8 ms·

At this point, Wikimedia the organization is parasitic on Wikipedia the open-source information project. The latter generates all the goodwill and the former fu

At this point, Wikimedia the organization is parasitic on Wikipedia the open-source information project. The latter generates all the goodwill and the former fucks around doing vanity projects with the ensuing resources. What's that pithy "law" about eventually any organization existing simply to perpetuate itself and serve the insiders who work there, rather than further its mission? Ironically what came to mind is Cunningham's Law which is the wrong one... https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

robonerd 4y ago
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
- icelancer 4y ago
  Nice. I hadn't seen this, or his related quotes. Quite usable for business.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Doesn't this apply to any organization? If you care about the goals of an organization you are going to be promoted because of your value to that task nor would you seem it. Those that don't are going to care more about the organizations structure and focus on improving their standing.
  - coderintherye 4y ago
    Not necessarily no, not all organizations are hierarchal. "Reinventing Organizations" has some good examples of such.
    - Miraste 4y ago
      There are no non-hierarchal organizations, only ones that are written down and ones that aren’t. Even Reinventing Organizations talks about “fluid, natural hierarchies” - i.e. cliques.
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        That’s true, but there’s more nuance to it. I worked once for an organization where relative power was part of the culture. Supervisors literally sat at high desks facing the minions. In another, there was a power structure and folks directly accountable for certain things; but it was very collegial. Everyone treated each other as peers and the senior folks were more like mentors or folks with other responsibilities than bosses.
    - msla 4y ago
      https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm THE TYRANNY of STRUCTURELESSNESS by Jo Freeman: > Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate structurelessness -- and that is not the nature of a human group. > This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an "objective" news story, "value-free" social science, or a "free" economy. A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones. Similarly "laissez faire" philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices, and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the women's movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.
- chongli 4y ago
  Too long for my tastes. I prefer: The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. — Oscar Wilde These kinds of laws, adages, quotes etc need to be short and sweet.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Perhaps Pournelle's Iron Law fell prey to itself.
onphonenow 4y ago
I think they are doing 100M+ per year to run the servers, manage PR / legal / HR issues.
- exolymph 4y ago
  Sure. I was def exaggerating for effect — there does need to be an org running this project and as that org Wikimedia also does good things. But as with Mozilla, the decision-makers are too distracted by flavor-of-the-week bullshit.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  Actually, they're spending less than 3MM per year for hosting. "Other operating expenses" are ~10MM, and everything else on the list has essentially nothing to do with Wikipedia. However, at the current rate it won't take long until they actually do spend 100MM+ on their own salaries. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
  - marcinzm 4y ago
    >everything else on the list has essentially nothing to do with Wikipedia I would say that engineer/product/analytics salaries are part of the cost of running and updating a webpage. Then you have HR which is needed to support those employees and Legal which is especially needed given the high risk nature of Wikipedia. Good luck keeping Wikipedia up in a useful manner without those people. edit: Then you need Finance to help handle the costs responsibly. Then you need Fundraising to help raise the money needed to pay for all that. Then you generally want some Marketing/Branding/Communications to help with the whole talking to external humans part.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Wikipedia could run with the company the size of craigslist but with all of the additional cash they choose to add layers of bloat without providing similiar value.
skybrian 4y ago
Please don't post content-free reaction posts on on Hacker News. If you don't like something, at least make some effort at explaining why.
curiousgal 4y ago
Same with Mozilla/Firefox imo.
- xvilka 4y ago
  Absolutely. Mozilla should have increased investment in the development, particularly rewriting the engine in Rust to improve the maintainability, rather than increasing CEO salary.
wmfanon9973 4y ago
Two recent threads on wikimedia-l may be useful for those non-versed in the WMF's present malignancy: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/6W2OATORZGI3D33GNPU3QXFM3VBTILFW/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/H5V56Z2TIYEO5TX6UAJHQJDXPUK4CCYS/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... MediaWiki is basically unmaintained at this point.
- bawolff 4y ago
  This is bullshit. WMF has its issues, but "unmaintained" is over the top. There was actually a time i would have agreed with this, and there are still under-maintained parts, but since the recreation of the platform team, i don't think its a reasonable position anymore. [Disclaimer: i am ex-wmf contractor]
zozbot234 4y ago
The latest WMF "vanity project" is Wikidata, started in 2012. It is currently getting more edits than the most popular version of Wikipedia, and has been playing a pivotal role in the "open-source information" ecosystem. If that kind of thing is "parasitic" then maybe we should welcome such parasitism.
- wmfanon9973 4y ago
  Wikidata is maintained by Wikimedia Deutschland (https://www.wikimedia.de/ https://www.wikimedia.de/), not the Wikimedia Foundation.
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    Can you cite any evidence (even in German)? The only thing I'm sure that was done by WMDE is about Wikivoyage (which is definitely more complicated than it seems, mainly because the English version was a fork of WikiTravel).
    - bawolff 4y ago
      You could look at the git commit history, and notice how most of the names are wm-de employees. Its not like its 100% exclusive, but the majority of wikidata engineers are wm-de. Operational responsibilities are a bit more shared. Also i hardly would call it a vanity project given how popular it is. I also dont recall wikivoyage having that much to do with WM-DE. If you want a source, i guess you could look at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Deutschland/Plan_2022/Programs_%26_Objectives#Strategy:_Wikidata https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Deutschland/Plan_2... but its a little light on details
    - afandian 4y ago
      Wikidata, both the software and the platform generally, is definitely developed at Wikimedia Deutschland. I’ve met a few of the people involved. https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE
  - ryan_lane 4y ago
bergenty 4y ago
I have no problem with wiki trying to expand into other areas, that’s how a company grows. I don’t see any degradation in their primary product and the value they provide is immense. I’m more than happy to see what else they can do in other spaces.
- stavros 4y ago
  I wish sometimes we'd remember that not everything needs to grow at all costs.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    But maybe this does? How do you know what can? I guess the market decides and I’m liking what I’ve seen so far.
- exolymph 4y ago
  But Wikimedia isn't a company, it's a nonprofit foundation.
ineedasername 4y ago
This doesn't seem like a vanity project. The wikimedia projects I've come across usually seem useful, though not as impactful as wikipedia. What are some of the projects you consider mere vanity projects?
hourago 4y ago
> the organization is parasitic on Wikipedia They get are trying to get financing for their organization offering a service. That is the most win-win situation that you can get. I am all for adding an Internet-tax to finance projects like Wikipedia, but it is politically easier if it can finance itself.
- modo_mario 4y ago
  Don't they have a really big endowment? I feel like they're expanding to use it rather than expanding to bring in more money. Similar thing seemed to happen with Mozilla.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    The endowment isn't that big, given the idea is you are only supposed to use the return not the principle. I think its size is in the neighbourhood of 100 million.
afandian 4y ago
Another point of reference is the principles for scholarly structure. It has clauses to prevent exactly mission drift and other ills. Not adopted by WMF or WMDE, but in the same approximate space. https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/ https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/
ryan_lane 4y ago
It seems like these kinds of reactions to WMF posts are always by the same handful of people, because it's like you copy/paste the same lies into every discussion. If you're going to make shit up, at least link to the completely open documents they use for planning, funding, and accounting, so we're basing it on the same information.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
I don't think it is parasitic per se but I do believe one of the problems is that it draws in people that have problems with others freely sharing knowledge if it is to their dislike. Same problem with some moderators and I think the best Wikipedia ever had left the project already.

robonerd 4y ago

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

icelancer 4y ago
Nice. I hadn't seen this, or his related quotes. Quite usable for business.
themitigating 4y ago
Doesn't this apply to any organization? If you care about the goals of an organization you are going to be promoted because of your value to that task nor would you seem it. Those that don't are going to care more about the organizations structure and focus on improving their standing.
- coderintherye 4y ago
  Not necessarily no, not all organizations are hierarchal. "Reinventing Organizations" has some good examples of such.
  - Miraste 4y ago
    There are no non-hierarchal organizations, only ones that are written down and ones that aren’t. Even Reinventing Organizations talks about “fluid, natural hierarchies” - i.e. cliques.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      That’s true, but there’s more nuance to it. I worked once for an organization where relative power was part of the culture. Supervisors literally sat at high desks facing the minions. In another, there was a power structure and folks directly accountable for certain things; but it was very collegial. Everyone treated each other as peers and the senior folks were more like mentors or folks with other responsibilities than bosses.
  - msla 4y ago
    https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm THE TYRANNY of STRUCTURELESSNESS by Jo Freeman: > Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate structurelessness -- and that is not the nature of a human group. > This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an "objective" news story, "value-free" social science, or a "free" economy. A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones. Similarly "laissez faire" philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices, and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the women's movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.
chongli 4y ago
Too long for my tastes. I prefer: The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. — Oscar Wilde These kinds of laws, adages, quotes etc need to be short and sweet.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Perhaps Pournelle's Iron Law fell prey to itself.

onphonenow 4y ago

I think they are doing 100M+ per year to run the servers, manage PR / legal / HR issues.

exolymph 4y ago
Sure. I was def exaggerating for effect — there does need to be an org running this project and as that org Wikimedia also does good things. But as with Mozilla, the decision-makers are too distracted by flavor-of-the-week bullshit.
formerly_proven 4y ago
Actually, they're spending less than 3MM per year for hosting. "Other operating expenses" are ~10MM, and everything else on the list has essentially nothing to do with Wikipedia. However, at the current rate it won't take long until they actually do spend 100MM+ on their own salaries. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
- marcinzm 4y ago
  >everything else on the list has essentially nothing to do with Wikipedia I would say that engineer/product/analytics salaries are part of the cost of running and updating a webpage. Then you have HR which is needed to support those employees and Legal which is especially needed given the high risk nature of Wikipedia. Good luck keeping Wikipedia up in a useful manner without those people. edit: Then you need Finance to help handle the costs responsibly. Then you need Fundraising to help raise the money needed to pay for all that. Then you generally want some Marketing/Branding/Communications to help with the whole talking to external humans part.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Wikipedia could run with the company the size of craigslist but with all of the additional cash they choose to add layers of bloat without providing similiar value.

skybrian 4y ago

Please don't post content-free reaction posts on on Hacker News. If you don't like something, at least make some effort at explaining why.

curiousgal 4y ago

Same with Mozilla/Firefox imo.

xvilka 4y ago
Absolutely. Mozilla should have increased investment in the development, particularly rewriting the engine in Rust to improve the maintainability, rather than increasing CEO salary.

wmfanon9973 4y ago

Two recent threads on wikimedia-l may be useful for those non-versed in the WMF's present malignancy: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/6W2OATORZGI3D33GNPU3QXFM3VBTILFW/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/H5V56Z2TIYEO5TX6UAJHQJDXPUK4CCYS/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... MediaWiki is basically unmaintained at this point.

bawolff 4y ago
This is bullshit. WMF has its issues, but "unmaintained" is over the top. There was actually a time i would have agreed with this, and there are still under-maintained parts, but since the recreation of the platform team, i don't think its a reasonable position anymore. [Disclaimer: i am ex-wmf contractor]

zozbot234 4y ago

The latest WMF "vanity project" is Wikidata, started in 2012. It is currently getting more edits than the most popular version of Wikipedia, and has been playing a pivotal role in the "open-source information" ecosystem. If that kind of thing is "parasitic" then maybe we should welcome such parasitism.

wmfanon9973 4y ago
Wikidata is maintained by Wikimedia Deutschland (https://www.wikimedia.de/ https://www.wikimedia.de/), not the Wikimedia Foundation.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  Can you cite any evidence (even in German)? The only thing I'm sure that was done by WMDE is about Wikivoyage (which is definitely more complicated than it seems, mainly because the English version was a fork of WikiTravel).
  - bawolff 4y ago
    You could look at the git commit history, and notice how most of the names are wm-de employees. Its not like its 100% exclusive, but the majority of wikidata engineers are wm-de. Operational responsibilities are a bit more shared. Also i hardly would call it a vanity project given how popular it is. I also dont recall wikivoyage having that much to do with WM-DE. If you want a source, i guess you could look at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Deutschland/Plan_2022/Programs_%26_Objectives#Strategy:_Wikidata https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Deutschland/Plan_2... but its a little light on details
  - afandian 4y ago
    Wikidata, both the software and the platform generally, is definitely developed at Wikimedia Deutschland. I’ve met a few of the people involved. https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE
- ryan_lane 4y ago

bergenty 4y ago

I have no problem with wiki trying to expand into other areas, that’s how a company grows. I don’t see any degradation in their primary product and the value they provide is immense. I’m more than happy to see what else they can do in other spaces.

stavros 4y ago
I wish sometimes we'd remember that not everything needs to grow at all costs.
- bergenty 4y ago
  But maybe this does? How do you know what can? I guess the market decides and I’m liking what I’ve seen so far.
exolymph 4y ago
But Wikimedia isn't a company, it's a nonprofit foundation.

ineedasername 4y ago

This doesn't seem like a vanity project. The wikimedia projects I've come across usually seem useful, though not as impactful as wikipedia. What are some of the projects you consider mere vanity projects?

hourago 4y ago

> the organization is parasitic on Wikipedia They get are trying to get financing for their organization offering a service. That is the most win-win situation that you can get. I am all for adding an Internet-tax to finance projects like Wikipedia, but it is politically easier if it can finance itself.

modo_mario 4y ago
Don't they have a really big endowment? I feel like they're expanding to use it rather than expanding to bring in more money. Similar thing seemed to happen with Mozilla.
- bawolff 4y ago
  The endowment isn't that big, given the idea is you are only supposed to use the return not the principle. I think its size is in the neighbourhood of 100 million.

afandian 4y ago

Another point of reference is the principles for scholarly structure. It has clauses to prevent exactly mission drift and other ills. Not adopted by WMF or WMDE, but in the same approximate space. https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/ https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/

ryan_lane 4y ago

It seems like these kinds of reactions to WMF posts are always by the same handful of people, because it's like you copy/paste the same lies into every discussion. If you're going to make shit up, at least link to the completely open documents they use for planning, funding, and accounting, so we're basing it on the same information.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

I don't think it is parasitic per se but I do believe one of the problems is that it draws in people that have problems with others freely sharing knowledge if it is to their dislike. Same problem with some moderators and I think the best Wikipedia ever had left the project already.