The Foundation is my client, but these views are only my own:
This is not to say there's no excess, or that resources couldn't be allocated internally more effectively - I'm not going to put up some kind of strawman - but:
1. I took a 20% pay cut so that I could do more work for the Foundation. Worth it.
2. Posts that say "Wikipedia only has [x] more articles but budget has gone up [y]" are beyond stupid. Any idea how many projects besides Wikipedia are run by WMF - for instance, ever heard of Wikimedia Commons? Any idea how litigious and heavily-regulated the world has got, and how much effort has to be poured into softening some of the emerging laws, mounting judicial challenges against the rest, etc? Any idea how much funding every usergroup and chapter (sometimes more than one per country, e.g. in Spain) is asking for? Any idea how much effort is put into developing features that encourage new people to start editing, not just consuming? Any idea how expensive it is to support and facilitate the big "Movement" discussions (aimed at decentralising the movement!) and the User Code of Conduct discussions? How hard it is to have a viable Trust & Safety team for so many projects, 300+ languages, and people from all over the world to support?
3. After a big outcry about the banners a month ago (that was a long time coming, no denial), the drafting and design of the banners is much softer this year than the last. And guess what, they're much less effective, and now projects are being cancelled, staff departures aren't being backfilled, and jobs are at stake. That may be worth it, but let's at least be honest about the downsides.
Accountability and criticism are fine - but when absolutely no intellectual effort is put into keeping that criticism balanced and on-target, then all you've ended up doing is making people who work here, rather than raking in the big bucks working for Big Tech, feel shitty. And guess what: you lose extra marks for bringing up cancer (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has...) when many people working here will be dealing with actual cancer, either personally or among their friends or family, at the moment.
> Any idea how many projects besides Wikipedia are run by WMF
You seemed to have missed the point, while saying it. The point is the banner makes it seem like Wikipedia needs money, when it's actually all the other projects, which OP presumably does not value, which need the money.
> now projects are being cancelled, staff departures aren't being backfilled, and jobs are at stake.
That sounds like a desirable thing, get it back to reasonable spending levels.
> Any idea how many projects besides Wikipedia are run by WMF
I use Wikipedia, not any of these other projects.
> Any idea how expensive it is to support and facilitate the big "Movement" discussions
I don't care about the "movement"
> and the User Code of Conduct discussions?
I don't care about this either, but how on Earth is that expensive?
You are asking me to donate to things I don't use, and don't care about, and are not necessary to the product that I use. If you allowed me to donate specifically to Wikipedia, I would (and I did until I realized I wasn't). Why don't you segregate funds between Wikipedia and the rest of WMF?
As for the spam level, I know that the reason that it has gone up is because you need more money to fund this stuff that I don't care about and could run Wikipedia on a small fraction of the donations you get. That's the issue. Not how "soft" the banner design is. You are using Wikipedia as a bait and switch fundraising operation for a lot of other stuff that, honestly, very few people know or care about or would donate to if it weren't for the Wikipedia focused fundraising.
> Why don't you segregate funds between Wikipedia and the rest of WMF?
Managing restricted donations is a pain from an accounting perspective and incurs a lot of overhead. I don't deal with nonprofits at WMF's size, but most that I've been a part of won't manage restrictions unless the donation is very large. The amount of additional fundraising that comes in for even pre-defined restrictions isn't worth the overhead of it.
> the drafting and design of the banners is much softer this year than the last
Doubtful. But even if true, they are still ridiculous.
I load a page and start reading. Suddenly the text I am reading is replaced by that huge begging message that takes up basically my entire screen. So I scroll down (sorry, Jimmy "Please don't scroll past this" Wales) and find my place again. As I scroll down, hey presto, the beg screen is replaced with a beg footer.
As for all those other projects... Give people a choice between donating "for Wikipedia operating expenses only" or "for all Foundation projects". Let people decide which they personally value more. I bet Wikipedia gets so much money you can set up a trust and never beg again, while those other projects stay budget-limited. But you don't do that, instead using misleading language like "reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia this year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $2 back" to fund non-Wikipedia projects. Just stop it.
People losing their jobs sucks, but I highly doubt it could even remotely be a result of an ongoing donation drive. You might be able to plan around a specific drive and change plans as a result of it tanking, but that wouldn’t happen in the middle of the drive. If it did, that screams of mismanagement far more than anything else.
Furthermore, the WMF fundraised $165 million in FY 2021-2022 already. That should more than cover staff salaries already, which were $68 million in 2020/2021.
The root of the issue is that the WMF does a lot, gets a lot of money for doing it, and puts back an abysmally small amount back into the thing they are most well known for: Wikipedia. So why would Wikipedia editors want to continue advertising it if they get little to no benefit from doing so?
If the money only comes from donations, and the donations start drying up, every area of the budget gets impacted, including salaries. The WMF could not have foreseen the current campaign making much less than expected.
The majority is spent on wages, as evidenced by the consolidated statement of activities of the WMF. I severely doubt that $88 million worth of people is required to run Wikipedia, nor that Wikipedia gets much benefit from things like “Awards and grants” (to the Tides foundation), “Travel and conferences”, or “special event expenses”.
In fact, only 2.7 million dollars is spent on the actual hosting, you know, that thing that is absolutely drop dead required to run a site. That is 1.8% and is split amongst the various sites other than English Wikipedia. That sounds a hell of a lot like “abysmally small” to me.
And, as I said, it wouldn’t be a part of a currently running donation campaign. Maybe it would affect budgets years from now, but the foundation is not running at the equivalent of paycheck to paycheck. The current donation drive would in no way shape or form impact the current projects that are being run, and if they are, then that’s indicative of massive mismanagement more than anything.
So please, show me exactly where I’m wrong, with explicit sources, instead of claiming I’m uninformed and pointing me to the most generic of pages on this.
Ops people cost money, and MediaWiki is a flaming garbage heap to operate (with utmost respect to those who tirelessly work on it). Developers who work on editor tools also cost money, as do lawyers for major jurisdictions in which Wikipedia operates (hint: there are many). Grants and appointments provide essential depth to Wikipedia; what's a history article without historians helping out?
Re paycheck to paycheck: look, I'm not a finance guy, but I have it on good authority (sorry, no links) that the current campaign's performance is having _some_ effect; you're welcome to tell them it shouldn't, I guess?
Sure, there's some stupid money (and the recent upheaval is helping with that), but there's a lot of non-stupid money, and it's not like they're epically mismanaging the money.
Apologies for the lack of sources, but everything relevant is public, I think, and you've found the budget already.
MediaWiki is open source. Developers getting paid is great, but things would still eventually go in even without them getting paid.
Ops might be essential, but it’s not $88 million dollars. Nowhere near.
It’s your responsibility to back up your claims with links. Telling someone it’s all public and to trust you and your good authority is, frankly, not enough.
Agreed. I see a lot of true believers in management, particularly following the overgrowth of 2021. Their logic is that their managers can't be wrong, because their managers hired them. If their managers are wrong, then the true believer's employment is wrong too. I think the anxiety of losing a job can cause true believers to "get in on the lie" and aid management in dodging the blame.
It's an unfortunate position to be in as a Wikimedia employee.
>2. Posts that say "Wikipedia only has [x] more articles but budget has gone up [y]" are beyond stupid. Any idea how many projects besides Wikipedia are run by WMF - for instance, ever heard of Wikimedia Commons? Any idea how litigious and heavily-regulated the world has got, and how much effort has to be poured into softening some of the emerging laws, mounting judicial challenges against the rest, etc? Any idea how much funding every usergroup and chapter (sometimes more than one per country, e.g. in Spain) is asking for? Any idea how much effort is put into developing features that encourage new people to start editing, not just consuming? Any idea how expensive it is to support and facilitate the big "Movement" discussions (aimed at decentralising the movement!) and the User Code of Conduct discussions?
Isn't it the job of the Wikimedia Foundation to let people know just these things in a way they can understand? Why is it the responsibility of users to dig into the financials of a non-profit begging them for money rather than the other way around?
edit: And if the answer is that if people were given detailed and accurate information they'd be less likely to donate then... that answers the question of why you shouldn't donate.
These don't seem to allow me to actually answer the questions OP brought up but merely give high level summaries of X% is spent on these N things or the strategic areas without money allotment. If the point of OPs questions is that knowing that information would make me more likely to donate then I don't know that information.
>At some point you have to ask yourself "what would victim blaming look like, and how different is that from this"
Interesting how questioning giving a money to a specific non-profit is now called victim blaming. I guess corporations really are people now.
The OP didn't genuinely ask any questions, they simply mischaracterised the banners that are on Wikipedia at the moment. I'm not the only person in this thread that seems to be having a hard time finding one that's implying Wikipedia could shut down at any moment.
"Yes the criticism is wrong, but that's your fault for not informing the critics" is absolutely victim blaming.
Although I’ve seen some banners that were on the aggressive side, the site to me is infinitely better than ones that deploy modern adtech, it’s almost like those practices can be intuitively felt when navigating leading to a worse experience.
All that but I have yet to get what the foundation spends 155 MILLION dollars on - each year. Even with your arguments that number seems to be wildly inflated.
Also, the Wikimedia Foundation explicitly asks for funding for Wikipedia. As far as I know, no one asked the Wikimedia Foundation to perform anything past that. This seems to be comparable to Mozilla‘s situation, who try to grow past Firefox with ideas nobody asks for but they lose sight of what their main product.
50% of money goes towards staffing. WF just overhired and pays ludicrous exec salaries, so now they must pay the price.
Last time I checked, just a couple of years ago, Wikimedia's CEO makes ~$350k / year which seems extremely reasonable compared to most CEOs in the USA. It was ~2.5x my salary when I worked at the foundation. Typical CEO salary multipliers (as compared to typical staff salary) are far far greater in the USA.
From my experience, and I worked there for 7 years, Wikimedia pays below average for the industry, though the benefit package is absolutely top-notch.
2. All of those are either unnecessary or could be done much cheaper. Why does facilitating discussions even cost money when Wikipedia is already a platform that facilitates discussions?
>many people working here will be dealing with actual cancer
Just because cancer is a real thing doesn't mean it can not be used as a metaphor. Death is similarly used as a metaphor all of the time.
Seriously, the whole argument is so flimsy. Very few people know or care about all of the extraneous arbitrary make-work causes and movements that Wikipedia donations are actually being used to fund rather than the core site.
And that’s the whole crux of the argument that OP conveniently ignored: that the banners make it seem like Wikipedia needs the money, when it doesn’t. WMF, on the other hand, does need it so it can continue to grow its spending exponentially on causes no one cares about and have nothing to do with Wikipedia itself (which is what people actually care about and probably think their donations are being used to support).
After reading this, I went an donated $10. Wikipedia is one of the most incredible resources on the Internet, and it pains me that it is having such issues. Maybe their messaging should say so.
Though personally, I think it's even better when people join the community of active users (whether Wikipedia or any of the other projects) and help out directly!
Commons in particular should get a big overhaul. And ideally a phone app.
I don’t know how would it look like, but… why is it 100 times easier to upload photo of a place from phone to Google Maps than it is to Commons?
(ironically, most poor country photos are from Panoramio from before it went to Google Maps.)
I am so glad you posted this. Let me take the opportunity to say thank you. The Wikimedia Foundation does some of the most important work in the world, I am profoundly grateful for your work.
This is not to say there's no excess, or that resources couldn't be allocated internally more effectively - I'm not going to put up some kind of strawman - but:
1. I took a 20% pay cut so that I could do more work for the Foundation. Worth it.
2. Posts that say "Wikipedia only has [x] more articles but budget has gone up [y]" are beyond stupid. Any idea how many projects besides Wikipedia are run by WMF - for instance, ever heard of Wikimedia Commons? Any idea how litigious and heavily-regulated the world has got, and how much effort has to be poured into softening some of the emerging laws, mounting judicial challenges against the rest, etc? Any idea how much funding every usergroup and chapter (sometimes more than one per country, e.g. in Spain) is asking for? Any idea how much effort is put into developing features that encourage new people to start editing, not just consuming? Any idea how expensive it is to support and facilitate the big "Movement" discussions (aimed at decentralising the movement!) and the User Code of Conduct discussions? How hard it is to have a viable Trust & Safety team for so many projects, 300+ languages, and people from all over the world to support?
3. After a big outcry about the banners a month ago (that was a long time coming, no denial), the drafting and design of the banners is much softer this year than the last. And guess what, they're much less effective, and now projects are being cancelled, staff departures aren't being backfilled, and jobs are at stake. That may be worth it, but let's at least be honest about the downsides.
Accountability and criticism are fine - but when absolutely no intellectual effort is put into keeping that criticism balanced and on-target, then all you've ended up doing is making people who work here, rather than raking in the big bucks working for Big Tech, feel shitty. And guess what: you lose extra marks for bringing up cancer (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has...) when many people working here will be dealing with actual cancer, either personally or among their friends or family, at the moment.