[aezell]

One of the issues here is this funding goes toward some of the more hidden work that folks using and even contributing to Wikipedia don't see. Let's take two examples:

1) Automatically identifying, reporting, and perhaps removing spam, hate speech, advertising, conflict of interest, etc. content. That's done in part by a system called ORES which was designed, built, and is managed by folks working for Wikimedia. Could volunteers have built such a system? Of course. Did they? No.

2) Identifying, blocking, and reporting child pornography. Like any site on the Internet that allows users to upload images, thousands of images of child pornography are uploaded to Wikipedia (and its sibling projects) on a regular basis. There are tools designed to catch most of these. However, humans still have to moderate a lot of this content. Would you volunteer to do that work all day long? I wouldn't. And that's why someone needs to be paid to do it.

So, while there is likely bloat in the organization (as in any group of humans endeavoring toward a shared goal), there is a lot of work done that volunteers wouldn't or couldn't or simply shouldn't do.

[pbhjpbhj]

You've not addressed the issue presented.

The page is basically an abstract to https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais....

The issue is the WMF VP of engineering estimate from 2013 says it costs about $10 million to run Wikipedia for a year. They have (according to this article) $300 million in the bank, and look to have taken $142 million more this year ... but are making desperate sounding pleas for cash.

The article says maybe they have enough and could ease up on the tearful-sounding begging. They're being the corporate equivalent of a beggar king that begs all day and drives back to their mansion in a brand new car in the evening.

From the Kolbe's article:

>WMF’s job advertisement [...] says the WMF employs a team of over 500. Top-tier managers earn $300,000 – $400,000 a year. Over 40 people work exclusively on fundraising.

[aezell]

If you think anyone is getting rich working at the WMF, I can disavow you of that notion. It's just not true. Each of those people is making far below market rate for their respective positions and geographical locations.

As for the language in the ads, it's there because it works. The WMF has tried, many times, language which is less emotional and more objective. It doesn't work. People don't respond.

What you're asking for is to have people donate because of their objective sense of value but that's not how most humans work. The WMF does what works.

[Zarel]

I don't think "it's there because the A/B test says it works better" is a good reason to lie in a fundraiser. If I say "please donate to support my dying child", this will probably get more donations than "please donate so I can buy a gaming PC". But if my child isn't dying, perhaps the lesson here isn't "I should lie" but "my gaming PC isn't as important as I think"!

(That said, I agree that individual WMF employees aren't overpaid per se. But perhaps it doesn't need quite as expansive of a bureaucracy as it does. Not to pick on Wikipedia; I see this phenomenon in other organizations, too: my university has been expanding the bureaucracy and hiking tuition while more and more professors are adjuncts earning below-minimum wage on food stamps. The individual bureaucrats may not be getting rich, but they sure don't have food insecurity like the adjuncts, and perhaps hiring more of them was a poor decision.)

[Qub3d]

You seem to be speaking with the authority of a WMF insider. If so, can you speak to the concerns Wikipedians have raised about the endowment responsibility?

Currently, there is nothing preventing WMF from drawing down the endowment arbitrarily, effectively making it a checking account, not an endowment.

This is less a complaint about fundraising (we get it, nonprofits need money) but accountability. Its one thing to ask for donations. Its another to use loaded language (ironically in violation of the Wikipedia Manual of Style) that implies the site will go dead in a year unless you contribute money to the dark pool of cash with almost no oversight.

"We should make spending transparent, publish a detailed account of what the money is being spent on and answer any reasonable questions asking for more details. We should limit spending increases to no more than inflation plus some percentage (adjusted for any increases in page views), build up our endowment, and structure the endowment so that the WMF cannot legally dip into the principal when times get bad."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

[akolbe]

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 to the end of June 2020, an entity called the "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund" was established, and $8.723 million was transferred to it by the WMF, in the form of an unconditional grant. The Fund is "managed and controlled by Tides Advocacy" (a 501(c)(4) advocacy nonprofit previously led by the WMF's current General Counsel/Board Secretary, who served as CEO, Board Secretary, and Treasurer there). Given that a Google search for "Wikimedia Knowledge Equity Fund" yields zero results prior to the release of the report, it is clear that the WMF kept this significant move completely secret for over five months, perhaps over a year. The Report FAQ additionally emphasizes that the WMF "has no right of return to the grant funds provided, with the exception of unexpended funds."

'The WMF unilaterally and secretly transferred nearly $9 million of movement funds to an outside organization not recognized by the Affiliations Committee. No mention of the grant was made in any Board resolutions or minutes from the relevant time period. The amount was not mentioned in the public annual plan, which set out rather less than this amount for the entire grantmaking budget for the year. No application was made through any of the various Wikimedia grants processes. No further information has been provided on the administration of this new Fund, or on the text of the grant agreement.

'I am appalled.

'-- Yair Rand'

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikim...

Part of this money eventually turned up here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund

Where were donors told that $4.5 million of the money they gave would be used to fund causes that not only have nothing to do with Wikipedia, but also have nothing to do with any other Wikimedia project? Where was the oversight on who would be awarded these grants?

[aezell]

I was an employee, past tense. I was referencing my own salary. I know nothing about the endowment so I can't speak to it.

[akolbe]

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 language in the ads, it's there because it works. The WMF has tried, many times, language which is less emotional and more objective. It doesn't work. People don't respond.

"We simply couldn't have increased our revenue from $5M in 2008 to $155M in 2021 without being emotional and, um, 'unobjective'. We just couldn't have done it."

> What you're asking for is to have people donate because of their objective sense of value but that's not how most humans work. The WMF does what works.

"If you want people to give you 31 times as much money as before, you have to tell a good story. What else can you do? By the way, did we mention that we think we should be the central part of the world's information ecosystem?"

[aezell]

> Wow, just wow.

This is not conducive to honest conversation. I've been nothing but polite in our discussion. Your sarcasm here and in further responses isn't constructive.

> Managers earning $300K+ are not getting rich. Good. I guess it's all relative.

It is relative. If you live in San Francisco where the WMF is headquartered, this salary won't make you rich. I wish I could make that much money but given the role and the location, it doesn't seem exorbitant.

It might be instructive to look at how many people are giving money and not just the actual amount of money. I'm honestly saying that. I don't know the numbers because I haven't looked in years. Maybe there's more money because more people use it, more people find value in it, and more people donate. It would be an interesting way to slice the data. What's the average donation size? How has the geographic distribution of donations changed?

It seems like across all these threads, what many people, possibly including you, are responding negatively to is the language in the ads and not strictly the fact that the WMF collects money from people who willingly give it. I've already said that I don't care for the language either. I believe that they could be successful without it. Perhaps, not equally as successful but successful nonetheless. I shared that feedback when I worked there. I want them to appeal to the better angels of our nature.

Still, it's marketing and if my money supports the mission (the whole mission and not just Wikipedia), which by all accounting it does, then I'll continue to donate. The marketing, while undesirable, doesn't change their dedication to the mission.

[akolbe]

I think I have said many times that the language on the fundraising banners strikes me as lacking in truthfulness and designed, through A/B testing, to create the impression that Wikipedia – not the Wikimedia Foundation but specifically Wikipedia, which many people care about very much – is under some sort of threat.

This becomes more and more absurd as the Foundation takes more money every year and expands its budget, and not just by a little – revenue doubles every four years or so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...

You need to decide for yourself, Alex, whether you are willing to excuse the manipulation or not. You said earlier,

> As for the language in the ads, it's there because it works. The WMF has tried, many times, language which is less emotional and more objective. It doesn't work. People don't respond.

You say now,

> I've already said that I don't care for the language either. I believe that they could be successful without it. Perhaps, not equally as successful but successful nonetheless. I shared that feedback when I worked there. I want them to appeal to the better angels of our nature.

This sounds more reasonable. Language which we both seem to agree is manipulative (a truly alarming habit for a key player in the global information ecosystem to have!) has enabled the WMF to double revenue every four or five years. I see no reason to assume that it couldn't have achieved modest growth with honest fundraising banners. Isn't this just greed?

Moreover, what falls by the wayside in this fundraising approach is what the WMF is actually planning to use its increased funds for. As far as donors and the public are concerned, it all seems to be about keeping Wikipedia up and running. But in fact, the WMF aims to invest in the Global South, in minor languages, in Wikifunctions for machine-translatable articles, in Wikidata, and so on. All of these initiatives might as well not exist for people seeing the fundraising banners with their message about "defending Wikipedia's independence".

This means that there is a lack of public scrutiny and indeed public debate and input into these plans. It is far better when people have a realistic idea of what it is they are supporting.

And indeed, there is a lost opportunity here, because people might actually be enthused by these plans. That would be a far better motivation for donating than artificially created fear.

[pbhjpbhj]

Not getting rich (is three-9s of wages in the UK, five-9s globally I'd imagine) and working at below your stated market rate for an advertising manager are quite different.

The comparison should be the people WMF are begging money from, I doubt hardly any of those being asked to donate in order to "save" Wikipedia are earning anything like that amount. Fire the 40 advertising managers and you've got something like half what's _needed_.

They have over $300 million, they don't need people to respond and they certainly don't need to misrepresent the situation as they are.

[akolbe]

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 them to volunteers) but it doesn't explain a headcount of 550 when throughout most of Wikipedia's existence the work got done by a fraction of that.

ORES was built with substantial volunteer input. ClueBot, an even more important vandal-fighting feature, was created by volunteers.

https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/18/5412636/this-machine-kill...

But in a way that's immaterial. Nothing wrong with having money and expanding. They just shouldn't tell people money is needed to defend Wikipedia's independence when by any measure they are richer and more secure than ever before. If you want more money, lay out your plans. Enthuse people for the additional things you want to do with the extra funds. Don't pretend you need five or ten times more money to do the same thing you've been doing all along.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#/media/Fi...

[aezell]

Your response doesn't account for the vast change in scale and technology since then. I also was clear that these two things didn't explain all of the expansion just that they were examples of things some folks might not recognize are part of the Foundation's work.

As for laying out their plans, there are dozens of wiki pages[1] dedicated to it and every task[2] and commit[3] to the code is public.

What they tell people in these pleas for donations is the language that actually gets people to donate. If folks would donate after reading the Medium Term Plan, then they would promote but instead humans tend to act only when an emotional appeal is made. That might not work for you but testing and experimenting on those ads proves that it does for most people.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-...

[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org

[3] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org

[akolbe]

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, remember, that wants to steward "the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge", the most-propagated information source on the planet.

I'd rather have someone in charge of that who's committed to telling "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth", rather than someone who tells people what "gets them to do what they want them to do". Wouldn't you?

[aezell]

In an altruistic and idealistic world, sure. But that's not the world I live in.

Personally, I find the ads histrionic and would like them to change. However, an article like this that insinuates something akin to malice or subterfuge instead of recognizing the reality of non-profit fundraising isn't helpful. That was my point.

[akolbe]

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've just met is the same as the old boss.