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Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

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Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#611

Post by apercu »

cedilla wrote: post #396
apercu wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on there, cowboy. 100k was maybe "sky high" 20 years ago. 100k in most large cities is not. When your modest house costs $800k USD, a car costs 30k, auto insurance is $1600 a year, groceries are 10k a year (looking at you, Toronto), just how in the hell is 100k "sky high"? $80k was a decent salary in a mid-size city 15 years ago. Just because six figures seems like a lot of money to you doesn't mean it's a lot o…

It's more than twice the median salary. It is quite high. Upper class income only seem lackluster compared to the perverse 0.1% incomes and the housing bubble.

You are so right. If you live in rural Iowa that's a lot of money. Guess what? Hundreds of millions of people live in cities where housing, transportation and food costs are prohibitively expensive.

You know how many people live in Iowa?

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#612

Post by apercu »

throwaway438 wrote: post #563
cedilla wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of people live with less than that joke by definition, and most don't have the privilege to be supported by wealthy relatives, either.

Exactly it's a giant joke and when homes were affordable 30 years ago. So it's ridiculous when people act like wages are too high while ignoring inflation without the ability to afford a home unless the wages match what's needed.

It's bullshit. Call it what it is. When people say that wages are fine they are being disingenuous or they are willfully ignorant.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#613

Post by apercu »

jhaygood86 wrote: post #587
apercu wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on there, cowboy. 100k was maybe "sky high" 20 years ago. 100k in most large cities is not. When your modest house costs $800k USD, a car costs 30k, auto insurance is $1600 a year, groceries are 10k a year (looking at you, Toronto), just how in the hell is 100k "sky high"? $80k was a decent salary in a mid-size city 15 years ago. Just because six figures seems like a lot of money to you doesn't mean it's a lot o…

I live in a "large city" (suburbs in a top 10 metro in the US) and $800k gets you a mansion here still. My 3400 sq ft house is worth ~$350k for a "almost new build" (I had it built in 2015) 6 bed / 4 bath, gigabit fiber, swimming pool / soccer field in the community, great schools, shopping, etc.. I'm also a Principal SWE and my salary is well below $200k, though there are years with bonuses, etc.. that I reach $200k

So you live in in an area that have massive urban sprawl and no bounding area driving up the costs (like say San Francisco or Toronto or London). Good for you and your urban sprawl McMansion existence (nothing wrong with it). But just because you can buy a mansion where you live for 800k doesn't mean that for millions of us 1 million dollars will get us a shitty house in a shitty area.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#614

Post by apercu »

arilotter wrote: post #439
h_anna_h wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When your modest house costs $800k USD, a car costs 30k, auto insurance is $1600 a year, groceries are 10k a year (looking at you, Toronto) How did you get these costs? You can get a French Chateau with that much money. https://www.prestigeproperty.co.uk/french-chateau-for-sale-2...

In Toronto (and I mean Toronto proper, not an hour's commute away), a modest house is easily over 1,000,000, and prices are only climbing.

An hour from Toronto houses are close to a million dollars. I am 30 km from the financial district. I live in a modest house in a modest neighbourhood. My house would list for around 900k and there would be a bidding war.

I paid $340k for this house 13 years ago. I thought that was far too expensive but I didn't have a choice.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#616

Post by throwaway2037 »

exporectomy wrote: post #194
throwaway2037 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I also notice the coverage dedicated to women vs men is extremely imbalanced. I know they have a separate team working on the issue and big advert banners about it... but the issue remains: Much more is written about men (living or dead) than women.

Aren't there far more prominent men than women though? Especially when you count the whole of patriarchal history.

I cannot personally agree with the first sentence from a modern context, but the second sentence is reasonable. I'm most bothered with I see articles about important ministers of a country and the women have either just a stub or a few measly paragraphs, and the men have flowing pages. I see the same for business leaders.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#617

Post by 20after4 »

5560675260 wrote: post #483
nemothekid wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is insane - are you arguing the Wikipedia should hire cheaper developers because they are a non-profit? Why stop there - why shouldn't Wikipedia fully cut corners and hire a body shop in a 3rd world country to build the site that millions of people use. wikipedia SHOULD be paying competitve salaries so that their best and brightest don't leave to join tire-fire companies like Facebook. I don't know why you think…

> hire a body shop in a 3rd world country This is a good question. Why shouldn't Wikipedia hire developers from 3rd world countries? It sure shows donation banners there. And there isn't anything magical about US developers and anything special about building sites for millions of people. Expertise is there, often used by US companies, salaries are not.

Wikimedia hires developers from all over the world. Although the pay scale is adjusted for cost of living, the lowest salary band is still much higher than the average salary of other companies hiring in, for example, a lower-income area of the Midwest US.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#618

Post by 20after4 »

jiofih wrote: post #580
20after4 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating a network at the scale of Wikimedia's is no small task. AFAIK, The largest part of the budget goes to maintaining the servers and network (and paying the people who maintain them). It's also worth noting that many of Wikimedia's staff are remote. I think more of the engineers are based in Europe than in the US and salaries are scaled somewhat based on the cost of living in each employees city/region. Wikime…

> AFAIK, The largest part of the budget goes to maintaining the servers and network It’s like you walked into this discussion without reading any of it. That is precisely the issue - less than 10% of the budget goes towards operating Wikipedia, and they’re still begging for money.

I did read a substantial portion of the discussion before posting. I just don't believe that it's true that less than 10% goes to operating Wikipedia.

Paying for legal staff who defend lawsuits and advocate for legal reforms that matter is part of "operating Wikipedia."

Paying SREs to be on-call for incident response, plus routine upgrades of servers and racking new hardware is all part of "operating Wikipedia."

Absolutely essential parts of operating Wikipedia certainly account for a lot more than 10% of the budget. Sure there is a lot of overhead and I'm sure some expenditures are non-essential. I just can't agree with your assessment. The overhead and excesses are quite certainly nowhere near 90%.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#619

Post by apercu »

pmoriarty wrote: post #501
apercu wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on there, cowboy. 100k was maybe "sky high" 20 years ago. 100k in most large cities is not. When your modest house costs $800k USD, a car costs 30k, auto insurance is $1600 a year, groceries are 10k a year (looking at you, Toronto), just how in the hell is 100k "sky high"? $80k was a decent salary in a mid-size city 15 years ago. Just because six figures seems like a lot of money to you doesn't mean it's a lot o…

These people could work from anywhere.. especially today that working remote has become the norm, but even if working remote wasn't an option there's no reason they have to live in an expensive city. They could commute, just like most of the rest of us who can't afford to live in rich cities. Wikimedia is a global foundation, so they don't have to live in the US even. They could have easily hired someone from a count…

I have ~17 years experience (maybe more) with outsourcing to cheaper countries to "save money". It's never been effective on anything valuable I have worked on. No money was ever saved. Just took more time from those near near the client.
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