No wonder they've upped the guilt tripping this year. Wikipedia has enough money right now to run Wikipedia forever but it keeps wasting it on useless stuff and feeling like it needs more. The WMF cannot fathom how to operate without continuous growing wastes of money, and without donations, Wikipedia would die within two years. We need to starve the beast so it learns to live frugally again.
I don’t know if you’re joking or not but of course Wales doesn’t profit directly from this. And, as a non-profit, compensation of executives is public knowledge. I believe Board members get zero compensation other than reimbursement for travel expenses.
(Jimmy Wales did cash in on his reputation with some ads for luxury watches and idk what else he does for $).
Salaries at the WMF have absolutely exploded, though they started out very low given the location and the talent base they were competing for. You probably want the WMF to be a somewhat competitive employer, and Silicon Valley salaries are also through the roof across the board. So those $400K executive salaries are (grating my teeth) vaguely justifiable.
A volunteer-run page summarizes salary progression in key roles (up to 2024)
So you can be assured your money isn’t going to the executives’ bank accounts, not directly anyway. However, this is precisely why non-profit organizations tend to get bloated. The executives can’t get away with a million dollar salaries and not other goodies like stock grants. But you can justify staffing up, which benefits the careers of the executives.
What would justify Silicon Valley salary for an organization that can be based anywhere in the world? They are not doing advanced R&D, or product dev that would justify big numbers or a very specific set of skills.
You guys don’t get it apparently but once the thing became corrupted, got a whiff of power and money, there is no chance they are going to be persuaded into anything long term. They may appear to do so short term to appease but money corrupts permanently.
Don’t be afraid of destroying things. Wikipedia isn’t unique or precious really. Some extended pressure would really rejuvenate the idea of such site in one way or another.
It is doubtful if anyone is in power to pressure them at this point though. Wmf grown like a tumour on the back of the site.
They have enough employees to need a union and a board? It's a CRUD PHP site that I could run from a VPS (joking ofc, but not that much off).
I've never worked in an industry where unionization was a thing, but my general understanding is that the unions are protectionist dreaming of things that were true before but not today, but they want to keep things as they were. Good luck.
I've benefited from Wikipedia, but I don't romanticize it. Either side of the table can't stop the AI onslaught, they are all out of jobs. Another Wikimedia will rise up from the ashes.
>my general understanding is that the unions are protectionist dreaming of things that were true before but not today, but they want to keep things as they were.
This mindset really baffles me, as a unionized guy with a white collar email job. Don't you, like, want things that your employer doesn't want to give you? Job protection? Better than CoL wage growth? Work from home? Internal job progression? Clear, understandable job factors agreed upon in advance?
The union negotiates for what its members want. There's nothing magical about unions that mean, like, a white collar union is going to be negotiating for all its members to get a new hard hat every year, just because that's what auto worker unions do.
You're unfamiliar with the scale of Wikimedia. Besides Wikipedia, they also host multiple other projects, like Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. Besides that, a huge portion of their budget goes towards grants to organizations that help distribute information for free on the internet. This absolutely isn't a "CRUD PHP site".
Wikimedia requires a board. IMO that board should include at least one representative selected by the employees (i.e. a union rep.) It has one seat reserved for the founder.
This governance question doesn't go away if another Wikimedia rises from the ashes. You still will still need a board making decisions, and someone needs to pick the members of the board. Right now there are 8 seats selected by "the community," 7 seats selected by the board, and 1 seat selected by the founder.
Some years ago, I think a french contributor pointed that out, aka
asking why the wikimedia foundation wants so much money.
Now the picture is getting more clear - denying a union is clearly
big brother billionaire thinking, e. g. lowering cost while maximizing
abuse of workers/employees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
No wonder they've upped the guilt tripping this year. Wikipedia has enough money right now to run Wikipedia forever but it keeps wasting it on useless stuff and feeling like it needs more. The WMF cannot fathom how to operate without continuous growing wastes of money, and without donations, Wikipedia would die within two years. We need to starve the beast so it learns to live frugally again.
Jimmy needs his third yacht, dangit!
Seems it'd be far more reasonable to direct the excess funds into an endowment of sorts instead of spending it on other areas.
If they did that they'd already have a big enough endowment to fund all of Wikimedia for life.
1 reply →
I don’t know if you’re joking or not but of course Wales doesn’t profit directly from this. And, as a non-profit, compensation of executives is public knowledge. I believe Board members get zero compensation other than reimbursement for travel expenses.
(Jimmy Wales did cash in on his reputation with some ads for luxury watches and idk what else he does for $).
Salaries at the WMF have absolutely exploded, though they started out very low given the location and the talent base they were competing for. You probably want the WMF to be a somewhat competitive employer, and Silicon Valley salaries are also through the roof across the board. So those $400K executive salaries are (grating my teeth) vaguely justifiable.
A volunteer-run page summarizes salary progression in key roles (up to 2024)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...
So you can be assured your money isn’t going to the executives’ bank accounts, not directly anyway. However, this is precisely why non-profit organizations tend to get bloated. The executives can’t get away with a million dollar salaries and not other goodies like stock grants. But you can justify staffing up, which benefits the careers of the executives.
What would justify Silicon Valley salary for an organization that can be based anywhere in the world? They are not doing advanced R&D, or product dev that would justify big numbers or a very specific set of skills.
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What's up with the continually revolving CTO chair? (under Executive)
3 replies →
Feels like where Mozilla went
Great analogy.
I have donated to them for many years and will stop now. I will not support any kind of union busting.
Be sure to tell them why you stopped. I’ll be doing the same. Hopefully this pressures them to give up on this
You guys don’t get it apparently but once the thing became corrupted, got a whiff of power and money, there is no chance they are going to be persuaded into anything long term. They may appear to do so short term to appease but money corrupts permanently.
Don’t be afraid of destroying things. Wikipedia isn’t unique or precious really. Some extended pressure would really rejuvenate the idea of such site in one way or another.
It is doubtful if anyone is in power to pressure them at this point though. Wmf grown like a tumour on the back of the site.
6 replies →
Never too late to read WP:CANCER also.
They have enough employees to need a union and a board? It's a CRUD PHP site that I could run from a VPS (joking ofc, but not that much off).
I've never worked in an industry where unionization was a thing, but my general understanding is that the unions are protectionist dreaming of things that were true before but not today, but they want to keep things as they were. Good luck.
I've benefited from Wikipedia, but I don't romanticize it. Either side of the table can't stop the AI onslaught, they are all out of jobs. Another Wikimedia will rise up from the ashes.
>my general understanding is that the unions are protectionist dreaming of things that were true before but not today, but they want to keep things as they were.
This mindset really baffles me, as a unionized guy with a white collar email job. Don't you, like, want things that your employer doesn't want to give you? Job protection? Better than CoL wage growth? Work from home? Internal job progression? Clear, understandable job factors agreed upon in advance?
The union negotiates for what its members want. There's nothing magical about unions that mean, like, a white collar union is going to be negotiating for all its members to get a new hard hat every year, just because that's what auto worker unions do.
1 reply →
You're unfamiliar with the scale of Wikimedia. Besides Wikipedia, they also host multiple other projects, like Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. Besides that, a huge portion of their budget goes towards grants to organizations that help distribute information for free on the internet. This absolutely isn't a "CRUD PHP site".
1 reply →
Wikimedia requires a board. IMO that board should include at least one representative selected by the employees (i.e. a union rep.) It has one seat reserved for the founder.
This governance question doesn't go away if another Wikimedia rises from the ashes. You still will still need a board making decisions, and someone needs to pick the members of the board. Right now there are 8 seats selected by "the community," 7 seats selected by the board, and 1 seat selected by the founder.
1 reply →
Some years ago, I think a french contributor pointed that out, aka asking why the wikimedia foundation wants so much money.
Now the picture is getting more clear - denying a union is clearly big brother billionaire thinking, e. g. lowering cost while maximizing abuse of workers/employees.
I would be very surprised is WMF employee conditions would meet anyone’s definition of abuse. If anything, these sound like patronage jobs.
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