Wikipedia Sucks!

Most of us have already heard about the recent issues with Wikimedia France in the last few months and the recent problems with Wikimedia NYCs treatment of one of their own members.

I noticed today on the Wikimedia mailing list that the WMF HQ is moving (see link here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2017-September/088654.html) and I also saw on WPO that the WMUK HQ is moving as well. It seems to me that this is a lot of things happening within the WMF infrastructure at the same time and I can't help but wonder if this is at least partly the failure of the Executive director.

In addition to this probably being at least partly to do with a leadership issue, I can't help wonder what these moves will cost donors. A few things I wonder about with relation to cost:
- The new WMF HQ space is LEED certified, that is surely to come at an increased cost. Anyone know what that is yet?
- It costs money to pack, move and then unpack. Given this is an IT organization and that the moving industry in California is unionized, this move is likely to cost at least $25, 000 and that is probably a conservative number.
- Are they buying new furniture or office accessories for the new office? Moves to new locations also come with the additional cost of new furniture. New furniture can be extremely expensive, new cubes and the like could cost as much as a couple hundred thousand dollars not counting getting rid of the old equipment.
- Are there additional costs for parking or other reimbursables that are often associated with a move a new location. Even a short move of just a few miles can drive up the cost a lot. In Washington DC or NYC for example, moving a few blocks can mean the price goes up by thousands of dollars a month.

These questions also pertain to WMUK as well but of course they have a lot smaller group so the cost is negligible.

Kumioko, they're sitting on somewhere around 100 million dollars, their theme song is , not a certain TV theme song by Quincy Jones .

The building is next to a galleria mall packed with restaurants so James Alexander can reach that life goal of eating to death.

Yes, Kum, this move is chickenfeed for them. I suspect it was triggered by the new ED and new trustees who wanted a "nicer" address on Market Street. It has direct access to the Crocker Galleria mall, where the old office is in a very ordinary old industrial building on a back street. It is not unusual for a tech company to move as frequently as the WMF has (remember they were in Tampa until 2008?)

Don't be TOO surprised if they build a "throne room" for Jimbo at the new location, with a gilded throne and slave women to polish his knob.

Oh I know it's really just a drop in the bucket, but I see this as a start of a spike in spending. The move will cost money, the new location is certainly more expensive and likely larger, they are going to want some new, nicer furniture, etc. So I think as we have seen with WMF spending spiraling upwards, that trend is going to continue to gain momentum. It's also worth mentioning that yes, they might have 100 million and more donations coming in all the time but it costs about 30-40 million to maintain this social abuse machine every year, so a couple bad years and some bad press and they could be done for.

All it would really take is a big scandal or two, such as something happening at one of their meetups (just to clarify I am not advocating anything, just stating it as a possibility because its already happened several times) or some big conflicts internally (like a hack that leaks credit card information or a sex scandal at the WMF as a couple examples). Those things can be hard to recover from and as incompetent as the WMF is, it's unlikely they would do so easily.

It's also worth mentioning that yes, they might have 100 million and more donations coming in all the time but it costs about 30-40 million to maintain this social abuse machine every year....

Thirty to forty million dollars to keep Wikipedia running? I was figuring at the most it might be costing fifteen mil. I found good ol' Jimbo claiming on Quora near Thanksgiving in 2014 that the budget for that year was forty-two million. The question is: did they spend all that money, or did they undershoot? Have they been undershooting for years?

Actually the WMF spends more and more money every year. This year I here it's over 50 million. I have also heard but have been unable to verify that the move is costing over $1 million, includes some new furniture and the rent is 3-4 times the rent at the old place per month.

I assume these figures will be released at some point, maybe next years budget, so it will be interesting to see what the actual numbers are.

Kumioko wrote:Actually the WMF spends more and more money every year. This year I here it's over 50 million.

Spending on WHAT?!?

They still use markup language, they can't entice new editors so those "This Article Has Problems" tags hover above many articles (and some of the articles have two or three of those tags, some dating back to 2008), the website design remains static, their attempt to get away from markup failed, I could list many other problems. This does not look like a site that needs more and more money to run - it looks like a site that peaked a few years ago and has become more and more moribund since.

I have changed my vieux after that SanFanBan by that autistic fool of a James Alexander complete. I see it as a kind of troll art, a lifestream out of a psychiatric clinic. And, from this point of view is 50M not so much for a word wide life stream. And I don't give them a single euro, so, not my probelm.
And they may go one for years, I don't care about trollopedia or WMF, whether it hurts into the sea, or get the Nobel price. Het ligt ver buiten mijn belevingswereld, I don't know how to translate this. Wikipedia does't fit in the way I look at the world. I am a spectator, that is all. I had never the intention to save the wikiworld, and still don't have.

But I understand your question, and the answer is simple. They spend there money on thinks they think are useful. And on staff they think is capable. And that is the only right answer. Take in mind trollopedia-NL and trollomedia-NL, project this two projects on WMF, and you have every answer on every question you have. And Statlers Law of course, autistic users replace/supplant not autistic users, and at the end the whole wiki population is autistic or a troll, like Natuur12 for instance. And the same happens in WMF. And that is the reason the chaos there gets bigger and bigger. They will never get it under controle, because they can't!

Strelnikov wrote:

Kumioko wrote:Actually the WMF spends more and more money every year. This year I here it's over 50 million.

Spending on WHAT?!?

They still use markup language, they can't entice new editors so those "This Article Has Problems" tags hover above many articles (and some of the articles have two or three of those tags, some dating back to 2008), the website design remains static, their attempt to get away from markup failed, I could list many other problems. This does not look like a site that needs more and more money to run - it looks like a site that peaked a few years ago and has become more and more moribund since.

I agree with your sentiment. Every year the WMF spends more money and every year they have less to show for it. There are so many people leaving Wikipedia for a variety of reasons, so few coming in and the projects have gotten such a bad reputation, that the WMF has to spend money on legal fees, employees, advertisement and IT just to keep the ship moving forward. It has already gotten to a point that the WMF is spending more than they really get out of the money but as long as donation dollars keep coming in, they'll keep finding ways to waste them.

Kumioko wrote:

Strelnikov wrote:

Kumioko wrote:Actually the WMF spends more and more money every year. This year I here it's over 50 million.

Spending on WHAT?!?

They still use markup language, they can't entice new editors so those "This Article Has Problems" tags hover above many articles (and some of the articles have two or three of those tags, some dating back to 2008), the website design remains static, their attempt to get away from markup failed, I could list many other problems. This does not look like a site that needs more and more money to run - it looks like a site that peaked a few years ago and has become more and more moribund since.

I agree with your sentiment. Every year the WMF spends more money and every year they have less to show for it. There are so many people leaving Wikipedia for a variety of reasons, so few coming in and the projects have gotten such a bad reputation, that the WMF has to spend money on legal fees, employees, advertisement and IT just to keep the ship moving forward. It has already gotten to a point that the WMF is spending more than they really get out of the money but as long as donation dollars keep coming in, they'll keep finding ways to waste them.

Yeh, you are right. But there are so many organizations, authorities, spoiling money. I am more fascinated by there complete madness, and it is not my money they are spoiling. After about twenty edits it was complete clear for me I had to deal with a bunch of lunatics, and It seems to me logical when you give a bunch of lunatics such a amound of money, they spoil it. It doesn't surprise or shock me.