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Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#321

Post by zztop44 »

akolbe wrote: post #303
t8sr wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bus driver in San Francisco makes about 80k on average, ranging up to about 150k AFAIK. The higher end is more than a senior engineer makes at Wikimedia in California. It maybe highlights that salaries in the US are higher than in much of the rest of the world, but I don't think that's Wikimedia's fault.

Relatively few Wikimedia staff are in San Francisco. Nearly half are outside the United States: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_... As for the other side of the equation, revenue, most of that is from readers' donations. And most of that comes from North America, Europe, Australia and East Asia. But the Foundation also shows its fundraising messages and sends its fundraising emails begging…

There are many wealthy/high income people in India, Brazil and South Africa. Proportionally fewer, but still many.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#322

Post by andersrs »

mattlondon wrote: post #239
ilikehurdles wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that time it’s become increasingly challenging to contribute anything to The People’s Encyclopedia. I wanted to update a local wiki page with newer data from its original sources, but apparently I have become blacklisted because I use/used Apple’s private relay and safari’s privacy measures by default in all my browsing. Disabling them didn’t fix it. I would love to sign up as a fallback measure to be able to cont…

It has always been like this - at least for the past 10-15 years or so it has been essentially impossible to edit wikipedia. Basically any change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor. I think some editors decide that they "own" certain pages or group of pages and install themselves as some sort of authority/gate keeper/moderator. If your edit does not please them, it's gone. Inst…

There is a lot of demand to control the narrative on political articles. Some political groups [1][2] have mobs of Wikipedia editors trying to influence what you read. I'd be surprised if they didn't have a few moderator roles otherwise a lot of their work would be reverted.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t52LB2fYhoY

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-edit...

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#323

Post by rqtwteye »

jl6 wrote: post #231
carapace wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You could submit your CV to an executive search agency. But wouldn’t it be remarkable if what you are saying was true? If there really is a pool of 100,000’s of equally skilled people lining up to do the same job for much, much less, then that would make the board of every major corporation fools. Remember, these are the cut-throat capitalists who’ll sell their mother for a percentage, who relentlessly optimize their…

"If there really is a pool of 100,000’s of equally skilled people lining up to do the same job for much, much less, then that would make the board of every major corporation fools. "

Don't forget that a lot of board members sit on a lot of other boards or are executives somewhere. It's an insider club that protects themselves.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#324

Post by kajaktum »

tptacek wrote: post #232
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…

Just don't donate to them. My feelings about Wikipedia come pretty close to reverence, and I've never even considered sending them money. They'll be fine no matter what. By all means, advocate against donating to them! They don't need the money. Unless someone here really thinks it's important for Wikipedia to pull in 9 figures in grants and donations, I'm not sure there's as much to argue about here as it seems. Org…

> not giving money to one of the few online that provide free access to billions of people without ads

So what would you give your money to? inb4 typical homeless/war/refugee charity. People give money to way greater evil than Wikimedia. For example I myself bought expensive as shit coffee (not even worth the price) twice for the past 2 months. It's an overpriced garbage that I regret buying every time, but I never donated to Wikimedia either. I am sure you and many others share the same experience.

With regards to money, they can put all that to an investment company or something and continue to make more money. Why not? So far they have much better track record than any other organizations/companies that I can think of.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#325

Post by andersrs »

swalling wrote: post #246
mattlondon wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has always been like this - at least for the past 10-15 years or so it has been essentially impossible to edit wikipedia. Basically any change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor. I think some editors decide that they "own" certain pages or group of pages and install themselves as some sort of authority/gate keeper/moderator. If your edit does not please them, it's gone. Inst…

> Basically any change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor. You sound like someone who was pushing a particular point of view about politics, which is precisely the kind of edits that are set up for organ rejection given Wikipedia's strict stance on neutrality, sourcing, and the fact that politics are naturally contentious / prone to edit warring. There are between 1.5 and 2 mil…

Sure there is a lot of spam but there is also a lot of political pressure to influence politically controversial articles. This rather old video was an eye opener for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t52LB2fYhoY

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#326

Post by adastra22 »

qingcharles wrote: post #186
adastra22 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t though. The amount of money they are spending on the core product you are thinking of is actually declining. All this extra raised cash is going to other purposes.

They are and they aren't. I mean, they are still spending money on the core product and it is still a great product and I still love it, but I understand what you're getting at - they're getting proportionally more cash but not spending it on Wikipedia, but all sorts of other side projects that most people are never going to use. I'm still happy to let them do it simply because of the love I have for all their work o…

That would be okay if not for one (1) the deceptive advertising they plaster Wikipedia with saying they’re about to shut down when in fact hosting costs are a rounding error, and (2) many of the things they are funding has absolutely jack all to do with Wikipedia.

It’s Kars4Kids levels of charitable fraud.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#327

Post by grumple »

noobermin wrote: post #298
t8sr wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, Wikimedia has about 250-300 employees and what they pay their CEO is about what Facebook and Google pay a senior SWE. They seem to run pretty lean to me. Firing everyone and moving to a cheap country doesn't seem feasible, and they already are apparently moving a lot of their hiring to Germany. I don't really see what's outrageous here? > Obviously it's become a gravy train . Oh come on - their CEO manages 25…

To be honest, this more highlights how far out of step tech salaries are with...well everyone else.

If a company is making 1 million per employee, why shouldn't the employee get a substantial part of that? I was personally responsible for easily 2 million / year in income at my previous job (and possibly just as much or more at my current job).

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#328

Post by patrec »

tptacek wrote: post #310
patrec wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telling yourself that no matter how many parasitic grifters the surplus gazillions attract, wikipedia will be "fine" won't make it so.

Saying it won't make it so, true. And yet, it is so.

Are the universities fine after the decades long algae bloom of administrators? Has admission become more merit based, tuition more affordable, inquiry freer, and the pace of scientific breakthroughs faster?

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#329

Post by grumple »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #200
lallysingh wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yikes, staff with a larger severance. I'm not surprised, I can't imagine it's easy to find a new CEO job after losing your last one.

It's not as if someone who has already been making several hundred grand is in dire need of financial stability between employment opportunities.

You could say the same about any professional. You do it because it's the right thing to do, and if you don't do it, people are more likely not to work for you in the future.

Re: Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

#330

Post by xnyan »

Alupis wrote: post #190
costco wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

During which, Wikipedia and it's prominent editors have become increasingly biased in their reporting of events. Instead of being a neutral "just the facts", we get editorialization about all kinds of things that just further entrench our two camps. Word choice, framing, referenced articles, things left unsaid, etc.

I’m not sure how you’d like people to evaluate this claim without some examples. Yes, some people will try to nitpick, but many readers here will engage in good faith. What’s an example of a heavily editorialized article?
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