Wikipedia and Wikimedia, Where's your money going Options

[Peter Damian]

How many people who donate to Wikimedia think that their money is going to Wikipedia. I never realised this until recently (not that I have donated any money anyway).

I am still struggling to understand what Wikimedia is for, other than hosting all those servers. In particular, now that Wikimedia UK is registered as a charity, I am wondering what the money is for.
Wikimedia UK has 'raised' £500,000, but I understand this is a cheque from the parent WMF. It took me a long time to find out how it is actually being spent, but the page linked to below explains some of it. I itemise them below (I didn't finish it, it being far too boring). The CEO salary is about right for London charity director, but I don't understand what he (Jon Davies) is doing, apart from raising money to pay his own salary. The Office Manager is also about right, but, again, what are they actually doing? The other stuff is impenetrable, apart from the second "Wikipedians in Residence" which is (because of the Bristol connection) is probably a nice cheque for Martin Poulter for being a good all-round nice guy.

The whole thing seems to be to raise money for 'mates' - the various ne'er do wells and useless people that hang around the WMF.

Further investigation, followed by a letter to the charities commission, would seem to be in order.

Chief Executive 60,000
Office Manager 25,000
Events Manager 30,000
Communications 20,000
Developer 30,000
Train the Trainers Programme 20,000
Outreach merchandise & publications 5,000
Extended Reach programme 10,000
Technical development to support cultural outreach 80,000
GLAM-Wiki Conference Autumn 2012 10,000
Outreach Events 10,000
Wikipedians in Residence 15,000
Digitization 20,000
World Wars I and II project 30,000
University outreach events 10,000
Wikipedians in Residence 10,000
[etc]

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Activity_Plan

[thekohser]

The whole thing seems to be to raise money for 'mates' - the various ne'er do wells and useless people that hang around the WMF.

Bingo.

Same could be said about Wikia venture capital fundraising.

[Peter Damian]

The whole thing seems to be to raise money for 'mates' - the various ne'er do wells and useless people that hang around the WMF.

Bingo.

Same could be said about Wikia venture capital fundraising.

Wikia is for investors, no? One presumes that in taking financial risk the onus of due diligence is on the investor, caveat emptor etc etc.

But a fundraiser is inviting widows and orphans to give money to good causes. I don't regard a fat cheque to the deplorable Martin Poulter as a 'good cause'. But the widows and orphans don't know that. They imagine the money is going to help African self-improvement or whatever.

[edit] Ah I've found the page I was looking for

The Charity Commission needs to know where there is a serious risk of significant harm to or abuse of a charity, its assets, beneficiaries or reputation. The issues we consider serious [include]

sham charities set up for an illegal or improper purpose
charities deliberately being used for significant private advantage
where a charity's independence is seriously called into question

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/About_...know_about.aspx



This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Ottava]

The whole thing seems to be to raise money for 'mates' - the various ne'er do wells and useless people that hang around the WMF.

Bingo.

Same could be said about Wikia venture capital fundraising.

I don't know if Mr. Kohs would agree with me, but I for one would definitely never look at Wikipedia again or even mention it if they paid me money to do so. They obviously have so much cash to spend on useless things that I am sure they can get what they want quite easily. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[melloden]

They seem to be paying a bunch of mini-Jimbos. They do a lot of stuff, but most of it isn't really important.

[Abd]

I don't know if Mr. Kohs would agree with me, but I for one would definitely never look at Wikipedia again or even mention it if they paid me money to do so. They obviously have so much cash to spend on useless things that I am sure they can get what they want quite easily. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Well, this is one of many ways that we differ. I'd edit Wikipedia for money, I'm just not willing to do it for love any more. She doesn't want me, eh? It's rude to insist!

But if someone is willing to pay me.... How much and for what?

And I do think this is something that Thekohser agrees with.

I did edit Wikipedia after being blocked/banned. That was for a higher purpose, so to speak. For that purpose, the edits had to be constructive, with respect for the community. I accomplished that, which was the point, a demonstration. Brief. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Actually, it's not even a nice place to visit any more. Used to be. I now stay SUL logged-in as Abd, so I'm not tempted to edit anything, too effing much trouble. Unless, of course, someone pays me.

[powercorrupts]

Unfortunately the UK is full of dodgy charities, it's just too easy to get a 'charity number'. Ultimately it's a decent living for a couple of people, and of course their mates too. What else do people really need other than a living? It's the ultimate truth, and Wikipedia provides a living with prospects: they are all over the fucking place. Jimbo isn't Gandhi whether he grabs a legal buck from the proceeds or not, as some plant suggested he was in his widely-BBCTV-advertised Radio3 interview the other day ("well - thank you").

A message to you thieving bastards at the WMF - While we are on the subject of fundraising product, can you stop using bullshit American phrases like "Brighton Hackathon"? I know it's basically appealing to feckless twerpy airheads you are always searching for, but for the rest of us they are not welcome here. Talk about cultural imperialism. You have to wonder if the UK Events Manager is obliged to say "awesome".

£30,000 GPB PA is a quite tidy sum in the UK for an Events Manager by the way - it's a very good UK wage anyway, and all these above are all good wages - and in hard times of high undemployment too. There is not a huge 'career ladder' at the WMF that employees must climb over the years either - one of the main reasons why wages tend to be structured as they are. Wikipedia is a hideous cash cow for select like-minded people (looked jealously upon by endless wannabees) - and only the 'censorious' governments that Jimbo seems to intrinsically dislike can ultimately intervene I think.

This post has been edited by powercorrupts:

[Peter Damian]

£30,000 GPB PA is a quite tidy sum in the UK for an Events Manager by the way - it's a very good UK wage anyway, and all these above are all good wages - and in hard times of high undemployment too. There is not a huge 'career ladder' at the WMF that employees must climb over the years either - one of the main reasons why wages tend to be structured as they are. Wikipedia is a hideous cash cow for select like-minded people (looked jealously upon by endless wannabees) - and only the 'censorious' governments that Jimbo seems to intrinsically dislike can ultimately intervene I think.

Well it seems to be about average http://www.salarytrack.co.uk/average-event...ger-salary.html at least for London. But (a) I would question why they need to open in London, given that most support for Wikipedia/Wikimedia seems to come from Manchester 'nearly the North' type places, and (b) why they need it at all. The volunteers seem to be doing this kind of thing anyway, why do they need 'event manager'??

[edit] And the CEO compensation looks a little on the low side from this http://society.guardian.co.uk/salarysurvey...1042677,00.html but again I question why they need this. A friend of mine who does this kind of thing told me a lot of the work is for advertising. But Wikimedia (if that includes Wikipedia) should have no problem at all with advertising.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[carbuncle]

I would like to thank Wikimedia UK for giving Chase Me some gainful employment, at least for the moment.

I don't know if Mr. Kohs would agree with me, but I for one would definitely never look at Wikipedia again or even mention it if they paid me money to do so. They obviously have so much cash to spend on useless things that I am sure they can get what they want quite easily. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

How much? I'll start up a collection....

[Ottava]

I would like to thank Wikimedia UK for giving Chase Me some gainful employment, at least for the moment.

I don't know if Mr. Kohs would agree with me, but I for one would definitely never look at Wikipedia again or even mention it if they paid me money to do so. They obviously have so much cash to spend on useless things that I am sure they can get what they want quite easily. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

How much? I'll start up a collection....

I'll stop editing WR for $1,000 dollars and give you my password to my WR account for $2,000.

[GlassBeadGame]

I would like to thank Wikimedia UK for giving Chase Me some gainful employment, at least for the moment.

I don't know if Mr. Kohs would agree with me, but I for one would definitely never look at Wikipedia again or even mention it if they paid me money to do so. They obviously have so much cash to spend on useless things that I am sure they can get what they want quite easily. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

How much? I'll start up a collection....

I'll stop editing WR for $1,000 dollars and give you my password to my WR account for $2,000.

Maybe we should just ban you now and let your mom give you whatever money you need. The panhandling is unattractive.

[EricBarbour]

I'd send you some money to stop editing, Ottava, but I'd much rather Taser you in the nuts.

Peter:
After looking at Poulter's edit patterns, I can say the following with confidence: he's a gnome, who
adds very little to the database. And he spends a great deal of time kissing admin asses.

You've had personal run-ins with him, haven't you? He's a campus social climber and
otherwise useless, am I right? Oh well, it's a common disease.

You need to go to that UK gathering and ask them one important question:
is Wikimedia UK going to provide material support to David Gerard and FT2?

[Ottava]

I'd send you some money to stop editing, Ottava, but I'd much rather Taser you in the nuts.

Do they have to be mutually exclusive? I mean, you can still send me money while wanting to do other things. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)



By the way, Peter - you are forgetting that most of the Wikimedians at Wikimedia UK are from London. They are the in-crowd. If you notice, most of them attached themselves to GLAM and have been helping each other gain permissions all over. I pointed that out when they pushed Tom Morris into OTRS.

[powercorrupts]

£30,000 GPB PA is a quite tidy sum in the UK for an Events Manager by the way - it's a very good UK wage anyway, and all these above are all good wages - and in hard times of high undemployment too. There is not a huge 'career ladder' at the WMF that employees must climb over the years either - one of the main reasons why wages tend to be structured as they are. Wikipedia is a hideous cash cow for select like-minded people (looked jealously upon by endless wannabees) - and only the 'censorious' governments that Jimbo seems to intrinsically dislike can ultimately intervene I think.

Well it seems to be about average http://www.salarytrack.co.uk/average-event...ger-salary.html at least for London. But (a) I would question why they need to open in London, given that most support for Wikipedia/Wikimedia seems to come from Manchester 'nearly the North' type places, and (b) why they need it at all. The volunteers seem to be doing this kind of thing anyway, why do they need 'event manager'??

[edit] And the CEO compensation looks a little on the low side from this http://society.guardian.co.uk/salarysurvey...1042677,00.html but again I question why they need this. A friend of mine who does this kind of thing told me a lot of the work is for advertising. But Wikimedia (if that includes Wikipedia) should have no problem at all with advertising.

But don't forget the charity factor. And as you say, they shouldn't really have such a need for an events manager to warrant employing one full-time, or at least one on such a high salary, esp given their supposed ethical status - ie how much they go on about their not-for-profit, contribute-for-free ideal.

The reality is that he/she no-doubt spends as much of the Foundation's surplus millions as possible on global meetings in the best places (they would never base their UK office in Manchester over London), and may also look-over the Chapter-creating nonsense, which (the last I looked) Wikipedians are supposed to run themselves with applied-for grant money. You can't build a global empire on bobbins I suppose.

[dogbiscuit]

The whole thing seems to be to raise money for 'mates' - the various ne'er do wells and useless people that hang around the WMF.

Further investigation, followed by a letter to the charities commission, would seem to be in order.

Chief Executive 60,000
Office Manager 25,000
Events Manager 30,000
Communications 20,000
Developer 30,000
Train the Trainers Programme 20,000
Outreach merchandise & publications 5,000
Extended Reach programme 10,000
Technical development to support cultural outreach 80,000
GLAM-Wiki Conference Autumn 2012 10,000
Outreach Events 10,000
Wikipedians in Residence 15,000
Digitization 20,000
World Wars I and II project 30,000
University outreach events 10,000
Wikipedians in Residence 10,000
[etc]

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Activity_Plan

I think the Charity Commission will need some persuasion to arise from their quango slumber, but one of the principles of charity trustees is that they have to be squeeky clean on financial separation from the operation, the trustees themselves simply are not allowed to financially benefit from the charity. Also, the Charity Commission do not like it when the trustees are all mates. The thing about this is that it will seem to outsiders that these people are distributed about the place.

Same with the salaries - they are reasonable salaries for those with experience, but it is a fair bet that most of their CVs simply are not up to the roles, they've just divided up the jobs between them.

What the Charities Commission need is hard evidence, and even then they are reluctant to intervene. We had forged invoices covering £20k at our local village hall where the committee had been paying themselves inflated sums - that was something like 30% of the income - and the CC were very little help, they only advised the trustees that they should not go to the police in the first instance as recovering the money was more important and I had to do some nasty behind the scenes work to ensure that the same people were stopped doing the same with the scouts.

I think other donators might be a little surprised that their money donated to Wikipedia, but actually to the WMF, has been diverted to the UK and is essentially going into the pockets of a handful of Wikipedians. I'm pretty amazed that any organisation would drop £500k to start up an organisation like that, which claims to be going to raise £1m a year where the participants are just a bunch of amateurs - and with oddballs like ChaseMe being employed, you can see that there is a major issue with the judgement of the group.

So I think CC would need a pretty well researched dossier which showed that the charity moneys were essentially being diverted into the pockets of employees selected because they were known through Wikipedia rather than selected through a proper process; that they did not have appropriate qualifications or experience (sitting being depressed in your own room for a year or two hardly is a great CV for an Events Manager) and a demonstration that an unreasonable proportion of the money was going in admin (read, own pockets) rather than to furthering the causes of the charity.

The key issue is that the trustees must have no financial benefit from the charity. The only exception is that if the charity can show that a trustee has provided the service at a demonstrably beneficial rate, e.g. if the trustee of a village hall runs a cleaning company and provides cleaning at cost as a favour.

I'd expect it to be fairly simple to find issues where they have not complied with law because these are Wikipedians, and they work on the principle of if Wikipedians believe something then that is how it must be, and actual law is a nuisance to be ignored. I'd presume that they had finance for some fairly good legal advice to get the charity but what the legal presentation was and what they actually do will be two different things. Perhaps a freedom of information request about the submissions would be appropriate. If they misrepresented the charity, then that is fraud and it becomes a police matter. It might also be worth, in that case, ensuring that you get copies of the various mailing lists and the statements made there - I'd presume that they would be naive enough to discuss what they were doing openly.

[thekohser]

But if someone is willing to pay me.... How much and for what?

Now wait, wait, wait a cotton-pickin' minute. I haven't seen you at the union meetings!

[Peter Damian]

Well I had the meeting with Richard Symonds on Sunday, and indeed bought him a beer. But he had to rush off, so I didn't get to the bottom of it. He did explain though that Wikimedia Foundation does not raise the money, WMUK does. I then asked him how WMUK raises the money if it only began to be a charity last week, and in any case who paid the £500,000 to WMUK for all those salaries and grants. He didn't really answer that but said that half the money has to go back to WMF anyway. At that point I was completely baffled.

He also said that in order to get charitable status, WMUK has to prove complete independence from WMF. That I don't understand either. If WMF writes a half million pound cheque to WMUK, how can the two be possibly independent?

He promised to email me this week with a more detailed and comprehensive account, but I have heard nothing despite a 'chase' email. I have 'chased' again and will leave it until the end of next week, but rather fear we are back in radio silence mode, as always happens with anything to do with Wikipedia.

More later on.

[Peter Damian]

OK Symonds has replied, saying that when a Wikipedia reader from the UK clicks on the banner, they get diverted to a WMUK page. Then they cough up, and the money is deemed to have been raised by WMUK. 50% of this goes to WMF under an agreement outlined here http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Fundraiser/Agreement .

I pointed out this is highly misleading, given that any normal person would assume the money was going to keep the engine rooms of Wikipedia going, after reading the banner text. "We have 400 servers and fewer than 100 staff worldwide." etc.

Whereas in fact the money is going to a quite different place, possibly Martin Poulter's pocket, who knows. My next question to Symonds will be where that money actually does go.

I talked to a couple of people at the meetup on Sunday, including one of the trustees and they only gave me foggy obscurities on the subject.

[dogbiscuit]

Peter, if you do get anything, do share it. I'm a charity trustee myself and have a pretty good idea of what is allowed and what is not.

If they are getting money for the UK charity and it is not entirely clear, and reading the page, there is no indication at all that the money is going to a nefarious bunch of British ner-do-wells, then that could be construed as fraud. The Fraud Act of 2002 is really clear on what constitutes fraud, and it includes the sin of omission of information. If I thought I was donating to Wikipedia and discovered that 50% of it had been filtered off to support Wikimedia UK I would be rather put out.

I also think that the Charities Commission would look rather dimly on a fundraising system that gave no indication of what that money was for.

What I really don't understand is why WMF would use its website to divert 50% commission to Wikimedia UK. If they were getting 10% to cover Gift Aid administration, it would make sense - WMF getting more money by using the charity front in the UK and Wikimedia UK getting some funds - a win for both, but why give away half your UK income? Bizarre.

[Peter Damian]

Peter, if you do get anything, do share it. I'm a charity trustee myself and have a pretty good idea of what is allowed and what is not.

If they are getting money for the UK charity and it is not entirely clear, and reading the page, there is no indication at all that the money is going to a nefarious bunch of British ner-do-wells, then that could be construed as fraud. The Fraud Act of 2002 is really clear on what constitutes fraud, and it includes the sin of omission of information. If I thought I was donating to Wikipedia and discovered that 50% of it had been filtered off to support Wikimedia UK I would be rather put out.

I also think that the Charities Commission would look rather dimly on a fundraising system that gave no indication of what that money was for.

What I really don't understand is why WMF would use its website to divert 50% commission to Wikimedia UK. If they were getting 10% to cover Gift Aid administration, it would make sense - WMF getting more money by using the charity front in the UK and Wikimedia UK getting some funds - a win for both, but why give away half your UK income? Bizarre.

I think there is this great drive to make the global Wikimedia into some kind of boyscout girlguide kind of thing.

I asked Sue if her Grand Tour involved the media and she said not at all - she went to Germany, Holland France etc to build up these country 'chapters' to recruit people to the Wiki way. A cross between a cult and the scouting movement.

The key is to understand what the money is going for.