akolbe

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by akolbe 4y ago
And I am really tired of seeing people online saying, "Well, but they must have huge hosting costs. Think of all the traffic!" And they are saying this because hosting costs are subtly ... https://www.wionews.com&#x2F
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by akolbe 4y ago
The culture war aspect of it, sure. On the one hand you have people coming into the Wikimedia C-suite who have had little to no affinity with the "encyclopedia" part of Wikipedia at all in their professional lives – people coming
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by akolbe 4y ago
True. Though all C-suite execs are US-based and US salaries make up the vast majority of all salary costs, as well as the vast majority of total staff costs if you include contractors.
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by akolbe 4y ago
Exactly. Which is precisely what has happened.
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by akolbe 4y ago
Gee, Flow was awful. :) The little "Reply" button they've made now is cool, but as Kunal Mehta (User:Legoktm) pointed out the other day, they knew even then that was all that was required: "Back in 2014, we had a very cl
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by akolbe 4y ago
Most of them are recent hires. They have built nothing. Wikipedia was built by volunteers.
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by akolbe 4y ago
Agreed, but staffers can be abroad (there are a few even now).
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by akolbe 4y ago
By 2020, the latest figures we have (page 48 of the Form 990), there were 8 people whose total compensation exceeded $300K. The CEO was at $423k: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/e4/Wik
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by akolbe 4y ago
That's what it means in Silicon Valley . It's not what it means in India, South Africa, Brazil, nor even Europe I think. These are all places where the WMF has just been fundraising. Nobody is forcing the WMF to hire in America.
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by akolbe 4y ago
Please have a look at this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial... Then read this 2013 post from a past Wikimedia VP: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-
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by akolbe 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode_(gadget) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode
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by akolbe 4y ago
Not to mention the fact that Google et al. do everything they can to avoid paying taxes in the countries they operate in, including developing countries. The global South loses billions of dollars that way that they could use to fund educat
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by akolbe 4y ago
Only if you insist on hiring in the US – while at the same time talking all the time about how you want to fix the fact that you're underrepresented in many parts of the world, by asking some really expensive US staff to fix it ...
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by akolbe 4y ago
Treats mentioned here ... https://wantremote.com/company_for_remote_job/wikimedia-foun... ... include "reimbursement for mind, body and soul activities such as fitness memberships, massages, cooking classes and mu
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by akolbe 4y ago
Thanks for the edit.
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by akolbe 4y ago
Well, ask yourself which org needs donations more urgently. (Last I looked the Internet Archive were being sued for lending scans of books – books they had physically bought – to one user at a time online.)
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by akolbe 4y ago
Sure. And I complained about how ArbCom volunteers had to deal with child protection issues etc. A lot has become better. But there seems to be an automatic assumption that any executive has to be someone in SF, with the salary costs that g
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by akolbe 4y ago
They already have an endowment of over $100M: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment Hosting costs them $2.4M a year: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e&#
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by akolbe 4y ago
How about comparing it to the Internet Archive (2019)? 169 employees, $11M salary costs: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943... Wikimedia Foundation (2019): 291 employees, $56M salary cost
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by akolbe 4y ago
Why not hire in Europe, or Asia? Almost all of them work remotely.
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by akolbe 4y ago
That reminds me of the saying, "We have the best politicians money can buy."
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by akolbe 4y ago
Arguably, Wikipedia is the loser, because you are rewarding a management mindset that thinks manipulating the public for financial gain is okay. Wikipedia is the most widely read reference source on the planet. Wouldn't you rather it w
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by akolbe 4y ago
That Village Pump page, incidentally, is also where the poll about the fundraising emails is, a few sections further down.
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by akolbe 4y ago
Some of the most expensive WMF execs have been complete disasters, exiting after a year or two and leaving the entire organisation in disarray.
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by akolbe 4y ago
I would also like to see public audited statements for their endowment, now holding about $115M. Nobody has ever seen one in all the six years the Endowment has existed.
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by akolbe 4y ago
Bingo. You can't grow your revenue tenfold and still claim you are asking for money to ensure your bare survival. Remember: the WMF less than ten years ago themselves said they could survive quite well on "$10M+/year".
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by akolbe 4y ago
Is that what most people would understand by the term "direct support"? "Direct support to communities", to me, is when you give something "directly" to a community member, such as a travel grant, or a grant fo
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by akolbe 4y ago
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
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by akolbe 4y ago
That "Where Your Money Goes" overview was particularly derided by Wikipedians in the Village Pump poll. It's so fuzzy it could mean anything. In particular, "32% direct support to communities" was seen as complete p
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by akolbe 4y ago
I do, and glad to hear it. :) To ask questions, a good place to start is the Teahouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse Good luck!

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