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by Zarel 1657 days ago
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.)