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by bawolff
2100 days ago
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These questions have the same answer as basically any other company. Most internet companies do not pay their content creators or if they do (e.g. youtube) they pay them a relatively small pot of the pie that is really only significant for the super popular people (whether that's ethical is totally different question). Anyways, some of the info you seek is probably at meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Disseminati... https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy Jimbo is largely a public figure-head. He has limited influence on WMF priorities beyond what any other board member would have. He has significant moral influence in the english wikipedia volunteer community. [To be clear, im just answering questions. I dont care whether you donate. Do with your money what you think is best, its none of my business] |
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I read this wikipedia article about KE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine_(Wikimedia_Fo...
I infer from the article that KE was, in part, a defensive initiative to stop google leaching traffic away from wikipedia.
It sounds like JW was a key strategist, and that wikipedians were left out of the loop, which lead to management turmoil within the ranks.
It sounds like a difficult situation, to fight an external threat using internal broadcast democracy, when you know the information is going to go public right away.
Can you imagine Gates, Bezos, Jobs or Google consulting 50,000 employees every time a competitor looked like gaining traction?
I can imagine the internal transparency and consultation practiced at WMF could be beneficial for many aspects of the operations. But at a strategic level, particularly when threatened, that model could have liabilities for an organisation - particularly one which commands such a significant place in what is a lucrative commercial domain.
To complicate matters, the funding for KE was coming from an external grant source, which may have had its own agenda.
Difficult.