221–230 of 252 posts
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Maybe there is a case for moving much of it outside the US? Lots of staffers work remotely anyway.
Yes. OTOH, United states has one of the best free speech protections in the world. It would make sense, to have the key people and data centers in the US. EU, however, has better privacy protection initiatives.
Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. That seems low for an executive at one of the most important (or at least, most viewed) websites on the planet.
100% agreed. $350k salaries for people that have basically built and maintained the modern-day Library of Alexandria is a pittance. These people deserve it.
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WMF is not a tech company, and their value is not in their tech. Their value is in their user created and populated content .
So youtube isn't a tech company?
YouTube however is a subsidiary of Alphabet, which is a tech company.
Yeah I've looked into this before and it's basically true. They have way more money than they need. They justify it by saying "look at all the outreach projects we do!" but really nobody was asking for those. The people donating don't know they exist. If they had spent wisely they could easily have a $0.5bn endowment by now and basically be self-sustaining without donations. It also feels like a massive waste for one…
They've built several GUI editors, and a more forum like discussion experience ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Flow/Bac_%C3%A0... ) which the community on larger wikis has pretty forcefully rejected
"Back in 2014, we had a very clear list of how to fix talk pages. Yet the mw:Talk pages project only started in 2019."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
Which reminds me: 3 of the 6 community candidates shortlisted for the Wikimedia board this year supported election compass statement #5:
"WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever."
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio...
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Paying for a gym membership is pretty standard perk in the industry. If anything, this is usually considered bare minimum You can't get employees if you don't pay them. This is what paying employees means in the tech industry.
That's what it means in Silicon Valley . It's not what it means in India, South Africa, Brazil, nor even Europe I think. These are all places where the WMF has just been fundraising. Nobody is forcing the WMF to hire in America.
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Is it really true that their hoard is enough to keep the site running for decades? it seems their annual surplus is less than their annual expenses..
You can't just look at the total expenses, you need to look at what the necessary expenses are. It's easy to create new expenses when you have available money to spend.
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That's what it means in Silicon Valley . It's not what it means in India, South Africa, Brazil, nor even Europe I think. These are all places where the WMF has just been fundraising. Nobody is forcing the WMF to hire in America.
WMF doesn't just hire in america. Although you probably only get the gym membership if you are american as the non americans are usually contractors.
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No; see my reply to dbingham above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32843394 When deciding where to donate we should consider where our money will do the most good. "Keep Wikipedia online" is a candidate for one of the most important things, if that's actually what your money will help do. But other Wikimedia projects, while useful, are generally nowhere near as high priority, and there are a lot of other places…
They are all hosted on the same group of servers using the same software. Its non-sensical to talk about money going to keep other wikimedia projects online instead of wikipedia. That's not how things work.
People may be excited to fund that other work too, but they should make the case for it instead of pretending there's a risk Wikipedia and their other sites will drop off the internet.
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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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode_(gadget) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode
I'm guessing I'll end up either using an extension or writing something up in Greasemonkey. There might even already be a userscript out there I can use.
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So netflix should have only paid for DVDs and shipping?
Elaborate?