This I why I don't donate to wikipedia anymore; I found out they actually don't need it.
Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
131–140 of 417 posts
Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
#132Why are they actually getting any severance at all? It looks like they resigned to take new jobs. They weren't sacked or made redundant.
Katherine left under questionable circumstances (right after a rebranding attempt that absolutely exploded). Who knows what really happened, but it seems plausible it wasn't her choice.
It's amazing how once you become what used to be called a quangocrat [1] you seem to live in this charmed circle where you keep getting offered positions on the board for X or a researcher at Y, effortlessly failing upwards through NGOs, think tanks and charities without any accountability or record of achievement.
[1] https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/quang...
Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course if you're comparing to a strawman where they pay everyone that'd be a bad idea that I wouldn't approve either. Nothing Wikipedia currently does with its money justifies the sums they are getting. If they decided to use that money to generate content, I'd imagine that would work more like normal encyclopedias instead of volunteer based. Where they would seek out actual experts, and only in scientific fields…
I think the people who want "actual experts" should go read encyclopedias built by actual experts. That user segment need not be targeted by Wikipedia. Wikipedia is what it is because of volunteer editors like me. It is not feasible to convert it to be majority "expert" so if it attempted to do so, the cost would be exorbitant and the users who prefer "expert-written work" will not be satisfied until it is complete s…
I see no reason why expert-written articles would have to be locked from further edits, or marked as expert-written. They could be subject to the same formal standards as the rest of Wikipedia, but with guarantee that those standards are applied.
There are already paid Wikipedia editors, they tend to be working for PR firms. A non-profit doing the same thing for altruistic purposes sounds feasible and good to me, it wouldn't even need to necessarily be part of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
#134One thing I do respect is that this article is hosted on Wikipedia. Not many corporations nor non-profits would host an obviously self effacing article.
Most of this is required public reporting for non-profits.
Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
#135They aren't the ones bringing the value. It's the volunteers, which don't get a penny. They have received enough money to sustain Wikipedia almost indefinitely, I have no idea why they are still begging for money. I haven't heard of a single thing that's good excuse for that money in years. And a corollary would be saying that GitHub deserve money because otherwise there would be no open source. Wikipedia's code and…
Volunteers don't run the servers, they don't handle donation processing for small donors or sweet talk the egos of large donors, they don't respond to lawsuits from people upset about how they are portrayed on Wikipedia. Then all those employees need HR, IT, janitors, etc., and then there are executives who run the organization. If you were a regular Wikipedia editor, you'd know there is a ton of resistance among vol…
I agree that freelance-style paid editors isn't a great idea, but it's not the only option for paid editors.
Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you do this in a country with more than 2 political parties such as the United States [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_t...
Pretending the US has more than two political parties is a weird hobby. There are only two that matter, and it can't be any other way with the current federal election system. It's a problem worth fixing but Wikipedia is not relevant to any solutions.
Ok but ideally the federal election system will be fixed eventually (and also most of the states). And I'd prefer if then we also didn't need to fix a bunch of other systems because they had a lot of 2 party assumptions baked into them.
Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
#137[deleted]
Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
#138How can this foundation be held accountable?
Tax exempt organizations such as nonprofits and churches are pretty famous for being difficult to hold accountable. There are some required public filings, but for the most part, a handpicked board, founder or president decides if they will enrich the mission or enrich themselves. Donors should know who they are giving money to, but most people just recognize a logo and give without thinking much about it.
Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's critical to compensate non-profit employees near the market rate otherwise you end up with sub-par performers, martyrs, having the vision co-opted by the wealthy who can afford to be underpaid, or the young who leave disillusioned. The Gates foundation pioneered this approach and imho it's the right way to operate in the sector.
Asking tangentially, earnestly, and with a genuine lack of knowledge: are $404k and $311k the market rate for the base compensation of a CEO and COO of a non-profit at Wikimedia's scale? EDIT: Found at least one source on US non-profits that excludes healthcare and university roles which skew numbers: https://analytics.excellenceingiving.com/2021-2022-nonprofit... Suggesting $364k compensation for the CEO a nonprofit…
In my experience reading hundreds of IRS 990 forms these number are not out of bounds for non-profits at their scale. Healthcare and university may skew the absolute numbers, but are similar.
Specifically a great executive will personally move the fundraising needle in organizations (+1-5% or more) and mediocre executive can cause losses/missed opportunities in the opposite direction of a similar magnitude. The conventional thinking is the relative fundraising impact of a great vs a good executive may 10x their total compensation, so it's probably worth trying to retain the best.
Anecdotally, I know of a not-for-profit COO who offended an NBA player killing the relationship. His successor COO repaired the relationship, ultimately resulting in multiple millions of new donations and a co-marketing agreement with the team. When the COO was hired there were rumblings because he'd negotiated +$50k over his predecessor.
With no equity and the poor optics of commission compensation or cash-bonuses, big severance packages are one of the few ways an organization can reward employees following years of great service.
Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about development costs ?
The last time Wikimedia Foundation released a new project website was WikiData in 2012, more than 10 years ago. Okay well maybe that's not fair. They did recently update the CSS for Wikipedia itself ... I don't know how many millions of dollars they spent on that...
There's also the visual editor, which I think got a mixed reception, but I like it for quick edits.