<story><title>Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-05-22/News_and_notes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattlondon</author><text>It has always been like this - at least for the past 10-15 years or so it has been essentially impossible to edit wikipedia.&lt;p&gt;Basically &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor.&lt;p&gt;I think some editors decide that they &amp;quot;own&amp;quot; certain pages or group of pages and install themselves as some sort of authority&amp;#x2F;gate keeper&amp;#x2F;moderator. If your edit does not please them, it&amp;#x27;s gone. Instantly. You only get to edit the pages if you are in the editor&amp;#x27;s cabal of friends.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t have an account, or you do have an account but perhaps have only made a handful of edits, you are instantly distrusted and assumed to be malicious.&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can never prove that you are &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; malicious, because there is the default stance of immediate-distrust for anyone, so your edits are constantly undone and you never get to build up enough credibility to appease the editors who control who gets to edit &amp;quot;their&amp;quot; articles.&lt;p&gt;I gave up years ago after a small edit-war with someone who kept reverting changes about a UK politician who was in national news at the time.  No amount of references or citations from e.g. the BBC or the Guardian was good enough as I guess the verifiable truth didn&amp;#x27;t fit with their view of what this page should selectively say about that person, and so they banned my IP as a &amp;quot;vandal&amp;quot;. I gave up (but got a new IP after redialing so it was pointless)</text></item><item><author>ilikehurdles</author><text>In that time it’s become increasingly challenging to contribute anything to The People’s Encyclopedia.&lt;p&gt;I wanted to update a local wiki page with newer data from its original sources, but apparently I have become blacklisted because I use&amp;#x2F;used Apple’s private relay and safari’s privacy measures by default in all my browsing. Disabling them didn’t fix it. I would love to sign up as a fallback measure to be able to contribute, and verify my account by whatever means necessary, but apparently in the 2020s that’s just not something Wikipedia supports (as I’m also black listed from signing up despite never contributing to Wikipedia.)&lt;p&gt;Increasingly I see out of date and opinionated articles and I wonder how many of us have meaningful contributions ready but are forced to sit on the sidelines because there’s no “way in” with this product.</text></item><item><author>costco</author><text>2016 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $69,136,758&lt;p&gt;2022 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $145,970,915&lt;p&gt;I love Wikipedia but I don&amp;#x27;t see how this cost explosion can evenly be remotely justified.  What value have they added in that time?  A new editor and CSS on articles?</text></item><item><author>andersrs</author><text>Just take a look at this graph. The salaries have been bloating whilst hosting expenses are flat and plummeting as a proportion of all expenses.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:Wikimedia_Foundation&amp;#x27;s_expenses_evolution_by_rubrics_in_US_Dollars.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;Fi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:Wikimedia_Foundation&amp;#x27;s_expenses_percentage.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;Fi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Net assets are sitting at ~$240M about 10x what they were a decade ago. Yet they roll out a sob-story banner on every page insinuating that they might cease to exist if you don&amp;#x27;t cough up.&lt;p&gt;It gives me an uneasy feeling that the ex-CEO went to work for a think tank. I hope they&amp;#x27;re politically neutral.&lt;p&gt;Obviously it&amp;#x27;s become a gravy train. At a certain point they should have stopped the begging because clearly they have the resources to run the site several times over.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>swalling</author><text>&amp;gt; Basically any change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor.&lt;p&gt;You sound like someone who was pushing a particular point of view about politics, which is precisely the kind of edits that are set up for organ rejection given Wikipedia&amp;#x27;s strict stance on neutrality, sourcing, and the fact that politics are naturally contentious &amp;#x2F; prone to edit warring.&lt;p&gt;There are between 1.5 and 2 million anonymous edits to Wikipedia every month. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stats.wikimedia.org&amp;#x2F;#&amp;#x2F;all-wikipedia-projects&amp;#x2F;contributing&amp;#x2F;edits&amp;#x2F;normal|line|all|editor_type~anonymous*group-bot*name-bot*user|monthly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stats.wikimedia.org&amp;#x2F;#&amp;#x2F;all-wikipedia-projects&amp;#x2F;contrib...&lt;/a&gt; A lot of them are in reality vandalism, spam, and garbage by passersby, but they aren&amp;#x27;t all reverted.</text></comment>
<story><title>Severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-05-22/News_and_notes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattlondon</author><text>It has always been like this - at least for the past 10-15 years or so it has been essentially impossible to edit wikipedia.&lt;p&gt;Basically &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; change you make it insta-reverted by some bot or over-zealous power-crazed editor.&lt;p&gt;I think some editors decide that they &amp;quot;own&amp;quot; certain pages or group of pages and install themselves as some sort of authority&amp;#x2F;gate keeper&amp;#x2F;moderator. If your edit does not please them, it&amp;#x27;s gone. Instantly. You only get to edit the pages if you are in the editor&amp;#x27;s cabal of friends.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t have an account, or you do have an account but perhaps have only made a handful of edits, you are instantly distrusted and assumed to be malicious.&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can never prove that you are &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; malicious, because there is the default stance of immediate-distrust for anyone, so your edits are constantly undone and you never get to build up enough credibility to appease the editors who control who gets to edit &amp;quot;their&amp;quot; articles.&lt;p&gt;I gave up years ago after a small edit-war with someone who kept reverting changes about a UK politician who was in national news at the time.  No amount of references or citations from e.g. the BBC or the Guardian was good enough as I guess the verifiable truth didn&amp;#x27;t fit with their view of what this page should selectively say about that person, and so they banned my IP as a &amp;quot;vandal&amp;quot;. I gave up (but got a new IP after redialing so it was pointless)</text></item><item><author>ilikehurdles</author><text>In that time it’s become increasingly challenging to contribute anything to The People’s Encyclopedia.&lt;p&gt;I wanted to update a local wiki page with newer data from its original sources, but apparently I have become blacklisted because I use&amp;#x2F;used Apple’s private relay and safari’s privacy measures by default in all my browsing. Disabling them didn’t fix it. I would love to sign up as a fallback measure to be able to contribute, and verify my account by whatever means necessary, but apparently in the 2020s that’s just not something Wikipedia supports (as I’m also black listed from signing up despite never contributing to Wikipedia.)&lt;p&gt;Increasingly I see out of date and opinionated articles and I wonder how many of us have meaningful contributions ready but are forced to sit on the sidelines because there’s no “way in” with this product.</text></item><item><author>costco</author><text>2016 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $69,136,758&lt;p&gt;2022 Wikimedia Foundation Budget: $145,970,915&lt;p&gt;I love Wikipedia but I don&amp;#x27;t see how this cost explosion can evenly be remotely justified.  What value have they added in that time?  A new editor and CSS on articles?</text></item><item><author>andersrs</author><text>Just take a look at this graph. The salaries have been bloating whilst hosting expenses are flat and plummeting as a proportion of all expenses.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:Wikimedia_Foundation&amp;#x27;s_expenses_evolution_by_rubrics_in_US_Dollars.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;Fi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;File:Wikimedia_Foundation&amp;#x27;s_expenses_percentage.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wikimedia_Foundation#&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;Fi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Net assets are sitting at ~$240M about 10x what they were a decade ago. Yet they roll out a sob-story banner on every page insinuating that they might cease to exist if you don&amp;#x27;t cough up.&lt;p&gt;It gives me an uneasy feeling that the ex-CEO went to work for a think tank. I hope they&amp;#x27;re politically neutral.&lt;p&gt;Obviously it&amp;#x27;s become a gravy train. At a certain point they should have stopped the begging because clearly they have the resources to run the site several times over.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>olivermarks</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vice.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;7x47bb&amp;#x2F;wikipedia-editors-elite-diversity-foundation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vice.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;7x47bb&amp;#x2F;wikipedia-editors-eli...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#x27;Nearly All of Wikipedia Is Written By Just 1 Percent of Its Editors
Researchers found that 77 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by 1 percent of Wikipedia editors, and they think this is probably for the best.&amp;#x27;</text></comment>