[potamic]

Chief of Community Engagement

Chief Community Officer

Chief Talent and Culture Officer

Chargée d'affaires

Chief Global Development Officer

Chief Creative Officer

Chief Communications Officer

Chief Revenue Officer

VP of Strategic Partnerships

55 million USD in annual salary expenses seems a bit high, even more so for a non-profit. I have seen startup unicorns spend less on salaries. I think there really needs to be some scrutiny into how funding is being spent.

Looking at the list of execs there I really have to question what role they play and how their compensation is justified. It's not just their individual salary either. At their level they have entire organizational hierarchies working under them and the collective salaries can add up. What precisely are they contributing to the movement?

I can't imagine the kind of things Wikipedia needs to do that needs such roles. These guys should be focusing on product and tech primarily. They have a solid product which hasn't changed in years and a strong brand. They have a singularly unique and special thing in this world and need to protect it as sacred. They need to focus on maintaining and scaling this system for eternity instead of experimenting and branching offshoots into community engagement, strategic partnerships, ambassadoring and all that crap.

[lrem]

For a second I thought that someone in Wikimedia is getting a 55M salary. But no, we're talking about one person earning 375k and a bunch of ~200k. The 55M is for the total ~450 employees. It's really far from outrageous.

Sure, some of these positions sound a bit surprising. But, having checked just the last one, it existed only for a part of 2016. So, eh, what's your point again?

[zozbot234]

Much of this stuff is needed in some form. It's the kind of things that random Internet volunteers don't do well. And with the unique opportunity that Wikimedia has of establishing the broader free-knowledge and free-content movement as a leading force in global education, I think we should be happy that significant resources are being used to pursue this strategic goal.

[SirSourdough]

It’s a community-edited encyclopedia with thousands of contributors and billions of users, I feel like community engagement is very central to that. Global development also seems central to scaling their core product. Communications is likewise no surprise for an organization of their scale and global importance.

Obviously there’s a debate to be had about what and how much Wikipedia should engage in other ventures but even for their core work a lot of these roles seem pretty reasonable...

[kqr]

"Let's just do the one thing we've always been doing, that will surely work forever" said Kodak, manufacturers of carburetors, Blockbuster, GM, I don't know, Sears, and many others. The road to stagnation and eventual failure is littered with their corpses.

The ones that made it through were specifically the ones that embraced and prepared for change, by running parallel long-shot projects and branched out from doing whatever they were doing before.

[chasil]

In my youth, my parents spent quite a bit of money on a Funk & Wagnal's encyclopedia set. I do not regret my $20 donation, as I've received far more in return.

However, this seems like excessive marketing for an organization that does not produce a physical product (unlike Funk & Wagnal's).

I have seen less online criticism of WikiPedia accuracy of late; perhaps this is the result of the marketing dollars. If true, it is good, but it could likely be done with marketing efforts a fraction of the size.