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Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#251

Post by ska »

tombert wrote: post #17
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…

To be fair, salaries going up isn't necessarily a sign of them "bloating". I've worked for startups before at a reduced salary, with the expectation that as they become more stable they'll bump up the salary to a correct number. In theory, people could have joined Wikimedia at a low salary while they were still struggling, and as they've become way more stable the salaries have gone up as a bit of a correction. That…

In my limited experience 1.5x annual is pretty normal for senior executives.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#252

Post by ska »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #121
tombert wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, salaries going up isn't necessarily a sign of them "bloating". I've worked for startups before at a reduced salary, with the expectation that as they become more stable they'll bump up the salary to a correct number. In theory, people could have joined Wikimedia at a low salary while they were still struggling, and as they've become way more stable the salaries have gone up as a bit of a correction. That…

You don't join a startup with the expectation that your base salary is going to explode from the related growth; that's the equity lottery. Your startup salary might go from somewhat below to market, that's not waht's happening here.

> below to market, that's not waht's happening here.

It isn't? They seemed like pretty normal market salaries for the type of position.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#253

Post by capitainenemo »

Joeboy wrote: post #223
capitainenemo wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fairly unreasonable since NFT values are really not tied to anything, and in tokens that may or may not be valued at what they are supposedly valued due to manipulation of the small markets (similar to penny stock pump and dump). So those values can be more about money laundering or poor signaling than any indication of real worth.

What would be a good comparison? Meta spending $36+bn on the Metaverse[0]? What are examples of websites that provide clearly better value for money than Wikipedia? [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lost-30-billion-on-meta...

That would be a better one yes. It was just a bad comparison of fake valuation to real.

But I don't think anyone is disagreeing that Wikipedia is offering good value for money, just that some people might be justifying that to excessively compensate themselves for an operation that requires very little to run and depends almost entirely on unpaid volunteers.

"well, our service is a boon to mankind, therefore it warrants skimming a bit off the top"

And that could be a problem in the long run.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#254

Post by bombcar »

bdidbdidhdidh wrote: post #237
bombcar wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundraising part is the completeness of it. I could probably COO on the non-fundraising side, but I'd be an absolute fundraising failure. Non-profit C level execs are fundraisers.

even when all the money is from a banner?

Not sure what the percentages are but many non profits live or die on a few large donors.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#255

Post by ilyt »

costco wrote: post #174
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…

2016 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $69,136,758 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $145,970,915 I love Wikipedia but I don't see how this cost explosion can evenly be remotely justified. What value have they added in that time? A new editor and CSS on articles?

And I preferred previous theme anyway...

And it can't be set without being logged in ;/

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#256

Post by akolbe »

qingcharles wrote: post #243
akolbe wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you really not know that the editors and "moderators" (a term not used on Wikipedia) are unpaid? The Wikimedia Foundation intervenes very rarely in content. Essentially, it only takes action on content if there is a court order to that effect. ALL OTHER CONTENT CURATION IS DONE BY UNPAID VOLUNTEERS. The Foundation "does not write or curate any of the content found on the projects", as they are happy to tell you t…

No, I understand completely; it wasn't clear from my post. I've been an editor myself since 2004. What Wikimedia have done is create a platform and mission and steered that mission to produce a culture that has bred the unpaid editors and kept them on-mission and stopped too many of them going rogue. That platform steering is not to be underestimated. Too many sites with user-generated content descend into insanity w…

Okay, I understand, and thanks for explaining. (I first registered an account in 2006.)

To what extent do you think it is the Foundation that keeps this culture and mindset going these days? And does more money and higher pay help them to do so?

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#257

Post by manmal »

tchaffee wrote: post #205
pessimizer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Valve?

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#258

Post by Jianghong94 »

I mean, can't we form a web3 dao to perform acquisition of WMF (or a hostile-takeover?), if it works out donors get to vote next leadership, etc etc, drive cost low and make sure things are in good hands, if it doesn't work out then just return the cash back, plain and simple.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#259

Post by smsm42 »

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…

> I hope they're politically neutral.

WMF is definitely not politically neutral, neither is English Wikipedia (don't know much about the rest).

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#260

Post by smsm42 »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #102
thecopy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>politically neutral What does politically neutral mean?

Both sides think you're biased. That's how the BBC does it.

You seem to be implying BBC is not biased. I have bad news for you in this case.
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