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I don't know whether they needed to "find projects": > the fact that the transfer coincided with Amanda Keton's move in the 2019–2020 financial year from Gener

I don't know whether they needed to "find projects": > the fact that the transfer coincided with Amanda Keton's move in the 2019–2020 financial year from General Counsel of the Tides Network and CEO of Tides Advocacy to General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation. Sounds like someone got into power at Wikimedia and went ahead and moved a few millions to their project.

throwA29B 4y ago
Looks like saying "where is the fraud there is bound to be embezzling" is on the money again.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  I don't think this would count as fraud or embezzling? businesses donating to charities run by the owners is outrageously normal.
  - mminer237 4y ago
    Wikipedia is supposed to be a non-profit. Non-profits don't have owners.
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      sure, swap out owners for "board of directors" and business for "charity" — it's still true
      - PeterisP 4y ago
        No, the difference is meaningful because as soon as you swap out owners for "board of directors" it changes the scenario from "outrageously normal" to "outrageous fraud". A director is not an owner who has any legitimate claim to funds they manage on behalf of the owner or the charity, quite the opposite, they have a legal fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the owner or the charitable purpose, not their own. If they funnel the company's money to themselves, that's outright fraud (or embezzlement, depending on details) and they deserve to be in jail and a civil claim to compensate for breach of fiduciary duty, there's nothing normal or tolerable about that.
        micromacrofoot 4y ago
        I'm not discussing the way things should be, but the way they are. There are numerous public charities who get a significant amount of funding because of who's on their board. They're not funneling money to themselves, they're funneling it to other charities that they work with.
fallingknife 4y ago
This is how most large non-profits work. They start out from building something genuinely successful, like Wikipedia, and from that visibility they raise more donations than they know how to spend. So naturally they want to expand their work. But it's very rare that the founders also happen to have the skills to run a large organization, so they need to bring in "professional management." And who could be better than someone who has previously run a large non-profit? They are now run by some career non-profit manager, and the first thing they will do is focus on fundraising. They will pay large salaries to professional fundraisers who are, you guessed it, their friends from previous organizations they have worked at. Their jobs will be easy and their salaries fat. Then they will build an expensive administration structure whose salaries will eat up an ever increasing share of donation income. The non-profit becomes essentially a feudal structure, with idealistic volunteers doing all of the productive work while highly paid managers consume all of the donation income. As long as fundraising investment has a positive ROI in terms of donations, management will find new ways to spend it. They will hire more and more parasitic administrators, and if things are particularly lucrative, they will donate to other organizations run by people they know in the industry. Always good to have someone else owe you a favor when times get tough. This will continue until the organization grows so big that it collapses under the weight of its own structure. In the case of Wikipedia, some of the serf volunteers have figured this out and described it as "Wikipedia has Cancer" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
- manholio 4y ago
  this is a very interesting take. Is it a sample of personal research or is it based on some external source? I have this exact view that "everything is politics". For profit businesses are just a particular case of a top down authoritarian political structure, but they work politically too in the broad sense, people fighting for power, influence and resources. it's the only constant i can think of regarding human behavior across cultures and types of organizations.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    It sounds a lot like a restatement of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_la... about bureaucracy - or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

throwA29B 4y ago

Looks like saying "where is the fraud there is bound to be embezzling" is on the money again.

micromacrofoot 4y ago
I don't think this would count as fraud or embezzling? businesses donating to charities run by the owners is outrageously normal.
- mminer237 4y ago
  Wikipedia is supposed to be a non-profit. Non-profits don't have owners.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    sure, swap out owners for "board of directors" and business for "charity" — it's still true
    - PeterisP 4y ago
      No, the difference is meaningful because as soon as you swap out owners for "board of directors" it changes the scenario from "outrageously normal" to "outrageous fraud". A director is not an owner who has any legitimate claim to funds they manage on behalf of the owner or the charity, quite the opposite, they have a legal fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the owner or the charitable purpose, not their own. If they funnel the company's money to themselves, that's outright fraud (or embezzlement, depending on details) and they deserve to be in jail and a civil claim to compensate for breach of fiduciary duty, there's nothing normal or tolerable about that.
      - micromacrofoot 4y ago
        I'm not discussing the way things should be, but the way they are. There are numerous public charities who get a significant amount of funding because of who's on their board. They're not funneling money to themselves, they're funneling it to other charities that they work with.

fallingknife 4y ago

This is how most large non-profits work. They start out from building something genuinely successful, like Wikipedia, and from that visibility they raise more donations than they know how to spend. So naturally they want to expand their work. But it's very rare that the founders also happen to have the skills to run a large organization, so they need to bring in "professional management." And who could be better than someone who has previously run a large non-profit? They are now run by some career non-profit manager, and the first thing they will do is focus on fundraising. They will pay large salaries to professional fundraisers who are, you guessed it, their friends from previous organizations they have worked at. Their jobs will be easy and their salaries fat. Then they will build an expensive administration structure whose salaries will eat up an ever increasing share of donation income. The non-profit becomes essentially a feudal structure, with idealistic volunteers doing all of the productive work while highly paid managers consume all of the donation income. As long as fundraising investment has a positive ROI in terms of donations, management will find new ways to spend it. They will hire more and more parasitic administrators, and if things are particularly lucrative, they will donate to other organizations run by people they know in the industry. Always good to have someone else owe you a favor when times get tough. This will continue until the organization grows so big that it collapses under the weight of its own structure. In the case of Wikipedia, some of the serf volunteers have figured this out and described it as "Wikipedia has Cancer" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

manholio 4y ago
this is a very interesting take. Is it a sample of personal research or is it based on some external source? I have this exact view that "everything is politics". For profit businesses are just a particular case of a top down authoritarian political structure, but they work politically too in the broad sense, people fighting for power, influence and resources. it's the only constant i can think of regarding human behavior across cultures and types of organizations.
- michaelt 4y ago
  It sounds a lot like a restatement of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_la... about bureaucracy - or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy