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Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#201

Post by pessimizer »

FredPret wrote: post #32
tombert wrote: post #5

Man, I've been fired by for-profit companies and felt lucky to get four weeks severance. It's upsetting that people working for a non-profit are getting 1.5x their salary, but I guess this is kind of what we get for believing that a non-profit is going to act better than an evil corporation.

While I think Wikipedia is highly suspect given its ample reserves and continued begging, it should not be upsetting for you. It should bring you joy that someone got treated well.

If you like that, I've got a non-profit that pays 100% of net income out as a severance package for its ex-CEO, who is currently helping as the interim CEO (and only employee) for a token $1/year. I will accept all donations in the spirit of joy in which they were given.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#202

Post by kwooding »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #151
concordDance wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move to Canada, Germany, Australia or wherever.

There are only two parties in Canada. Three if you count the Bloc.

That’s a weird comment. Were you trying to be sarcastic?

There are 3 major federal parties (Liberals, Conservatives, NDP), who received 33%, 33%, and 18% of the popular vote respectively.

There are two minor federal parties (Greens and the People’s party) who together took around 7% of the popular vote, and

Finally there is the Bloc Québécois. It is a federal party but it exists only in one province. It grabbed around 8% last time.

Of course those percentages aren’t entirely representative, because seats are won in a first-past-the-post style in each riding.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#204

Post by kylec »

andersrs wrote: post #14

Just take a look at this graph. The salaries have been bloating whilst hosting expenses are flat and plummeting as a proportion of all expenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi... Net assets are sitting at ~$240M about 10x what they were a decade ago. Yet they roll out a sob-story banner on every page insinuating that they mi…

Yeah, I love Wikipedia, but it's been a long time since I've donated because they clearly have more money than they know what to do with

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#205

Post by tchaffee »

pessimizer wrote: post #194
tchaffee wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mismanagement could help those funds disappear pretty quickly. It's rare that any kind of organization or business needs no governance.

Only "mismanagement" used as a euphemism for self-dealing or embezzlement, which is what I think many people suspect is occurring now on some level. Wikipedia has a small, constrained remit and if no one ever edited it again, it would still be very useful for decades.

Not only that. Name a big business or big NGO that runs well and has zero leadership.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#206

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

kwooding wrote: post #202
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only two parties in Canada. Three if you count the Bloc.

That’s a weird comment. Were you trying to be sarcastic? There are 3 major federal parties (Liberals, Conservatives, NDP), who received 33%, 33%, and 18% of the popular vote respectively. There are two minor federal parties (Greens and the People’s party) who together took around 7% of the popular vote, and Finally there is the Bloc Québécois. It is a federal party but it exists only in one province. It grabbed aroun…

The NDP has never formed a federal government.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#208

Post by stubybubs »

mtttpt wrote: post #49

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Maher "Maher states that she focuses on global digital inclusion as a way to improve and protect the rights of people to information through technology." Yet the actual mission of Wikipedia is something quite different to this. They push a particular point of view, wrapped up in the false cloak of "neutrality", and assert this as truth. Wikipedia is part of a broader propaganda…

I'm curious, do you do much reading of Wikipedia in languages other than English? I don't, so I don't have an answer here, but I wonder how much neutrality there is in Russian or Vietnamese or Urdu wiki articles.

English Wikipedia is going to have at the very least an English-speaking world tilt to it. Are the others similar?

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#209

Post by fastily »

I’ve been an editor on Wikipedia for nearly 15 years. I reckon I’ve easily contributed tens of thousands of dollars worth of value during this time. To be clear, I don’t expect/want any compensation (I firmly believe in the free knowledge for all mission), but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t sting to see others profit handsomely off of my hard work.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#210

Post by renewiltord »

pessimizer wrote: post #191
renewiltord wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if they are not marked or restricted then I believe they won't appeal to users who want expert articles. Like in the reaction to LLMs we know that people who want high certainty in their articles also want to know when they're in their high certainty environment and when they're not. Mixing the two will cause many of them to be upset. Permitting volunteers to edit will cause many of them to be upset, especial…

> Because if they are not marked or restricted then I believe they won't appeal to users who want expert articles. I believe they will, because the quality will be higher. They shouldn't employ experts as a marketing campaign, they should employ experts as a way to keep interesting entries from devolving into trash heaps. I'd honestly prefer those experts to be research librarians and experts on parliamentary procedu…

One way to bootstrap this approach is to mirror Wikipedia and add on expert articles. That would demonstrate the value of the expert articles. I suspect this value is low. If it were sufficiently high, this Expert Wikipedia would rapidly come to dominate.

I think the Expert Wikipedia would be a bad use of resources because most people do not desire this and because experts will not deliver better articles in general.

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