3 ms·

It just... really bothers me that Wikipedia has grown into this massive thing, with $60 million in cash reserves and $31 million in salaries a year... and the p

by cwyers 10y ago

It just... really bothers me that Wikipedia has grown into this massive thing, with $60 million in cash reserves and $31 million in salaries a year... and the people who aren't getting paid are the ones actually writing an encyclopedia. For that kind of money, you'd think they could actually pay people to write an encyclopedia, like Britannica used to. Now Britannica is circling the drain, Wikipedia is raking in money, and instead of paying the writers, there's this whole bureaucracy slurping up the cash and not giving it to the people doing the actual work. I hate all this digital sharecropping. I hate all these businesses based on paying millions of amateurs nothing or next to nothing for large volumes of low quality labor, making it up on volume, and paying a handful of people large sums of money to "administer" it. You'd think for that kind of money you could pay some writers.

soniman 10y ago
It's the digital version of college football except nobody ever makes it to the pros.
aquadrop 10y ago
60 millions in spending, but that's for top5 site in the world, serving knowledge to billions of people, and is a phenomenon of modern society, is it that much? Of course they probably could spend less, like 20 millions if they were perfectly effective. But who is perfectly effective all the time? Sure, it's needed to keep an eye on effectiveness and try to improve it, and increase transparency, evaluate what all those people are doing etc But I wouldn't say that situation is awful or anything. Original article is using imagination and projection a lot. And I think there's big problem with idea paying writers. The moment you start paying your writers become not just people who want to help and share their knowledge because of goodness, but they (or some part, which you can't distinguish) also become people who want money. And it's hard to manage it, people can start bickering who's got how much, etc. You might end up with thousands of people willing to write anything just to get some money and some good writers leaving because they don't want to compete with money grabbers.
- cwyers 9y ago
  > You might end up with thousands of people willing to write anything just to get some money and some good writers leaving because they don't want to compete with money grabbers. Okay, but why isn't programming held to the same standard? Why do they have, what, four scrum coaches on payroll? Can't they rely on scrum coaches who want to help and share their knowledge because of goodness, too?
  - aquadrop 9y ago
    I think they are held to a degree - mediawiki is open-source and devs can contribute. I guess scrum coaches or other kind of management is harder to use this way, you still need core team working full-time, but I don't know what they are doing.
akolbe 10y ago
Exactly. Even if they didn't pay writers (which might create its own problems), they could do far more to create and publicise a user-friendly scheme to provide volunteers with access to paywalled sources, digitised books etc. They could spend some of those tens of millions on that. But there too they rely on begging and volunteer labour: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library It speaks volumes that even this rudimentary project, the Wikipedia Library, was originally initiated by a volunteer - for ten years, nobody at WMF seems to have had the brains to think of it. Supporting the broad mass of volunteers (rather than a few snouts in the trough) has never been near the top of the WMF list of priorities. I suspect the volunteers are largely regarded as amazingly convenient and useful idiots. The lion's share of WMF money has always been spent on software engineering, much of it done by former volunteers who sucked up enough to first land a WMF job and then prove their engineering incompetence (as in the VisualEditor debacle): http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-free-just-pay-us-our-salaries/ http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-fr... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/25/wikipedia_peasants_revolt/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/25/wikipedia_peasants_...
Markoff 9y ago
this is reason why I don't contribute in years already, there is bunch of parasites leeching on work of other people, somehow resembling charity organization where minimum of donated money go actually to those in need only thing I want from wikipedia is wikipedia, no awards, grants and other nonsense to launder money to friends who don't wanna work, so cut those 300 employees to 30 actually doing work on wikipedia and maybe one day I will contribute again either by editing or donating money, but feeding bunch of parasites doesn't seem like healthy longterm solution

by cwyers 10y ago

soniman 10y ago

It's the digital version of college football except nobody ever makes it to the pros.

aquadrop 10y ago

60 millions in spending, but that's for top5 site in the world, serving knowledge to billions of people, and is a phenomenon of modern society, is it that much? Of course they probably could spend less, like 20 millions if they were perfectly effective. But who is perfectly effective all the time? Sure, it's needed to keep an eye on effectiveness and try to improve it, and increase transparency, evaluate what all those people are doing etc But I wouldn't say that situation is awful or anything. Original article is using imagination and projection a lot. And I think there's big problem with idea paying writers. The moment you start paying your writers become not just people who want to help and share their knowledge because of goodness, but they (or some part, which you can't distinguish) also become people who want money. And it's hard to manage it, people can start bickering who's got how much, etc. You might end up with thousands of people willing to write anything just to get some money and some good writers leaving because they don't want to compete with money grabbers.

cwyers 9y ago
> You might end up with thousands of people willing to write anything just to get some money and some good writers leaving because they don't want to compete with money grabbers. Okay, but why isn't programming held to the same standard? Why do they have, what, four scrum coaches on payroll? Can't they rely on scrum coaches who want to help and share their knowledge because of goodness, too?
- aquadrop 9y ago
  I think they are held to a degree - mediawiki is open-source and devs can contribute. I guess scrum coaches or other kind of management is harder to use this way, you still need core team working full-time, but I don't know what they are doing.

akolbe 10y ago

Exactly. Even if they didn't pay writers (which might create its own problems), they could do far more to create and publicise a user-friendly scheme to provide volunteers with access to paywalled sources, digitised books etc. They could spend some of those tens of millions on that. But there too they rely on begging and volunteer labour: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library It speaks volumes that even this rudimentary project, the Wikipedia Library, was originally initiated by a volunteer - for ten years, nobody at WMF seems to have had the brains to think of it. Supporting the broad mass of volunteers (rather than a few snouts in the trough) has never been near the top of the WMF list of priorities. I suspect the volunteers are largely regarded as amazingly convenient and useful idiots. The lion's share of WMF money has always been spent on software engineering, much of it done by former volunteers who sucked up enough to first land a WMF job and then prove their engineering incompetence (as in the VisualEditor debacle): http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-free-just-pay-us-our-salaries/ http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-fr... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/25/wikipedia_peasants_revolt/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/25/wikipedia_peasants_...

Markoff 9y ago

this is reason why I don't contribute in years already, there is bunch of parasites leeching on work of other people, somehow resembling charity organization where minimum of donated money go actually to those in need only thing I want from wikipedia is wikipedia, no awards, grants and other nonsense to launder money to friends who don't wanna work, so cut those 300 employees to 30 actually doing work on wikipedia and maybe one day I will contribute again either by editing or donating money, but feeding bunch of parasites doesn't seem like healthy longterm solution