71–80 of 252 posts
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that's a lot of salary for something that is going broke and needs donations now.
Is requesting donations better or worse than selling advertising?
Wikipedia is a very effective medium for reinforcing the spread of false information and as such will never be "broke".
If you see false information on Wikipedia, go and correct it!
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I guess you have to compare it to the salary of the donors who feel compelled by these heart-wrenching fundraising messages to donate. Here is a senior with $18 to his name promising to donate as soon as his social security check arrives: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#S... The Wikimedia Foundation has also just been fundraising in India and South Africa, again asking people there to donat…
Being envious of something doesn't make it cheaper. Most in-demand, skilled labour is much more pricey than what the average person makes.
Imagine you were asked to donate to "keep the animal shelter open", and went you went there you found that they were using gold water dishes for the little critters. You would be within your right to complain. You thought you were donating to keep it operating, but now you find that they're using funds on frivolous expenses. Is there something a dish made out of gold does that one made out of plastic doesn't, to justify the expense? Is there something a $350k executive does that a minimum wage one (or even none at all) doesn't?
Any organization that asks for donations would be subject to criticism if it doesn't optimize its operations as much as possible.
This is an extremely misleading take. Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent financial report. They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, and came out of the year with $240 million in assets.[1] So they had about half a year's surplus, and wound up with ~2 years worth of savings. And yes, that's a simplification, a good chunk of those assets are necessary to continue op…
The giant operating budget is what people take issue with.
People see these banners on the website and assume that their donations are going to fund the website. However, the Wikimedia Foundation has been inexplicably expanding their budgets to match whatever amount of money comes in each year, leading them to this endless cycle of needing ever-increasing amounts of donations because they're doing ever-increasing amounts of spending on various activities unrelated to serving the website.
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I guess you have to compare it to the salary of the donors who feel compelled by these heart-wrenching fundraising messages to donate. Here is a senior with $18 to his name promising to donate as soon as his social security check arrives: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#S... The Wikimedia Foundation has also just been fundraising in India and South Africa, again asking people there to donat…
Being envious of something doesn't make it cheaper. Most in-demand, skilled labour is much more pricey than what the average person makes.
And Wikipedia became a top-10 website in 2007, when there was no C-Suite. There seems to be little awareness these days that the main value of the site to the public was and is built and maintained by unpaid volunteers.
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Sundar Pichai gets ~$250M. Parag Agrawal gets something like $30M.
Apples and oranges, you should instead compare it with other non-profits. According to top links in search for 'non profit ceo salary' give me average salary numbers about $150k
This is an extremely misleading take. Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent financial report. They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, and came out of the year with $240 million in assets.[1] So they had about half a year's surplus, and wound up with ~2 years worth of savings. And yes, that's a simplification, a good chunk of those assets are necessary to continue op…
> They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, The giant operating budget is what people take issue with. People see these banners on the website and assume that their donations are going to fund the website . However, the Wikimedia Foundation has been inexplicably expanding their budgets to match whatever amount of money comes in each year, leading them to this endless cycle of needing ever-i…
This is an extremely misleading take. Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent financial report. They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, and came out of the year with $240 million in assets.[1] So they had about half a year's surplus, and wound up with ~2 years worth of savings. And yes, that's a simplification, a good chunk of those assets are necessary to continue op…
They have an "$111 million operating budget", but that's because they've decided to spend money on lots of things other than "serve Wikipedia": https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe... Note that "Direct support to websites" includes things like designing and implementing more intuitive article editing UI, which while potentially worth it isn't the kind of "obviously we must do this" that keepin…
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$350k salaries _are_ lavish, though. It seems strange to me that people would argue otherwise.
Sundar Pichai gets ~$250M. Parag Agrawal gets something like $30M.