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Wikimedia Foundation spent $88M for salaries in 2021-22 as a no profit

meta.wikimedia.org

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Re: Wikimedia Foundation spent $88M for salaries in 2021-22 as a no profit

#11

Post by blep_ »

efficax wrote: post #8

I do find the wikipedia donation nags annoying (they go away if you register), and it's wild how much money they have. But Wikipedia is also one of the best things on the internet, one of the best holdovers from the golden age of the web. I don't feel bad that the people working on it are well paid. The world would be much worse without Wikipedia.

A lot of the friction here is that the WMF (nonprofit who gets donations and runs servers) and the Wikipedia community (the unpaid people who write the content and run the project[0]) are separate entities. Many people in the community feel that the WMF is misleading donors into thinking the donations are for the latter.

[0] Including administrators. It's customary to say "btw I have never been paid to edit", completely unprompted, when accepting a nomination for adminship.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation spent $88M for salaries in 2021-22 as a no profit

#12

Post by im3w1l »

When you donate money to charity it must eventually end up in someones pocket. Maybe it's spent on salaries, or maybe it's spent on goods and services (which will in most cases also means spending on salaries indirectly). Some mercenary is always making the money you donate. It's an inescapable fact.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation spent $88M for salaries in 2021-22 as a no profit

#13

Post by jfengel »

The term "nonprofit" is rather weird. It means that the organization doesn't have shareholders, so no person owns the money that the organization doesn't spend.

Salaries are a common thing that nonprofits spend their money on. That table shows some very comfortable salaries, but not at all out of keeping with an organization that size. There are many larger nonprofits with much larger salaries: a number of health care systems are incorporated as nonprofits, and their executives get well into the tens of millions.

You also get organizations like MITRE, a billion-dollar federal contractor that pays million-dollar salaries to its C suite. I'm honestly not sure how that's legal. The health care firms are dubious enough.

Still... the idea is that they're not trying to earn a profit for shareholders. They don't pay taxes on their profits because nobody owns that money. The employees who earn 7 and 8 figure salaries, they do pay ordinary income tax on that money, as anybody else does.

I really don't know how much actual work Wikimedia does and whether it's spending that $88M well or badly. But I can say that it is in keeping with the American tax system's use of the term "nonprofit", which is not really what people expect it to be from the word alone.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation spent $88M for salaries in 2021-22 as a no profit

#16

Post by xyzzy123 »

silcoon wrote: post #6

Other than having more than $350M of founds, the Wikimedia Foundation has started selling Wikipedia data to private companies (like Google) via Wikimedia Enterprise [1]. The open knowledge created by the community worldwide is now sold for profit of a few. [1]: https://enterprise.wikimedia.com/

From the FAQ: "All revenue from Wikimedia Enterprise goes towards the charitable mission of the Wikimedia Foundation."

Re: Wikimedia Foundation spent $88M for salaries in 2021-22 as a no profit

#18

Post by WiSaGaN »

fourseventy wrote: post #14

Wikipedia gives away an amazing product for free and people still find something to bitch about.

I had donated to Wikipedia almost every year before I saw this kind of thing and Wikipedia basically became an entity advancing US foreign policy.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation spent $88M for salaries in 2021-22 as a no profit

#19

Post by legitster »

blep_ wrote: post #11
efficax wrote: post #8

I do find the wikipedia donation nags annoying (they go away if you register), and it's wild how much money they have. But Wikipedia is also one of the best things on the internet, one of the best holdovers from the golden age of the web. I don't feel bad that the people working on it are well paid. The world would be much worse without Wikipedia.

A lot of the friction here is that the WMF (nonprofit who gets donations and runs servers) and the Wikipedia community (the unpaid people who write the content and run the project[0]) are separate entities. Many people in the community feel that the WMF is misleading donors into thinking the donations are for the latter. [0] Including administrators. It's customary to say "btw I have never been paid to edit", complet…

It's hard to imagine a world in which hiring full-time editors would not have much, much worse outcomes.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation spent $88M for salaries in 2021-22 as a no profit

#20

Post by legitster »

jfengel wrote: post #13

The term "nonprofit" is rather weird. It means that the organization doesn't have shareholders, so no person owns the money that the organization doesn't spend. Salaries are a common thing that nonprofits spend their money on. That table shows some very comfortable salaries, but not at all out of keeping with an organization that size. There are many larger nonprofits with much larger salaries: a number of health car…

I don't know why it should even be that controversial.

It was never the government's intent to determine which nonprofits are truly noble and just. It's also not their job to govern how well they spend their resources, or how big they are allowed to be.

If they are lying or defrauding donors, there are existing legal remedies.

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