Comment by akolbe
3 years ago
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.
Wikipedia should not beg for donations. They should sell ads.
Being envious of something doesn't make it cheaper.
Most in-demand, skilled labour is much more pricey than what the average person makes.
You're answering a point no one made. It has nothing to do with "being envious".
Imagine you were asked to donate to "keep the animal shelter open", and went you went there you found that they were using gold water dishes for the little critters. You would be within your right to complain. You thought you were donating to keep it operating, but now you find that they're using funds on frivolous expenses. Is there something a dish made out of gold does that one made out of plastic doesn't, to justify the expense? Is there something a $350k executive does that a minimum wage one (or even none at all) doesn't?
Any organization that asks for donations would be subject to criticism if it doesn't optimize its operations as much as possible.
> You're answering a point no one made. It has nothing to do with "being envious".
Then what is the relavence of saying "I guess you have to compare it to the salary of the donors who feel compelled ..."? The donors dont do work similar. The only reason i could possibly imagine bringing this up would be something to do with envy between the average person's salary vs the salary of a high skill position. If not that, what was this sentence trying to say?
> Is there something a $350k executive does that a minimum wage one
350k executives exist. Minimum wage one's don't.
Imagine you were donating to an animal shelter, but you discover that they spend more on dogfood than you do on feeding your family. You imagine the reason is that they are feeding the dogs caviar, but the real reason is it costs more to feed 150 dogs than it does to feed 4 people.
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I honestly question the value added by these execs. The other day, you and I discussed some of the expensive C-Suite disasters Wikimedia has bought. They actually set Wikimedia back by years. Dozens of valuable, experienced staff left.
And Wikipedia became a top-10 website in 2007, when there was no C-Suite. There seems to be little awareness these days that the main value of the site to the public was and is built and maintained by unpaid volunteers.
Whether or not a particular set of executives (who have all left at this point) are shit at their jobs is a totally different question to what is a reasonable salary for an executive.
As far as early days of wikipedia. I agree the community is what provides value. But at the same time i think there is a lot of rose coloured glasses for that era. I remember there being a lot of downtime and slowness on the site in that era.
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