I have donated in the past, but then there were wild accusations, people saying it’s not needed, it’s to fund other things, and so on and so forth.
Yesterday I got the popup begging for a couple of euros, so what’s the status? Should I donate or is it a waste of time and money?
Cheers
Edit: Thanks for all the insightful posts! I’m jobless at the moment so just ten bucks this time:
Next time you think about donating to a foundation, look at their CEO‘s salary, then think again.
513k seems pretty low compared to most private sector CEOs
That sort of remuneration isn’t compatible with their yearly donation pleadings… and that’s not even looking into the benevolent work of all authors which actually drives the value of that supposedly non profit. Other private sector CEO at least aren’t pretending…
If you don’t have good leadership then it doesn’t matter what the fundraisers do. It seems like the metric to look at here should be the average and median 501©3 CEO total compensation for similarly sized orgs and for whatever city they are headquartered in
How would you assess its size given that the bulk of the work is crowdsourced ? As for the city that’s awfully arbitrary… especially in these times where remote working is available and talents can be sourced from anywhere. Maybe it’s different in American companies but in Europe the leadership is generally shared across a number of executives. Or even broader. All in all I find it quite funny too see all the shielding when discussing Wikipedia’s ceo when any other ceo related discussion would have them hanged by popular demand.
No. The WMF does not work on Wikipedia’s content. They focus on fundraising, hosting, software, legal, and the rare cross-wiki initiative.
And pretty high compared to what most donors have.
WhAtAbOuT!
Sorry, what is the actual thinking here? Anyone who earns more than you shouldn’t exist?
Without a highly paid CEO, wikipedia wouldn’t exist.
Without donations, wikipedia wouldn’t exist.
Therefore, if you want wikipedia to exist, you should donate.
My argument is that nobody needs 500k to do their job right and there is no justification for paying a manager five to ten times as much as an engineer, especially not on donation money.
I‘d rather give to a smaller project where the money actually ends up with the people who do most of the work.
Then go do that and stop loudly aligning with fascist goals of tearing down the last good part of the internet, weirdo
Criticizing top-down organizations where money flows up toward the least useful people being equated to fascism is fucking wild, bro. That’s like the most standard left take.
As an editor, based on the difference she made in community–WMF dynamics, I would say that Iskander is really useful.
Tearing down Wikipedia is in direct alignment with Fascists’s stated goals, I’m not equating anything.
If you are against Wikipedia you’re with Trump and Elon.
Make good choices
Oh yeah, the guy who fights for fair wages, universal basic income, free healthcare and equal rights for everyone criticizes that your favorite „non-profit“ organization looks more and more like a for-profit corporation every year and comes begging while wearing a gold watch. He must be a fascist.
No one in this comment section is against Wikipedia. You’re making that shit up. We’re saying they don’t need your money, they can trim the fat off the top. They’re also one of the most well funded orgs in the world. It doesn’t take that much to host wikipedia.
If you think “hosting” is what it takes to run Wikipedia, we’re done here. Best of luck to you
You misunderstand my wording but I’ll refrain from correcting you seeing as you have no intentions of having this discussion. Good day :-)
I think the thinking is that half a million is a disgusting amount for anyone to earn annually and I tend to agree with that.
For perspective, 500k is effectively the same as zero compared to what the likes of Musk, Bezos and Ellison make from their assets.
You and this CEO are basically equivalent in wealth to those guys.
You can take issue with the remuneration here, sure, but this person doesn’t have anything close to the economy breaking amount of wealth held by the actually wealthy
They are the ones we should be focusing our energy on.
Be angry at wealth, not income. That’s what’s fucking everything up right now.
I can think that both are gross beyond a certain point.
Does she really need the donations I’ve been giving to top her up to that level? Or is 300K more than enough for anyone? It would certainly be more palatable to those giving donations.
I think that utterly ridiculous wages at C level generally have become normalised and the amount of people in this thread defending a half a million salary is clear evidence of that to me.
Both can be gross sure, but even the biggest CEO income is not causing systemic economic problems because it’s generally taxed somewhat properly and is ultimately tied to some amount of time and effort being spent (however little)
Wealth? Basically not taxed at all. Requires zero time and effort to make income.
What do people who make millions a year from assets do with that money?
Buy more assets, beyond a point everything they could possibly have as a living expense is covered.
What does someone with a lot of money do when bidding against people with less for an asset?
Drive the price up
This is why houses are expensive and will keep getting more so
This is why food is expensive and will keep getting more so
This is why energy is expensive and will keep getting more so
This is why everything is expensive and will keep getting more so
What happens then? Housing, food and energy is increasing something the non wealthy can afford.
Keep it up and the 99.9% won’t be able own a thing and will ultimately have no power to change that.
Concentrated wealth is an existential issue
Oh I agree that gross levels of wealth are the bigger problem by a country mile. We’re in total agreement there.
People earning half a million a year are still raking in money from earned wealth from excess money. I suppose my objections are twofold; that it’s a donations based organisation and that wages just shouldn’t be that high (and I grant you hers are at the lower level of many large companies C level packages).
That’s super tame, though. A competent CEO is essential to an organization as important and as hated by powerful people as Wikipedia, and those cost a a pretty penny.
You gotta remember this is a massive website that doesn’t run on donations alone. It needs qualified people that have experience with websites of this scale.
Those people aren’t cheap.
Then pay the people who actually keep the website running. I bet they don’t earn half a million per year.
Who hires those people? Who gives them direction? CEOs don’t do nothing. They are overpaid in for profit companies, but this is probably what they should be making.
If you believe that CEO are doing that in vacuum you’re being very naive. They are for sure taking decisions but they take them most of the time based on shareholders constraints, external guidance or internal influences.
They don’t pay the people who do the actual work anything, though…
Did you think they run their servers using volunteers?
No I don’t but I think the articles are slightly more important, yet the writers get nothing.
Have you a nice dark mode plugin going on that I should have?
Dark Reader!
It’s great. In some rare cases it breaks a website though, then you need to deactivate it.
Nice one. Will check it out.