I found on Facebook feed the next article [1]. The article title was so amusing that I had to read the article: Stop giving Wikimedia money.
Although I thought I'll find something totally irrelevant, the article actually reveals that the author is pretty well introduced into internal Wikimedia issues. Which is, in turn, insufficient for article to be a good one, but this one has some good points.
Big banner. I admit, there are some benefits of living in the second class country by the Western financial norms. I saw that banner just on Commons. But that's the known issue. My question here is: Is there a way to get similar amount of money from the public in some other way? For example, I am sure that there are many people outside who would be willing to donate ~$10/month if they don't have to think about that (i.e., opt-in for monthly charge).
"We're a small non-profit...". Huh. I am working for one American non-profit with few times bigger budget than WMF, which management treat themselves as "a small non-profit". I mean, I fully understand that kind of reasoning. There are much bigger non-profits in the wild. BUT, keep in mind that, not counting bigger retailers, I'd have to walk 15-20 minutes from my home to find a visible business which has comparable revenue. And I am living in not that poor city in the richest municipality of my country. Please, just remove that "small" in the future.
There are some points in relation to the programming failures. They are now funny to me because I know that things are moving, as well as we have now engineering-focused ED. Just one year ago that wouldn't be that funny because it would hurt.
$684.000 gross or $3200 per capita for furniture sounds, hm, interesting. May somebody explain that? I am not saying that employees should live nomadic lives inside of the office; not even that it's about outrageously decadent spending, but the amount doesn't sound too rational, as well as it's partially in collision with Sue's quote inside of the article.
Now, the crucial point from the article "[Money] doesn’t go to content creation at all.".
It's heresy to us, but the fact that it's heresy to us gives open field to that kind of very valid criticism: WMF is spending few percents of the budget on the content and people are using its projects because of the content (yes, few percents include projects where we are not paying people to actually write the content, but for the projects which lead to the content creation).
I didn't think about possible answers. The argument just strikes me on the line that Wikimedia is basically exploitative toward her editors comparably to Uber toward their drivers.
What differs us from Uber and makes our position better is the fact that we are community-driven movement (as well as encyclopedia publishers are on average much more predatory organizations than various organizations of taxi drivers).
However, there are some issues which should be addressed, definitely. Ideas?
On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 3:40 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
What differs us from Uber and makes our position better is the fact that we are community-driven movement (as well as encyclopedia publishers are on average much more predatory organizations than various organizations of taxi drivers).
However, there are some issues which should be addressed, definitely. Ideas?
It also helps that Uber is a $40 billion dollar for-profit company with the sole objective of a financial return for its owners. The comparison seems inapt.
On Dec 5, 2014 10:07 PM, "Nathan" nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
It also helps that Uber is a $40 billion dollar for-profit company with
the
sole objective of a financial return for its owners. The comparison seems inapt.
That's valid structural point, as well.
However, there are some comparable consequences and we can't escape from them.
While I am quite happy to see powerless members of former powerful guilds, which obstructed progress, there are some seriously negative consequences of our global influence and the influence of other contemporary free access organizations, for profit or not.
Market logic says that if traditional education is becoming irrelevant, there will be lower demand. If there is lower demand for formal education, professors will have smaller salaries, which would lead to smaller number of professors.
And Silicon Valley didn't yet figured out how to transplant education directly into the brain. And there are many basics which has to be learned by a competent teacher.
Which means that our net contribution could easily become negative, that the end of what we started would be more dumb population than it was before us.
I am not saying that we are the witnesses of the final stages. But we can already see young scientists all over the developed world who are living on the edge of the dignified life or, in many cases, below that line.
We are not capable to reverse some trends immediately, but it's our responsibility to try to make positive contribution.
On Dec 5, 2014 10:44 PM, "Milos Rancic" millosh@gmail.com wrote:
And Silicon Valley didn't yet figured out how to transplant education
directly into the brain. And there are many basics which has to be learned by a competent teacher.
(Nah, still have problems with to learn/to teach dichotomy. It's the same verb in Serbian.)
Hi,
Milos Rancic wrote:
For example, I am sure that there are many people outside who would be willing to donate ~$10/month if they don't have to think about that (i.e., opt-in for monthly charge).
I think that's precisely what happens to Chapters membership. And Chapters members probably have a say (?) in what the Chapters do. There is no Wikimedia membership, however.
A similar line from the UK's Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/citydiary/11276717/Dashwood-Ladbr...
Quote:
Dashwood was confused to see a large banner ad flashing up on *the Wikipedia homepage * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Pagelast week. The site was asking visitors for money, claiming that it “survives” on donations averaging about $15.
“To protect our independence, we’ll never run ads,” said Wikipedia’s online ad. “If everyone reading this right now gave $3, our fundraiser would be done within an hour.”
But Wikipedia hardly needs to scrabble around for small change. Latest accounts for the Wikimedia Foundation, which controls the online library, report revenues of $52.8m in the year to June, up from $48.6m in 2013, with cash and “cash equivalents” up $5.7m to $27.9m.
The foundation also spent more than $680,000 on office furniture – a $2,862 allowance for each of its 239 paid employees. Presumably, the “small non-profit” organisation doesn’t shop at Ikea.
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Sat, Dec 6, 2014 at 6:14 AM, svetlana svetlana@fastmail.com.au wrote:
Hi,
Milos Rancic wrote:
For example, I am sure that there are many people outside who would be willing to donate ~$10/month if they don't have to think about that (i.e., opt-in for monthly charge).
I think that's precisely what happens to Chapters membership. And Chapters members probably have a say (?) in what the Chapters do. There is no Wikimedia membership, however.
-- svetlana
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