akolbe

54 ms·

571.
by akolbe 5y ago
Wow, just wow. > If you think anyone is getting rich working at the WMF, I can disavow you of that notion. It's just not true. Managers earning $300K+ are not getting rich. Good. I guess it's all relative. > As for the langu
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by akolbe 5y ago
A little more courage ... :) In my view you should hold those who claim to be different from the corrupt profit-makers that preceded them to the standards they claim to embody. Nothing will ever improve by accepting that the new boss you&#x
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by akolbe 5y ago
To give an example, see this mailing list post: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... 'According to the recent Independent Auditors' Report of the WMF [1], at some point prior t
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by akolbe 5y ago
That's precisely the point though: telling people "what gets them to donate". That's manipulative. And it's the inevitable result of a sophisticated, decade-long program of A/B testing. And this is the outfit,
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by akolbe 5y ago
Wikipedia was a top-10 site in 2007, when the WMF had 11 employees. Child porn got deleted. I'm all in favour of someone being paid for such work, and the WMF taking on child protection responsibilities (after many years of leaving the
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by akolbe 5y ago
> What's remarkable is that WP is as good as it is. But I'm not happy with the idea of one website becoming the touchstone of human knowledge. Exactly. It's a remarkable constellation of interests. People are invited to ex
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by akolbe 5y ago
Who said anyone got duped?
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by akolbe 5y ago
It's just the sheer amount of stockpiling while claiming to be under threat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi... Wikipedia plays a central role in today's information flo
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by akolbe 5y ago
That passage is from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discus... It's an "explanatory supplement" to the Consensus policy. The problem with Wikipedia's policies and guideli
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by akolbe 5y ago
Kozierok's First Law: "The apparent accuracy of a Wikipedia article is inversely proportional to the depth of the reader's knowledge of the topic." :)
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by akolbe 5y ago
That's a good point. At any rate, this is one thing people can't blame the WMF for.
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by akolbe 5y ago
Wikipedia fuels Google's Knowledge Graph panel and Assistant, Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Bing's and DuckDuckGo's info panels etc. One of the biggest challenges to Wikipedia is actually that "Wikipedia’s facts are now incr
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by akolbe 5y ago
We can safely say that's had a negligible impact on WMF aspirations, which are more of the world-conquering kind.
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by akolbe 5y ago
Well, there is this: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-... I don't think many donors have ever looked at that. Nor do I think many donors who do can make too much sense of phrases like &q
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by akolbe 5y ago
Yeah, that's not how human psychology works. You didn't have managers earning $400,000K+ at the Wikimedia Foundation then. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
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by akolbe 5y ago
Have a look at this graphic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi... Note that this does not include the $100+ million Wikimedia Endowment.
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by akolbe 5y ago
The comparison to the increase in the Mozilla headcount is quite commonly made. There are now (incl. Fundraising technology, only linked on that page) 50 people working in Wikimedia Fundraising alone: https://meta.wikimedia.org&#
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by akolbe 5y ago
Several million dollars disappeared at one point ... only to resurface months later in a Tides Advocacy fund for spending on worthy causes _outside_ the Wikimedia movement. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Knowledge
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by akolbe 5y ago
I think you put that well, actually (although the editor base is not as young as it used to be ... quite a lot of oldies by now). I would agree with your phrasing. What I meant with left of centre was that, taking the US as an example, Obam
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by akolbe 5y ago
For more on the Nathaniel White story and how having his picture used to illustrate the Wikipedia article on a serial killer affected him, according to his lawyer, see https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgpnq/wi
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by akolbe 5y ago
There was a BBC report just a few days ago pointing out climate change denial and related conspiracy theories in Croatian Wikipedia (and other language versions): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59325128 What is
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by akolbe 5y ago
Wikipedia as a whole is subject to various and varying biases. See for example: BBC: "Climate change: Conspiracy theories found on foreign-language Wikipedia" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59325128 S
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by akolbe 5y ago
Correct. Those figures were taken from the Form 990 and are base salaries only. There is additional compensation ... in their case, an "estimated amount of other compensation from the organization and related organizations" of $32
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by akolbe 5y ago
There's the rub. Who's "they"? The unpaid volunteers who write and curate the articles, or the Wikimedia Foundation who takes the money? People by and large have very little idea of what the Wikimedia Foundation is doing
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by akolbe 5y ago
It's worth noting that the Fundraising manager's salary increased by 50% in the space of four years (from $168k in 2015 to $252K in 2019, the most recent figure available). https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki
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by akolbe 5y ago
There are other ways of asking. You can enthuse people with your plans for the future, rather than creating a completely spurious impression that your financial independence is under threat.
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by akolbe 5y ago
The fundraising banners have started again, asking people “to defend Wikipedia’s independence”. This may sound like the Wikimedia Foundation is struggling to keep Wikipedia up and running, but there is no financial emergency – on the contra
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Wikipedia is loaded, so why’s it asking for donations?(thenextweb.com)
157 points by akolbe 5y ago|251 comments
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by akolbe 5y ago
Enjoyed that too. :)
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by akolbe 5y ago
For another – rather more serious – photo mix-up on Wikipedia see last month's: "A photo on Wikipedia can ruin your life" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... "Wikipe

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