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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?

#571

Post by reader_mode »

CRConrad wrote: post #539
reader_mode wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I assumed we're talking about Software Engineering here, I accept your point. But Italy and Spain aren't really what I would consider Western Europe, they are the less developed parts and I admit I have no experience with France and know nobody who works there.

> But Italy and Spain aren't really what I would consider Western Europe Yeah, well, you're American, right? You really are living up to it in many ways.

No I'm Croatian, lived across EU, back home remoting now. Italy and Spain are not considered developed western Europe (neither is Portugal for that matter) it's not geographic, for example you often include Scandinavian countries in that bunch even if it's not geographically correct, so is Switzerland, their standard of living (Italy/Spain) is a tier below. Eastern Europe is a tier below that. Maybe it's a Croatian colloquialism since they are all west of us but I heard it used many times in other countries as well.

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

#572

Post by reader_mode »

Naracion wrote: post #560
reader_mode wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I assumed we're talking about Software Engineering here, I accept your point. But Italy and Spain aren't really what I would consider Western Europe, they are the less developed parts and I admit I have no experience with France and know nobody who works there.

So... The UK is not part of EU, and you're not counting Italy and Spain, and don't know anybody in France so can't speak for that country... Yet you're arguing for western EU salaries...? I can only sense you having some knowledge of Germany from your comments.

I would consider UK part of the developed Western Europe for sure and salaries in London are low for standard of living in that city. Zurich is even more insanely expensive.

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

#573

Post by bawolff »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #564
bawolff wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Thanks, I like the idea of Gemini, but haven't found the time to try any of the clients yet. In my eyes it has a few shortcomings straight out of the gates by requiring TLS and also by being relatively new tech, so there's not much established knowledge base, and the "early problems" are still being solved. It's much less accessible than Web in many different scenarios, such as when I can't install software on my dev…

What is gemini? I'm unfamilar.

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

#574

Post by detaro »

bawolff wrote: post #573
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I like the idea of Gemini, but haven't found the time to try any of the clients yet. In my eyes it has a few shortcomings straight out of the gates by requiring TLS and also by being relatively new tech, so there's not much established knowledge base, and the "early problems" are still being solved. It's much less accessible than Web in many different scenarios, such as when I can't install software on my dev…

What is gemini? I'm unfamilar.

Basically a reinvention/reinterpretation of gopher.

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

#575

Post by bawolff »

Qub3d wrote: post #562
bawolff wrote: post #15

This seems to be about the endowment - That's not the same as normal donations, and they can't just "use it", they can basically only use the interest of that money, from what i understand. Disclaimer: Used to work for wikimedia, once upon a time, don't anymore.

The WMF has refused to state how the endowment is stuctured, so we have no proof that they cannot dip into the principle whenever they feel the need/want. Users have tried asking for clarification. Multiple times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

I dont think your link really supports what you're saying. One user speculating on a user space page (what amounts to essentially a personal blog) is not the same as actually asking for clarification, and it definitely isn't a large group of users asking for such, as your use of plural would imply.

Which isn't to say nobody has ever asked, im sure someone has at some point, just that's not supported by your link.

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

#576

Post by MagnumOpus »

thepangolino wrote: post #116
jonahbenton wrote: post #14

Ridiculous question and even more ridiculous factoids. The assumption that operating as a non-profit implies an entity should stop asking its audience for help advancing the mission, or that it should pay its necessary staff less than competitive wages...please. Give wikipedia more so they can take on the MUCH more well-endowed and entirely opaque private capital taking over nearly every other information outlet in t…

Wikimedia foundation spends over 55M to pay for 400 staff. That’s 137k a year in payroll costs per employee. Are they all top management and or US based engineers?!

Yes, most of them are. And most of them work on "Advancement" (begging, fund raising, and schmoozing rich people and organisations for future fund raising) and "communication" (PR and brand building).[1] And of course with the obligatory diversity and inclusion staff, also on six digit salaries, also based in the swanky skyscraper in central San Francisco.[2]

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/

[2] And the rent for the swanky office is another million and a half per year, because it's not their money after all...

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

#577

Post by uranusjr »

zozbot234 wrote: post #214
KingOfCoders wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is bleeding editors and keeping others away because of the ever more hostile environment. Try to edit something and you get blasted of Wikipeda very fast with a boatload of jargon. This is something they should work on. But as every club that get successful and was open (I attended many Wiki/Wikipedia meetups 20y ago) it gets more restricted and close to keep the masses out. What a shame.

> Try to edit something and you get blasted of Wikipeda very fast with a boatload of jargon. "Trying to edit something" is a bad idea these days - the content is far too developed for that. Instead, post on the talk page with a description of your suggested edit, wait for people to object/complain/discuss, refine the text on talk if needed, then edit. It's pretty indistinguishable from a "pull request" workflow on gi…

There’s a mental mismatch in here. The pull request workflow works on GitHub because 1. every piece of code has a clear owner that is in charge to gate-keep the changes, and 2. if the gatekeepers fail at their job, contributors have a reasonable recourse (forking).

Neither is true for Wikipedia. There are no clear owners for each article so the editors are more or less hidden in the shadows (from the readers and casual contributors, at least), instead of being front-and-center of an article and explicitly taking responsibilities. It is also very unclear why they get to “own” the article like a GitHub repository; are they the initial author? Major contributors that took the baton from the original author? In many cases they are, but Wikipedia does not make that relation clear, so the editors look like self-appointed to an outside eye, which is why people have issues with gate-keeping (not the gate-keeping itself).

Making things worse, an “outside” contributor also has no chance but to work with those (seemingly) self-proclaimed maintainers; only one article can be under an entry on Wikipedia, your own modified copy has no chance competing with the original, even if you managed to make other people aware of it and agree it’s objectively better. That’s competitive imbalance, another trait of undesired gate-keeping.

I’m not saying what the Wikipedia community is doing is wrong. But if that’s how they want to do things, they need to fix Wikipedia to reflect what they want the process to work. The current system is broken.

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

#578

Post by MagnumOpus »

bawolff wrote: post #66
dannyw wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions both the endowment ($100M) and also WMF's funds on hand ($300M?). So the main point is still valid. Wikipedia's fundraising strongly implies that they need your $3 to keep the site online. WMF has $400M which would be enough to keep the site online for up to 40 years with no further donations. Thus, their fundraising is misleading and deceptive. I bet 9 in 10 donators won't donate if they knew WM…

I think you have those numbers reversed. According to the article (I presume its accurate), the endowment total is $300M [including funds from multiple years], and the fundraising total so far this fiscal year is $142M (I assume that's gross, fundraising has costs). The majority of Wikimedia's money goes to software development, not keeping the lights on. I think there are definitely reasonable criticisms that could…

> The majority of Wikimedia's money goes to software development, not keeping the lights on

The majority of the money goes to grants (because they don't even know what to do with it internally), followed by fundraising and brand building ("advancement" and "communications") which has the largest staff numbers. Then lawyers, and technology staff and contractors are a distant fourth...

> a world where WMF spends the absolute bare minimum to keep the lights on, with no further funding to new software development, and Wikipedia is still a success

I 'member back in 2005-2008 that was the state of the world. WMF paid Brion Vibber and the bandwidth bills and Brion kept the lights on. It was the most successful time for Wikipedia with massive growth and recognition.

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

#579

Post by mihaaly »

CRConrad wrote: post #537
mihaaly wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote is about sharing knowledge not about educating people. Different things with different requirements, a different (related) activity. Sharing knowledge is a well understood long lasting profile, education is not. Also the 'need' for sister projects is an unfunded claim, a mere opinion. Actually the "bring you unlimited access to reliable information" that is explicitly mentioned in fundraisers already thriv…

> That quote is about sharing knowledge not about educating people. So what is educating people, if not sharing knowledge? > Different things with different requirements, a different (related) activity. That's one way of looking at it. Another is: Just different words for the same thing.

Libraries and schools/universities are not the same thing, you should know that.

Allowing access to information is essential part of the education but is not the education itself!

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Chek out its home page, top left corner! ; ))

If they have big ambitions, want to be more than 'mere' sharers of information that is fine, having huge organizations with high paid managers and PR campaigns for the education of the world and the future or whatever big words they pick, it is fine. But then please communicate that when begging for money to keep "Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia" running.

They should not misinform us....

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

#580

Post by jiofih »

20after4 wrote: post #394
rightbyte wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's probably one of the reasons why they can run such an amazing site. The reason Wikipedia is amazing is the user generated content and community moderation/admin.

Operating a network at the scale of Wikimedia's is no small task. AFAIK, The largest part of the budget goes to maintaining the servers and network (and paying the people who maintain them). It's also worth noting that many of Wikimedia's staff are remote. I think more of the engineers are based in Europe than in the US and salaries are scaled somewhat based on the cost of living in each employees city/region. Wikime…

> AFAIK, The largest part of the budget goes to maintaining the servers and network

It’s like you walked into this discussion without reading any of it. That is precisely the issue - less than 10% of the budget goes towards operating Wikipedia, and they’re still begging for money.

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