Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
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Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
#2Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
#3Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. That seems low for an executive at one of the most important (or at least, most viewed) websites on the planet.
Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
#4With the financial situation being how it is I, paradoxically, would currently consider donating to Wikipedia to be actively harmful to the future of Wikipedia. The larger its dragon hoard of money grows (which is already way beyond any sort of costs to keep up Wikipedia for decades), the larger the incentive for unscrupulous individuals to corrupt the Wikipedia mission to tap into this money for personal benefit. I can't help but conclude that if you love Wikipedia and what it does... don't give them any more money for the time being.
Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
#5Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. That seems low for an executive at one of the most important (or at least, most viewed) websites on the planet.
What do they do, though?
Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
#6Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. That seems low for an executive at one of the most important (or at least, most viewed) websites on the planet.
that's a lot of salary for something that is going broke and needs donations now.
Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
#7Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. That seems low for an executive at one of the most important (or at least, most viewed) websites on the planet.
>Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange.
It's not, really. It's about how you frame things, and the follow-up tweets touch on that:
>You wouldn't think so from the fundraising emails currently being sent out, telling people to donate "to keep Wikipedia online", saying it's "awkward to ask", etc. A recent poll of Wikipedia volunteers condemned these emails as unethical and misleading
>If people want to throw money into a bottomless pit, fine; but let's not pretend that the money is needed "to keep Wikipedia online".
>And that story is not the story told to prospective donors. Wikipedia and its unpaid volunteers – the people who actually write and curate Wikipedia – deserve better.
Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
#8Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. That seems low for an executive at one of the most important (or at least, most viewed) websites on the planet.
I guess you have to compare it to the salary of the donors who feel compelled by these heart-wrenching fundraising messages to donate. Here is a senior with $18 to his name promising to donate as soon as his social security check arrives:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#S...
The Wikimedia Foundation has also just been fundraising in India and South Africa, again asking people there to donate so Wikipedia stays online for them, ad-free, subscription-free and independent.
None of these executives have anything do with the Wikipedia content. All of that is written by unpaid volunteers in their spare time. When Wikipedia first became a top-10 website, the Wikimedia Foundation had less than a dozen staff, and annual expenses of $2 million. I am not saying lets go back to that; I'm only saying this to make the point that the success of Wikipedia was not dependent on highly paid executives. It happened when there weren't any. The main value of the site comes from the volunteers.
Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
#9This is an extremely misleading take.
Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent financial report.
They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, and came out of the year with $240 million in assets.[1]
So they had about half a year's surplus, and wound up with ~2 years worth of savings. And yes, that's a simplification, a good chunk of those assets are necessary to continue operating and cannot be liquefied to cover operating expenses.
In 19-20, they took in $120 million against a $111 million operating budget.[2]
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
[2]https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu...
So, yes, Wikipedia is doing well - as we should hope they would be. But no, they are not rolling in it, and yes they do depend on our continued support to continue doing well.
Edit: The article linked in the tweet asks valid questions and puts the stats in better context, but the twitter thread presents the numbers in a way that is very, frustratingly, misleading.
Re: Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved
#10With the financial situation being how it is I, paradoxically, would currently consider donating to Wikipedia to be actively harmful to the future of Wikipedia. The larger its dragon hoard of money grows (which is already way beyond any sort of costs to keep up Wikipedia for decades), the larger the incentive for unscrupulous individuals to corrupt the Wikipedia mission to tap into this money for personal benefit. I…
The bigger threat to Wikipedia is people who want to corrupt its information content. People wanting to get their treasure chest is not an existential threat. The existing employees and collaborators are more likely to get corrupted by nefarious actors if they don't have independent revenue sources.