The Wikimedia execs are obviously not being paid to boost the bottom line; it's fat enough already. Wikipedia has never failed to cover it's costs. It doesn't need whizz-kids; it needs a few competent managers to make sure things don't completely fall apart.

All the pointless side-projects just mean there's too much money washing around. Those side-projects could end up torpedoeing the main deal. Wikimedia makes enough in a year to set-up an endowment that would guarantee Wikipedia forever. Provided they prune the management tree - not so much because of salary costs, but because all those execs need projects, to prove they're not overpaid.

It's nothing to do with "charity work". It's about maintaining mature code, taking care of the editor community (they're not much cop at that), and buying server racks. You don't need scores of leet execs for that - you just need a handful of competent and responsible administrators.

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

#526

Post by bawolff »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #185
bawolff wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are no-js users cut off? At least the desktop site should definitely work fine (I never use the mobile so i don't know). Hell, last i checked, wikipedia even worked if cookies were disabled (and you weren't logged in). I'm also not sure what the unsteady connections thing is about? Wikipedia doesn't modify the TCP stack.

By "unsteady connections", I meant inconsistent or unreliable connections, where you may not be able to stay online reliably. On mobile, there is a new "feature" where each section is lazy-loaded, so if you do not expand them while you are online, you cannot read them once you're offline. Also, if the browser reloads the page from cache while offline, sections are also inaccessible. The desktop site is inaccessible t…

Fair enough. I'm personally not a fan of the mobile site, even on mobile. https://en.wikipedia.org/?useskin=timeless is another option (for that link to work on mobile, you have to first click the use desktop button to have desktop cookies)

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

#527

Post by ClumsyPilot »

denton-scratch wrote: post #525
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is he doing in finding opportunities, has he found one yet? Whats the most revolutuonary thing they've done in the past five years, increased the character limit? You cannot possibly be serious, assigning twitter CEO some super demanding nebulous task of 'looking for new opportunities' but somehow downgrading Wikipedia one to that of a middle-manager. Both websites have a massive audience, both have new intiative…

I ditn't mean that he deserves his pay; I meant that's what he's paid for. He's paid to make money for shareholders. The Wikimedia execs are obviously not being paid to boost the bottom line; it's fat enough already. Wikipedia has never failed to cover it's costs. It doesn't need whizz-kids; it needs a few competent managers to make sure things don't completely fall apart. All the pointless side-projects just mean th…

"All the pointless side-projects just mean there's too much money washing around."

It is your personal judgement, and I violently disagree: if they stagnate, they will either wither and die. FAANGs of this world will eat them, for example by taking snippets from wikipedia and giving nothing back.

It is charity work to spread knowledge, and it has never been as important as it is in the knowledge economy of the 21st century. Do you seriously think that there is nothing to improve, the pinnacle of creation is text format with links? You cannot imagine a more interactive alternative to learn?

Now it's possible that both of us are wrong, and the truth of the matter is something else entirely.

However they are not a public service, and they run their charity in accordance with their vision. If they want to document every dead language and give each poor kid a laptop, people like myself support them, and you don't have to.

Your cost-cutting/management bloat critique comes across as a standardised copy paste of critique you might encounter on "department of highways" or similar public service. It appears to be based off prejudice and assumptions. Not only don't you have that level on knowledge, no-one without a crystal ball could know for sure.

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

#528

Post by MaKey »

heavyset_go wrote: post #457
MaKey wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? In Germany an income of 80k EUR will put you into the top 10% of all earners, so you will be upper class. Especially on two such incomes.

> In Germany an income of 80k EUR will put you into the top 10% of all earners, so you will be upper class. Upper middle class maybe. People in the upper class don't need to work.

No, upper class if you go by the definition of the German Economic Institute [0].

[0] https://www.iwkoeln.de/en.html

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

#529

Post by nemothekid »

mithr wrote: post #507
nemothekid wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is insane - are you arguing the Wikipedia should hire cheaper developers because they are a non-profit? Why stop there - why shouldn't Wikipedia fully cut corners and hire a body shop in a 3rd world country to build the site that millions of people use. wikipedia SHOULD be paying competitve salaries so that their best and brightest don't leave to join tire-fire companies like Facebook. I don't know why you think…

> are you arguing the Wikipedia should hire cheaper developers because they are a non-profit? > You are disparaging a CEO for making 350k/year for one of the highest trafficked sites in the world The root of the question is: what determines compensation at companies? FAANG and SV startups are able to offer huge salaries not because they are "the highest trafficked sites in the world". It's because they rake in billio…

>The root of the question is: what determines compensation at companies?

So let's say I start a company selling cars. I decide to sell my cars for $1. It's a terrible business model, and I don't make much money. So according to you, because my company makes no money, I should be allowed to pay my staff way under market. This doesn't make sense to me, despite being obviously illegal.

The amount of money you paid for labor is decided by a market. Just because I have a horrible business model of giving away cars for free does not entitle to me to underpay for labor. And conversely, if I am a good engineer working for Wikipedia, and FB offers me a much better paying job, I will probably jump ship to FB. Employee retention is a problem for any company.

Now I'm not saying Wikipedia is completely justified in paying the exact same pay grade as FAANG, but it's ridiculous to me that there are so many tears about an executive member of Wikipedia making the same amount of money as a middle manager at Facebook. We are not even comparing directors, we are comparing rank & file to the CEO of another company and people still have a problem with it.

>It's disingenuous at best to connect a nonprofit's executive staff making large salaries with raising the minimum wage

I don't see how the argument is different. I don't think engineers working at Wikipedia should make 300k because they work at Wikipedia. I don't think cashiers working at McDonalds should make $15/hr because they work at McDonalds. You are removing the value of their work simply based on where you think their social status should be,

Post reply on HN