Metacurity
This is kind of upsetting. Wikipedia has $400 million in cash reserves and the foundation which runs Wikipedia has 550 employees with top managers making high salaries but doesn't pay it maintainers a penny.
I'm so disillusioned.
The next time Wikipedia asks for a donation, ignore it
https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-next-time-wikipedia-asks-for-a-donation-ignore-it/
Metacurity
@philbetts I'd love to hear from @molly0xfff on this.
Molly White
@metacurity @philbetts First, some background: Orlowski has a hell of an axe to grind with Wikipedia for some reason, and has more recently decided it’s “a tool of the left” and suchlike. Some of his comments in this article are bizarre and demonstrate either a lack of knowledge of what he describes, or a lack of care (eg that the name change opposition came down to “Wikipedia Foundation” being a “slur”, or that editors first criticized the Foundation’s fundraising appeals in 2022).
Phil Betts
@metacurity not really. It's one of the *world's* most important and valuable assets, with an incredibly important mission. People volunteer to edit (and contribute) because they see the value. $20 million sounds dubious, and doesn't sound like it includes things like legal contingencies - what happens if one of its many enemies tries to take it down, through law or otherwise? I'd rather Wikipedia be *unassailable* over cost effective, and I think that does require a level of professional staff.
Molly White
@metacurity @philbetts As for the fundraising, the WMF maintains detailed audited financial reports if you want to dig into how much money they have and where it goes: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports. As of the most recent report they had total net assets of ~$280M, which is ~17 months of operating expenses and seems like a reasonable safety net.
Molly White
@metacurity @philbetts As for not paying editors, that is a part of the arrangement, and one that we editors are, broadly speaking, happy with. I am also perfectly happy that the people responsible for operations at the WMF are being paid for their work.
Molly White
@i_cannot_today I think it comes down to whether you distinguish between a salary of “what any person could reasonably need”, and a salary that would be competitive to people who are competent to direct an organization like this (and often in high demand). The most recent reported CEO comp was ~$525k, which is certainly very high, but also not necessarily out of line compared to other similar non-profit executive salaries.
Claire (sometimes Carla)
@molly0xfff The part that caught my eye and made OP an insta-boost for me was that they're paying their execs many times what any person could reasonably need, like hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Is that true or not?
That said, this does look like one of the situations where I have seen a rightwing asshat attacking someone from the right who I am inclined to attack from the left, and agreed with them for the wrong reasons.
Molly White
@i_cannot_today You’d be hard pressed to find a comparable non-profit that’s not paying its director six figures, and some are much more exorbitant (the Mozilla Foundation chair received $6.9M that same year.)
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