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Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

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Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#91

Post by Dylan16807 »

reflexco wrote: post #10
orlp wrote: post #4

With the financial situation being how it is I, paradoxically, would currently consider donating to Wikipedia to be actively harmful to the future of Wikipedia. The larger its dragon hoard of money grows (which is already way beyond any sort of costs to keep up Wikipedia for decades), the larger the incentive for unscrupulous individuals to corrupt the Wikipedia mission to tap into this money for personal benefit. I…

The bigger threat to Wikipedia is people who want to corrupt its information content. People wanting to get their treasure chest is not an existential threat. The existing employees and collaborators are more likely to get corrupted by nefarious actors if they don't have independent revenue sources.

> if they don't have independent revenue sources.

Nobody is saying wikipedia should have zero donations. Just that people piling on extra money should cool it.

Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#92

Post by mrguyorama »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #73
feoren wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you see false information on Wikipedia, go and correct it!

Who's got more time and capacity to play the wiki game, me or the PR firm hired to edit a politician's wiki page?

All you have to do is find a bored wikipedia nerd "editor". They will gladly take on the bureaucratic battle to get that PR firm banned from editing wikipedia content.

The people who make editing wikipedia their identity have A LOT of time on their hands, and LOVE fixing these kinds of things because it makes wikipedia better, and look better.

Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#93

Post by Dylan16807 »

dane-pgp wrote: post #24
JohnFen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$350k salaries _are_ lavish, though. It seems strange to me that people would argue otherwise.

It may be lavish, but if an executive paid $350k is 35% less likely to make a mistake that would cost the organisation $1m (which is about 1% of their budget), compared to a volunteer working for free, then maybe, from the organisation's point of view, the expenditure is cheap. Of course, judging performance like that is very difficult, and predicting it in advance is even harder, so it's possible that the highly pai…

> It may be lavish, but if an executive paid $350k is 35% less likely to make a mistake that would cost the organisation $1m (which is about 1% of their budget), compared to a volunteer working for free, then maybe, from the organisation's point of view, the expenditure is cheap.

They're not though. Especially not multiple of them providing the same service.

Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#94

Post by amelius »

orlp wrote: post #4

With the financial situation being how it is I, paradoxically, would currently consider donating to Wikipedia to be actively harmful to the future of Wikipedia. The larger its dragon hoard of money grows (which is already way beyond any sort of costs to keep up Wikipedia for decades), the larger the incentive for unscrupulous individuals to corrupt the Wikipedia mission to tap into this money for personal benefit. I…

Wow, that almost sounds like "don't feed the dog, because it'll become a beggar".

Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#95

Post by yupper32 »

jhbadger wrote: post #34
koprulusector wrote: post #19

I don't understand the point of this tweet. Is this a bad thing? If this is a bad thing, why?

The point is lots of people (including myself until about a year ago) were under the impression that Wikipedia was on the verge of bankruptcy, and would likely either stop existing or be purchased by Microsoft or Google if it wasn't for our donations, so I gave every time they asked. Learning that they are swimming in money makes us seem like we've been fooled.

Do you just donate to places without looking into their finances and how they spend their money? It's not like wikipedia hides it. It's right on their website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances

I tend to only donate to places that seem to spend the money well and efficiently, for example.

Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#96

Post by JohnFen »

yupper32 wrote: post #89
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from the organisation's point of view, the expenditure is cheap But from any normal person's perspective, it's expensive. The difference is who is in control and what are their priorities and influences. Since "the organization" is making the decisions - and, completely incidentally, "the CEO" is the head of "the organization" - it just so happens that "the organization" finds that "the CEO" should be paid lavishly…

> But from any normal person's perspective, it's expensive. Why does it matter what that hypothetical "normal" person thinks? Does that "normal" person have insight into how much it costs to hire a competent executive?

It matters because "normal" people are the ones paying those extravagant salaries in the end.

Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#97

Post by throw10920 »

orlp wrote: post #4

With the financial situation being how it is I, paradoxically, would currently consider donating to Wikipedia to be actively harmful to the future of Wikipedia. The larger its dragon hoard of money grows (which is already way beyond any sort of costs to keep up Wikipedia for decades), the larger the incentive for unscrupulous individuals to corrupt the Wikipedia mission to tap into this money for personal benefit. I…

Anyone remember cost disease[1]? My favorite hypothesis for one of the major causes is an excess of funding/resources/money without pressure to efficiently make use of those resources - which includes not siphoning them off for personal gain, as you point out here

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#98

Post by autoexec »

xyzzyz wrote: post #33
woodruffw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link: 25% overhead doesn’t really seem that bad? If those numbers are accurate, 75c of every dollar goes directly to hosting, development, and community support (things like grants and legal aid for editors). That’s probably on par if not better than most nonprofits.

Have you noticed any actual development on Wikipedia? Only thing that changes from the user perspective is that the donation request get more and more annoying every year.

I have noticed some changes like in how they handle media, but most of their development must be backend work because for the most part you shouldn't notice a bunch of changes. The site should be kept as simple and unobtrusive as possible. The only feature I really want them to have that they don't is dark mode.

Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#99

Post by endisneigh »

jefftk wrote: post #88
spywaregorilla wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a bit silly to me. Working on the UI that enables expanding and maintaining wikipedia feels like a reasonable top priority of the organization responsible for maintaining wikipedia. If they just "served" it, it would collapse.

I agree it's a reasonable thing for them to work on, but not to fundraise for under the banner of "keep Wikipedia online".

Why not?

Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

#100

Post by akolbe »

JohnFen wrote: post #60
dane-pgp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be lavish, but if an executive paid $350k is 35% less likely to make a mistake that would cost the organisation $1m (which is about 1% of their budget), compared to a volunteer working for free, then maybe, from the organisation's point of view, the expenditure is cheap. Of course, judging performance like that is very difficult, and predicting it in advance is even harder, so it's possible that the highly pai…

> if an executive paid $350k is 35% less likely to make a mistake that would cost the organisation $1m (which is about 1% of their budget), compared to a volunteer working for free, then maybe, from the organisation's point of view, the expenditure is cheap. True, but I'd be hard-pressed to believe that's a realistic hypothetical at all.

Some of the most expensive WMF execs have been complete disasters, exiting after a year or two and leaving the entire organisation in disarray.
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