Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2026-07-13/Op-ed

A proposal for WMF: To support a struggling community, spend 25% of donations on the community

File:Wikimedia balance sheet 2025.png

Wikimedia Foundation

300

Op-ed

A Layup Easy Proposal for Wikimedia at 25: Spend 25% of Donations on the Community

By NabuKudurru

If strategy priority 1.1 is supporting the community, can we not increase the support to the community?

Simple summary: If the community is under threat and strategy priority 1.1 is supporting the community, a simple, straightforward strategy would be to increase the financial investment in the community. Given the importance of the volunteer editor community to Wikipedia and its mission, spending 25% on the community seems like a minimum, but looking at WMF financial documents reveals only 13% of donations go toward funding community proposals by way of grants and only a smaller proportion of that going to pay community people's time. On its 25th birthday, WMF committing to spending 25% of donations to support the community would be a move toward equity and sustainability for the movement. I estimate 'the community' could hire over 100 people at the average WMF salary or about 250 at the US national average salary, which in turn could work on community determined objectives and goals (e.g., starting a volunteer union or whatever else you propose).

By the counting of the WMF, the Wikimedia movement is made up of approximately 265,000 volunteers each month (https://wikimediafoundation.org/). Upon Wikimedia's 25th birthday, and in the face of fewer readers and a tiring Wikimedia community, there have been calls for bold proposals and new directions (Schiste, 2026; Jemielniak, 2026)

Here I suggest that in celebration of its 25th year and in the face of concerns about this community (which resulted in its being strategy point 1.1), the WMF spend *at least* 25% of its revenues on supporting its community. Not only to bolster what already works, but to try new things; in particular, to identify ways to make contributing sustainable and professionally valuable for contributors. Turning contributor's volunteer efforts into something that is professionally valuable and pays for their decent living is the way to achieve multi-generational sustainability for the movement or mission (Buttliere, Vetter, & Ross, 2024, Buttliere, Vetter, Rasberry, Pensa, Mietchen, & Mkrtchyan, 2025)..

He who has the gold makes the rules.

How can we increase the support to the community? Well, in fiscal 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation brought in US$208 million in revenue, mostly from donations, and spent approximately US$191 million over the course of that year (Figure 2 below; Wikimedia Financial Statement 2025; page 6).

The good news is that US$200 million is quite a substantial revenue and enough to solve any problem the WMF turns its attention to; a theoretical 25% spend rate would mean that up to US$50 million could be used to support community actions or given as grants.

As you can see in Figure 2, the WMF gives out approximately US$28.7 million, or about ~15% of the money it spends each year (13% of revenue), as grants, which is the main mechanism the WMF supports the community financially through. This is lower than I—and I think many—expected, especially as the volunteer editor community is so vital to Wikimedia and the upkeep of its projects.

For perspective, internet hosting costs about 4 million a year, other operating expenses in general cost about 8 million a year, and travel and conferences about 6.5 million a year. Salaries and Benefits for WMF employees are 114 million.

So Wikimedia is spending money on the community, but actually, getting to a ~52 million/ 25% spend rate would mean doubling the amount spent currently (28.7 million spent currently; 13% to 25%). The upside is that this could double the support the community, affiliates, or new projects receives. To me it feels like a layup easy move for an organization where strategy 1.1 is support volunteers.

Even 25% of revenue sounds quite modest for such a community driven organization which strives to be an example, so I would suggest this be increased each year, to keep in line with how old Wikimedia is (26% next year, then 27%, 28%, 29%), up to perhaps 90%. This would require a different mindset at WMF, one in which its mission is to facilitate the community, where as now perhaps they are trying to do (too many) things themselves or they feel some responsibility, which also results in projects that the community is not happy with and does not take up - because it is not the way they would have done it.

Where does all of this 208 million go? Well the single largest section in the budget is that the salaries of the people who work at WMF, at 114 million per year. If one adds 'Professional service expenses' to salaries, 68% of the budget is going to salaries. The key that rubs me a little bit the wrong way is that the salaries WMF is offering are far far higher than what is available on community projects or in the grants that WMF makes to the community, or even the average worker in the US in general.

If WMF has so much money, why do I always feel poor?

Many of the biggest problems for Wikimedia projects are due to the limitation that Wikimedia has on being mostly a volunteer organization. This limits the amount of time that people can put in, because they also themselves need to make a living. This effect has large implications also for biases on the project, because only certain types of people can afford to volunteer more than a small amount. This also applies to most community leaders and people who put really a lot of effort into Wikimedia (e.g., administrators, users with extended rights).

Except for those who work at WMF or a few large affiliates, the people who work within the community of Wikimedia in many cases are doing it as a volunteer or as an un(der)paid community leader. These are exactly the people that WMF should be supporting, because they are doing it because they want to, not for the money and even sometimes at the cost of their own happiness, family, or career. This is also evidenced by the focus in the last years being on recruiting new editors, and the focus on recruiting students and young people, rather than making editing an attractive thing to do for adults or professionals in general. If contributing is an attractive or valu-able activity people will come on their own. Indeed, we can have a discussion whether it is better to struggle to get people to come or struggle to keep too many even bad intentioned people from coming - right now we have the problem not enough people are coming, so let's worry about that situation when we come to it.

Making the mission about supporting volunteers

The idea is that the WMF should transition to fostering the community and supporting it in achieving its mission, rather than unnecessarily trying to do everything itself. There is tension now both that the foundation does not listen to the community and also that everything the foundation does is wrong. People at the foundation are stressed and feel overwhelmed, and people in the community feel unheard and resentful when things don't turn out as they want.

This is perhaps and probably because WMF is trying to do everything its self, rather than helping the people in the community do the things they want to do. This can also be seen in the recent community wishlist debacle (Orlowitz, 2026). Instead of establishing a way to help the people with the wishes do it, an elaborate structure was set up to vote on wishes and then the foundation implement them. Basically, we are taking work from people who really want to do it and paying a lot of community resource money to people who see it as a task and for which they are almost surely going to be criticized anyways so they are demotivated from the start.

This is a perfect example where helping those who are already doing it do more of it makes much more sense as a general way of doing things. Not only do the volunteers have the drive that makes good work, they are likely to accept much less money for doing it and probably even do a better, more community accepted, job. At least, people at the foundation should interface with them and maybe lead a group of volunteers to help them in their own work. If the argument is that the budget is not big enough to really pay people directly (though there are 150 million in salary already being managed), at least let's make contributing valuable as professional activity for people to do so that they are not hurting themselves by contributing (Buttliere et al., 2024/2025/2026).

In general, the idea should be to free existing contributors up to do more of the work that they already are, or want to be, doing. The problem is those volunteers need to go and also have another job, which limits their availability. In our studies of Wikimedia academics (Buttliere, Vetter, & Ross, 2024), we found that many academic contributors want to be doing more, and are even doing more at their own expense (e.g., in terms of publishing papers or 'doing the work their boss wants'). They are contributing even though it is probably hurting their professional prospects, because their work for Wikimedia unfortunately does not translate well into professional careers or tenure criteria. WMF or the community should be there in a way to help that individual make value, including mentorship and start up funds.

One of the themes Wikimedia has set out to achieve for 2026 is trying new things quickly (2026 annual plan). Increasing the budget spent on the community could mean both better supporting the ongoing successes and also funding new initiatives.

Where would the extra 20 million come from?

If the target is to spend 25% of US$190 million (WMF's 2025 operating expenses) on the community, the question is where could this extra ~ 20 million in funding for the community come from? We are essentially looking for about 10% of the overall budget, which, although not large overall, again is actually almost doubling the budget for community projects and grants made by the foundation.

Figure 2 shows the income (top) and operating expenses of the foundation (bottom). One can see that 20 million is not very large compared to some categories. For instance, donation processing expenses are more than US$8 million. This means that ~3.9% of all the money that is donated to Wikimedia goes to middle people who take the money from the donor and give it to Wikimedia. Four percent seems at first glance quite high, and reducing this expense by 50% saves the community US$4 million and still means that these middle people get to make 4 million on a system they can hopefully use for other clients as well. A quick and uneducated google search shows companies in the 100 million range that are ready to do it for 2%. That 4 million is already 20% of the budget that we are looking for.

To make informed decisions, one would need a more detailed summary of the budget, but looking at the expenses of the 190 million dollars Wikimedia spent in 2025, almost 130 million (68.4%) of it was spent on salaries and professional services. Again, about 15.3% of it going explicitly to the community by way of awards and grants and only a smaller portion of this going to paying for the time of community leaders. This is a pretty serious imbalance, especially when considering the relative size of those two groups.

In looking to estimate the size of these groups we were surprised to find that the foundation only reports having about 650 staff (Who we are), meaning WMF spends about ~US$177,000 per employee. This also tracks quite well with the salaries that are being offered currently by WMF, which often run from low 100s to 200,000s USD. This is a very good salary, approximately 2.25 times the national US average, and I believe that all Wikimedians deserve such a salary - especially the long time volunteers and editors. My question is whether community leaders and contributors really have such high salaries, my impression is that their average salary is much lower.

My suspicion is that this US$177,000 is multiple times higher than the average salary of community members, and especially those very often part time community leaders who get e.g., US$1,000 a month for half their working effort. This is a simple survey to do among administrators or other extended privileges users, simply asking them their salary and working to make it comparable to those at WMF. Looking at some of the grants awarded to even relatively large affiliates, my suspicion is that community salaries are lower, but it is not a study i have done yet (because it is more than a volunteer effort and who would pay for my time to do it?). The problem is that there is just not enough money to go around; which is exactly why increasing the funding to the community could be so useful. This increase in investment would also be a move toward more equality in the movement.

This funding imbalance is an obvious source of frustration and resentment between the community (the poors) and the foundation (the rich) that can be addressed in a manner that everyone can agree on, i.e., by increasing support to the community - i.e., strategy 1.1!

What an extra 20 million could do: Build Equality

Putting an extra 20 million toward the community, or giving the community control of this money, would allow it to hire 112 Wikimedians at the average salary as those working at WMF, and if we make it the average salary in the US (~US$75,000), we could hire another 266 people full time. I don't want to say exactly what I think all of those people should work on here, but WMF reports that there are 179 affiliate groups in good standing. This would mean that every affiliate could hire another person (full time!), with a good salary, and there would still be at least 50 new initiatives that could be tried (if new initiatives have 2 half time people to start).

Investing in greater equality between the community and WMF would already be a worthwhile move. For a movement founded on equality and openness to knowledge, it is interesting that the average WMF employee earns more than twice the average salary in the US, which also puts them into the 1% worldwide . It is tricky in my mind to argue that someone deserves US$30,000+ a month, when this same amount could is the budget for some whole community groups or a conference for 100 people.

Conversely, and due to the law of large numbers, and also because so many Wikimedia volunteers are students, it is quite likely that the average community salary is similar to the US or worldwide average. This is a major inequality, between community salaries and WMF salaries. Therefore, increasing the average salary by investing more in grants and community salaries could build sustainability, or at least allow us to 'try new things quickly'. Some early readers of this post and long time contributors have expressed worries that making editing professionally or financially valuable could bring extrinsic motivations. These are the same motivations that WMF is using to hire employees (high salaries), hence this is not a convincing argument to me at least.

Equalizing the salaries of WMF employees and average volunteer editors, or of community leaders, creates equality and truly empowers the community that actually makes up the Wikimedia movement. Such a move would allow us to get the best out of the people that we have, and also will go a long way toward making engaging with Wikimedia an attractive thing to do. This in turn should make it easier to recruit and maintain contributors, making Wikimedia truly multigenerational.

At least it is something the community can probably agree to.

At minimum, in the face of accusations that the foundation is doing nothing, this is a move that WMF can make that few in the community would have a problem with, thus potentially becoming the start of a new relationship between the community and the foundation at a crucial time and 25 years for the project.

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• Interesting read. I will just note that I think grants are not the right way to think of money being spent on the community, given that many of those grants ultimately have little or indirect impacts on the projects. Instead, for me, it's things like Movement Communications (for all their imperfection), some pieces on the technical side, and some elements of Trust & Safety/Legal that I would consider spent "on the community". Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:11, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

  Hi @Barkeep49, thanks for your feedback. would you agree though that more could be spent? 13% seems relatively low to me, especially as the community is so crucial. I am wondering how you sustain your efforts, it is purely for the joy? I would like to see WMF better support you and those like you, either monetarily or by helping you get indirect credit for the work. I think this would also go a long way to attracting more people to your position, both making it easier for you and multigenerational in a way that people are very worried about currently. Best, Nabu/ Brett NabuKudurru (talk) 11:48, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Yes I would hope that more than 13% are spent on my definition of "the community". But my definition is also larger than what you put forward here so it would follow that it would get a larger budget amount. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:12, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  I am not trying to argue about any particular definition of the community - but just using grants as a best estimation - since as far as i understand, this is the main mechanism through which community actions occur or are funded.

  I think a higher budget amount should be put even than 25% - the key is really like we have money, we have the potential to try new things, but the amount of money put toward trying new things each year is actually really small. and we shouldn't be surprised the community is tired frustrated and with high turnover when it is not sustainable as an activity but they see WMF employees making crazy salaries. NabuKudurru (talk) 09:39, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

• Wow, I don't even know where to start. The article says that 13% of the budget goes to the "community" now. What exactly are we getting for many millions spent this way? Has anyone assessed the impact on the number of new editors, retention of experienced editors, page views or something else?
  The proposal is a bit vague on who the new 266 new hires would be and what they would do. Would they be editors? Community organisers? Developers? You can probably guess why the first two options won't solve our problems, and regarding the third one there is such thing as Brooks's law.
  Comparing the WMF staff salary to the average US salary is ridiculous. WP:COMPETENCE is required to run one of the largest internet projects. Alaexis_¿question? 20:05, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

  The issue is that the writer mistakes "the affiliate system" for "the community". (Hardly a surprise, for someone with under 100 edits to their name.) Frankly, I think the editing community would be deeply offended to find that the 13% the Foundation spent on grants was nearly doubled to 25%. Remember what grants are spent on: with the notable exception of Wikidata (next year's grant is 8.1 million dollars), we've spent some unknown amount of cash on mentorship programs that, apparently, teach their mentees how to ban evade, more than a quarter of a million dollars on whatever the heck this is... there are all kinds of grantees like this. If anything, I'd like to see the WMF reduce spending in these areas. Wouldn't it be much better to, instead, provide more resources for, say, T&S (8 employees listed), Moderator Tools (also 8 people), dealing with the huge backlog of Phab tickets... anything, really, than another editathon that blows a pile of donor money on acquiring 12 off-kilter images for Commons and a brief blog post? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 20:59, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

  There are good grants - micro grants, transparent ones... but yeah, stuff we have to say "whatever the heck this is" is worrisome, as is the waste of money that was sponsoring random (not wiki-related) feel-good-semi-scams in the developing world that was popular the time I was looking at the grant system :( --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:38, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Hi Piotr, micro grants can only do so much. I can agree 8 million is a lot for any particular project. 'whatever the heck this is' is probably a lack of knowledge or desire to know more than something about the project. in my opinion capacity exchange or training is a good idea and even probably needs more resources. not 1 person paid 150k, but maybe like 15 people (previously engaged volunteers) paid 10 k each year. I won't say that exactly, and i don't pretend to know what exactly to spend the money on but - trying new things quickly also in my opinion necessitates making money available to actually pay for things and time. not 10k for half of someone's working time for a year and then expecting them to work the next 3 years for free to finish or maintain the project. NabuKudurru (talk) 10:50, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Well, @NabuKudurru, can you explain what CapX is? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 12:15, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Do you mean, @Asilvering, Capacity Exchange? it looks like a place where people can find potential collaborators, services, or etc. In general it sounds like a good idea, but I guess few people use it, either because not coordinated in any central way (start a community organization with these funds then) or also a lack of funding. There are a lot of situations where either people don't know what to do but have skills, or want to do something but don't have skills. could be good i think.

  I guess the real question, instead of just saying everyone else's idea is bad, is what would you do with the 20 million a year? could be a good little essay contest i think NabuKudurru (talk) 13:02, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  A place where someone can find potential collaborators, like... a wikiproject? Those are transparent, open, accessible to all, free, and, crucially, already exist and did not need to be developed. I've already answered the question about other places I'd like to see money spent. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 13:11, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  We at Science Hub also struggled with how to help wikimedians find collaborators and projects - i think Capacity exchange is at least a decent answer to this question. please propose a way to do it on wiki. NabuKudurru (talk) 13:20, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  please link @Asilvering, sorry if i missed it in the past, but it is kind of hard to really search history or i don't know how yet. I wish there was a recommendation feed of wikistories where i could have seen your writing on it, but i don't know about that either NabuKudurru (talk) 13:22, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  . In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 13:24, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  One sentence is not a really serious answer or enough to say that you have indicated how you would like to see the money spent. Please put together a real proposal (e.g., for a trust and safety team), make it public and send it to WMF and they can fund it, why not? they have the money, that is the point of the essay. You should be able to get funds for the wiki++ projects you want to try or work on.

  Essentially, your solution is to increase the size of WMF? what about e.g., having a federation of organizations, not centralizing power too much, doesn't WMF always say they are doing too much? I personally think 15 people at 10k each can get more done than 1 person at 150k, but maybe I am wrong? NabuKudurru (talk) 13:15, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  @NabuKudurru My point is that I believe we should be doing more micro grants, rewarding and helping real Wikipedians, rather than throw money at weird stuff that has no real impact on the project. (I have really bad experiences reviewing some stuff WMF wasted money on few years back - see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund and see the talk page for problems, such as not requiring that the resulting projects are related to Wikimedia, or even open access... sigh. Nearly 5 USD millions down the train right there). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 17:56, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  my first grant was a microgrant, but i ended up working like 25% time a whole year for 5,000USD NabuKudurru (talk) 19:12, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  honestly, 5 million is almost almost a rounding error when the budget is 200 million per year. I feel like there are many many things that would not exist without the grants that WMF has made. NabuKudurru (talk) 19:15, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  Hi, @Asilvering, thanks for writing. I am not saying exactly what the money should be spent on - or when i do i say we should try to make editing and contributing valu-able in general and also indirectly. That means also for editors in general even if they are not getting paid, ideally say put it on their CV, or be able to tell their boss and them be happy.

  Pointing out a few grants you don't like is not reason to say all grants are bad.

  My point is yes we can hire 8 people for T&S as you want, and spend a few million, or maybe we can set up a committee of volunteers and pay them 1 or 2000 a month for part of their time, and have like 50 volunteers for that same few million. more sustainability I would argue and less work for the foundation to do.

  please be serious about competence, do you not think volunteers or community leaders also need competence? I see no reason there should be such a large difference between wmf salaries and salaries paid in grants or earned in general by community people. This is a movement about equality, no?

  Best, Brett NabuKudurru (talk) 10:46, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  @NabuKudurru, I said nothing about competence; that was @Alaexis. But I'll bite, anyway: as someone who is not employed by the WMF and who has only cleared 100 lifetime edits across all projects by responding to comments on this op-ed, I think you should have absolutely zero say in how donation money, raised primarily from these wikis, and among them primarily from this wiki, should be spent. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 12:24, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  thank you for being so welcoming, exactly the attitude wiki needs if it wants to be successful for the next 25 years.

  isnt this focus only on edits exactly the type of problematic measurement that affiliates and etc are trying to push back against? why is the only meaningful activity editing or recruiting editors?

  One of my projects in 2024 created a set of metrics that Wikimedians can use to report their activities, and i think is a part of this widening also that the foundation is pushing forward in metrics and using P&E dashboard. the work ended up developing the individual version of the programs and events dashboard. That is basically a year of contributions and more without any edits. Even if you think what, i think there is pretty clear evidence that the things i have been working on in the last years are being taken up by the community.

  So you disagree with the idea that more support, also financial, for the community would be a good thing? or that making contributing a valu-able thing in general would increase the sustainability of the movement? NabuKudurru (talk) 13:12, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  isnt this focus only on edits exactly the type of problematic measurement that affiliates and etc are trying to push back against? This reads so much like a Wikipedian trying to parody an out-of-touch affiliate person that I can scarcely believe you wrote it in seriousness. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 13:21, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Once again, i ask what you would like to do with an additional 20 or 50 or 100 million, because the funds are there, they are just being spent in some way which it seems like many people are agreeing is not working that good. in my opinion a focus solely on edits and recruiting new editors as compared to making editing valuable in the first place, is part of the problem.

  If contributing is valuable, you don't need to even put effort to recruit editors, people will come by themselves. NabuKudurru (talk) 13:30, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  I have already answered your question. I answered it in my very first comment here. You don't like my answer, which is fine, but don't pretend I didn't give it. Your assertion that If contributing is valuable, you don't need to even put effort to recruit editors, people will come by themselves appears to equate "valuable" with "receiving compensation"? I assure you that all of us here find our contributions valuable. And you may be interested to read about the Overjustification effect and Motivation crowding theory. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 13:40, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  I dont want more edit-a-thons, but trying more new things quickly involves spending money and grants are the typical way this is done. or are you against the idea of grants at all? everything should be volunteer? why then do WMF employees make so much?

  in my opinion and as i said in the piece, i think the huge backlog of Phab tickets is a symptom or result of WMF trying to do everything itsself, rather than engage and support the community in doing the work it wants to do.

  I guess the question is whether you think there are volunteers out there who want to do more but are limited because they can't make a living out of it - i think there are many. all of the many projects are someone with an idea and a lot of time invested even just to write a grant application. they are not getting rich running edit-a-thons, or do you think they are? NabuKudurru (talk) 14:00, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  @NabuKudurru, again I think you are revealing that you are out-of-touch with this community, and I am not interested in answering broad, open questions from someone who has not made an effort to understand the community whose fundraising dollars they seek to spend. Regarding the Phab backlog in particular, and the community's relationship to the WMF regarding our technical debt, you may be interested to follow the link in my signature, and follow up on other pages and discussions linked there. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 14:53, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  @NabuKudurru: did you read the motivation crowding theory: giving money to some volunteers might actually make them less motivated to edit, and make them perform less well. I wonder how much better Wikipedia would be if that grant-writing effort was dedicated to editing instead. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 19:27, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Yes, technically i am paid in my day job to be an academic psychologist :) I don't think we should pay necessarily just for editing, but more for like community maintenance, writing big grants, administration, organizing things. I was at a talk one time and it was someone from the arbitration committee i think and they were talking about stressing and spending all their time trying to fix wiki problems but they got nothing but feel goods and some scholarships to conferences.. meanwhile they were doing like one of the hardest jobs and really killing themselves for it.

  to me it is not reasonable to ask people to try new things or etc, but then ask them to take all the risk and put in all the initial capital and time into trying and building those new things - especially if the people are already volunteers. and especially especially if the people asking them to do it are earning major money like WMF employees do.

  I don't get why you are concerned about editors or volunteers getting some small amount of money (if they want or need it!) when WMF is paying people like 15k on average and high salaries is one of the main motivations they use to attract talent. NabuKudurru (talk) 20:13, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  As a member of English Wikipedia's arbitration committee, I know that I speak for all 15 of us when I say that we do not want to be paid for our work as arbs. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 20:17, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Asilvering do you have any idea about the average salary on the committee or how it is in relation to the average salary paid at WMF? my hope would be it is similar, even if your work for wiki is volunteer. or what about the effects of keeping it volunteer on how it biases the types of people that have the freedom and time to take part in such a committee?

  I am not saying everyone should get paid, but i am saying that more funds can and perhaps should be made available - especially if the main problems we are having is a stagnating community, high turnover, and the situation is such that strategy 1.1 is support the community. NabuKudurru (talk) 09:44, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  It is truly incredible to speak to someone who believes that people could only be motivated by money and could not possibly participate in a volunteer activity online without financial support. I really don't know what to make of it. I will not speak for or about current arbs' financial situations but I can tell you that we have had broke arbs. Student arbs. Arbs on disability. Arbs on welfare. Retired arbs. This conversation has really brought home to me why affiliates are overall so wasteful and why so many of them do so very little for the projects. You do not have any idea what sustains or supports this community, because you are not part of it and have never tried to be.

  Join us. You'll learn a lot. And maybe you'll come up with some good ideas to deal with the problems we face, while you're at it. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 12:41, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  You don't think you could have gotten more or better work out of at least some portion of those people if they weren't stressed about money and etc - the same way that WMF employees are not stressed about money and etc? why could not your argument be made to say that nobody should be paid at all for wiki related work?

  My guess is there are many people who are ready to be on or part of the arbitration committee, but they simply cant because they don't have the time to do it, because they have to have a different job and etc.

  Volunteer time is a few hours a week, and not time that costs the individual. i don't see any reason there should be a broke arb when Wiki brings in 200 million a year and is very ready to pay entry level employees more than100k. Walmart might have employees on welfare, but at least they are paying the people for their time - Wiki can and should do better than that, I would argue at least. it is capable and able. NabuKudurru (talk) 13:27, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  We are in a situation where we are worried about our sustainability and etc - it doesn't make sense to fret about giving people who are really doing a lot for the movement at least a basic living. to make the activity sustainable. NabuKudurru (talk) 13:30, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  you are in some way very strongly asserting that people should not get paid for working on wiki stuff, and then at the same time saying WMF should hire more people to work on the particular things you want. NabuKudurru (talk) 14:08, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  As I am a volunteer here, I am not going to spend any more of my time explaining to you what you do not care to try to understand. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 18:38, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Asilvering, so you don't think you could have done better work, or others, or maybe more people would want to join and you could be more selective or have more people to split the workload, or etc, if there were some funding available?

  There are 15 people on each arbcom no? so for the price of one WMF employee, each arbcom member could basically get 1000USD a month. you don't think that would help anyone on the committee do better or be less stressed or etc? at minimum we could make sure that nobody is paying out of their own pocket to go to wikimania, or at least at minimum keep you from having to fill out the scholarship application, no? NabuKudurru (talk) 08:36, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  No, and would provide a perverse incentive for people to run for Arbcom. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:59, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  there are 200 million which can be done something with, please keep in mind. we are talking about .1% of the budget to make that happen. NabuKudurru (talk) 08:37, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  literally nobody is objecting on the basis of we can't afford it. Bawolff (talk) 11:36, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  Stop trying to spend the money that you had no part in raising. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:00, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  @ScottishFinnishRadish first off, ew. This quote from your profile doesn't seem to be ringing true right now " engages in positive, collaborative behavior with other editors."

  but in any case, if you have any legitimate suggestions, I totally encourage you to make them and i think funds should be made available to you if you want them. as I said elsewhere, there are 200 million to spend each year and if you don't do it the way you like, probably someone else will spend it in a way you don't approve of. NabuKudurru (talk) 11:21, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  This might blow your mind, but that quote is what other editors (you know, the people that build the encyclopedia that raises the money you're trying to spend) said about me. I do make suggestions, and often speak directly with staff members and developers from the WMF, leveraging my experience as an editor to push for things that will help the community that is responsible for the donations coming in. Take a look at this discussion, please, and try and absorb that you have no idea what the community wants or what will help us succeed in our mission. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of basically this whole fucking thing. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:34, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  at 28 million for 265,000 editors you are talking about 100$ on average spent, no? to me it is not that unconvincing.

  28 million is not a large portion of the budget overall. 28 million to sustain a community of 265,000 volunteers does not seem that excessive to me. Excessive is ~150 million to sustain ~650 WMF employees. NabuKudurru (talk) 11:46, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Just saying that we need to invest in the community (understood broadly) is a truism. Everyone here would be happy to see the community grow and contribute to Wikipedia and other projects. Note that the goal is to "collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally", rather than to grow the community for its own sake.

  My problem with your article that on one hand you seem to suggest specific things like hiring people outside of WMF. However you are rather vague on the mechanism - how adding people would contribute to collecting, developing and disseminating educational content. Are there successful projects, whether on-wiki or off-wiki that can serve as examples?

  Also, you label the current "awards and grants" budget item as "spending money on the community". Charitably, this is being sloppy with the terms. Do you think that the current awards and grants are directionally right and we just need more of them? If yes, you should say so. If no, also say so, and maybe hint at other ways of spending money on the community. Alaexis_¿question? 15:04, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Hello, If investing in the community is a truism maybe we need to call it something else, because it is not actually happening that much. if we spend 13% on grants for non-WMF projects, how much of that is actually going for people time? I would guess between 20 and 50%. so actually we are spending like between 2 and 5% of the budget overall on like the community community - paying community leaders for their time. to me that is not really sustainable or sensible given their importance in the movement, in my opinion.

  I would agree with your goal if not the fact that it needs to be constantly updated. thus it needs to be in some way self sustaining. in this case i think getting academics involved (one of my major projects) makes it sustainable because it becomes part of professional education.

  As Orlowitz's latest article talks about, we need to be a federation, not just one organization enriching its self and giving small small amounts to others in ways that keep them dependent and without power.

  I dont see any way for the volunteer community to do anything without actually sustainable incomes, even to organize is basically 10x difficult on volunteer compared to work time. NabuKudurru (talk) 17:36, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  You haven't responded to my question "Are there successful projects, whether on-wiki or off-wiki that can serve as examples?"

  Engaging scholars is not a bad idea per se, if done right it can improve the quality of encyclopedia. It's not exactly novel so the execution here is the hard part - you add another tier of editors and the consequences are hard to predict. Also, it's unlikely to grow the community organically. Again, are there successful pilot projects?

  Who are the "community leaders" you've mentioned? I'm a bit astonished how one can research Wikipedia for years and fail to grasp what drives editors to contribute. Alaexis_¿question? 20:15, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  WikiEducation, WikiData, WikiDE are all at least semi working examples - but they also all have paid staff that make livable wages. they have people working on them full time.

  Our idea is that getting professors involved and using it in the classroom is a way to introduce contributing to all professionals across all or many areas of knowledge (since they will learn it at university). we have been trying to help affiliates and wikimedians in general get external funding for their work (for instance i wrote a COST Action grant with like 35 researchers across europe), it was rejected just because the funding success rate for EU level grants is simply like 10%. it would have been worth ~600,000 over 4 years if we got it. we asked WMF for between 50 and 100k to continue efforts and go for it next year, they rejected it. we were asking for like 10% time for 4-5 people even though we were spending like 1-2 work days a week on it, they said we were asking for too much.. so now science hub is basically rotting on the vine in my opinion. a really really good opportunity lost meanwhile we should 'try new things, quickly' NabuKudurru (talk) 10:03, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  Thanks for providing the examples. I can't say much about WikiDE. WikiData is owned by the WMF and thus it's not an example of an external project. WikiEducation on the other hand is a good example. I appreciate that they take impact assessment seriously and publish very detailed statistics. Still, I'd like to see the RoI before declaring it an unqualified success story.

  By all means, let's support good programs. Unfortunately, at this moment I am not particularly impressed by WMF's award- and grant-making decisions and I don't think that throwing more money in the same direction will help. Alaexis_¿question? 22:18, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  WikiData was not started by WMF as far as i understand, so in that sense, it is a good example. WikiEd has a problem because they use students and do not track if any of them actually stay. and in fact often the students are 'paid' but they are paid through the grades they get in the classes in which they edit. so yes, they bring in 20% of new editors or whatever, but very few of them stay, they are not really super high quality edits, most of them are done in name space, and in general i feel like we should be focusing on getting professionals, not students. NabuKudurru (talk) 06:38, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  the problem is we don't know actually what will work and we will never get everyone to agree on what is probably going to work. so we have try, simply try, things and then some of them will work. NabuKudurru (talk) 06:39, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  fwiw, Wikidata is probably best viewed as a joint WMF/WM-DE venture with WM-DE taking the primary development role. WM-DE is kind of unique as an affiliate as they are really the only affiliate to take a serious role in the technical development of Wikimedia projects (see also the german wishlist project) Bawolff (talk) 10:08, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  in my opinion the main problem is organization between all of these people. that is why we did the science hub, and also why i did this network making COST action grant, which was essentially a project to help new projects develop and happen. like there are many people, and they have ideas and will and etc, but they do not have resources or time to do the things they really want - because they have to have different work or need to get paid etc.

  in one study we did about wikimedia academics, 20,000 academics wrote a paper that had a wikiproject in the title or abstract since 2014, but most people only had 1 or 2 projects, only about 50 really had like made a career out of it, so to speak. the problem isn't getting people to come, it is keeping them. NabuKudurru (talk) 14:11, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

• Also, come the heck on. For a movement founded on equality and openness to knowledge, it is interesting that the average WMF employee earns more than twice the average salary in the US, which also puts them into the 1% worldwide. You know what also puts you into the 1% worldwide? Making the $75k USD salaries suggested by the writer. Meanwhile, ~3.9% of all the money that is donated to Wikimedia goes to middle people who take the money from the donor and give it to Wikimedia is an incredibly low rate. (The typical is the "80/20 rule", not the "96/4 rule".) This op-ed is astonishingly out of touch from both the community and the WMF perspectives. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 21:15, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

  Wait, I've misread the 3.9% statement I quoted, which is actually about donation processing expenses. That's the amount that payment processors charge Wikimedia. Why on earth would we be able to cut that figure in half? Mastercard isn't going to give us a 50% discount off their normal because we ask nicely. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 21:30, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Asilvering I see you are touched :D Mastercard is not the only option and 4% is actually really quite high. normally they take about 1% as far as i understand. In my opinion for 8 million a year you can set up a totally open and etc payment system like bitcoin and all the wallets do for less. NabuKudurru (talk) 10:56, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  You cannot seriously be suggesting that Wikimedia should switch exclusively to taking donations in bitcoin. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 12:13, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  i appreciate your clicks, no i am not suggesting that, but for 8 million USD per year i am pretty confident we could build a wikimedia payments system which can power open access, creative commons, and etc and save them 4%. and then we can run payments for other organizations and get 4% of their donations. and i am totally very serious about that! NabuKudurru (talk) 13:33, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  In a time of declining readership I want the foundation laser focused on our core mission of spreading knowledge. Affiliates certainly have a place to play in spreading that knowledge, while the projects have been and remain our most successful way of both spreading knowledge and fundraising. Building our own payment processor would be a distraction without any guarantee that the moon shot bet would ever pay off. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:30, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  i was kidding about the payments processor :) 4% of the money donated to wikimedia goes to payment processing, that is rather high as far as i understand. In any case this is only one example of where we could find the 10% we need to essentially double the funding available for projects and trying things. NabuKudurru (talk) 17:42, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  This is standard; I used to volunteer for another charity (sadly, defunct) which operated on a rather more... shoestring budget than the WMF; the way our creator got around that was by only accepting checks and cash. I believe she also accepted PayPal, but the strong preference was for the former two. Needless to say, this does not scale. It worked for us, because we were all on a first name basis, but whatever possible savings the WMF would get by refusing to accept credit cards would be lost when the majority of people stopped donating to them.GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 17:49, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  I asked google for the cheapest payments processor for about 100 million with an average ticket of 15$, it actually suggests multiple options

  1. The Absolute Cheapest: Adyen

  Adyen is the overall cheapest and most effective processor for your specific scale, ticket size, and global distribution.

  • Why it wins: Adyen operates as a direct global acquirer rather than a re-seller. For $100M+ volumes, they drop their processing markup to roughly $0.02 to $0.05 per transaction + interchange.
  • Interchange Optimization: Since your audience is global, Adyen automatically routes transactions through local banking licenses (e.g., domestic networks in Europe, US, or APAC). This avoids expensive cross-border card fees, slashing your interchange rates from ~3.0% down to local caps (like 0.2%–0.3% in the EU).
  • The Bottom Line: Expect an all-in blended rate close to 1.2% to 1.8% depending on your exact regional mix.

  ----

  NabuKudurru (talk) 19:22, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  @NabuKudurru I'd give WP:LLMTALK a read right about now, if I were you. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 19:57, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  This is just one minute of looking, with the potential to save the movement 4 million dollars, i think it can be worth while to call in an expert for a meeting or at least ask for bids from some various companies. NabuKudurru (talk) 20:17, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Payment processors often charge higher fees to charities like Wikimedia because they are commonly used to verify stolen credit cards, which make them a high risk client. Anyways, i dont think there is much value to trying to backseat drive WMF donation pipeline without even knowing what their requirements. Bawolff (talk) 10:37, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

• (de-indent, Re NabuKudurru) One minute of looking where Google returned the advertising of a competitor. Look, it's fine to not be familiar with the payments space, but don't pretend you are offering anything other than guesses. The payments area is very well-studied. Even the very largest companies have trouble routing around Visa / Mastercard. If "calling in an expert" solved the problem, then Wal-Mart's website, Amazon, Steam, etc. would all have switched off credit cards. They haven't - most of them will even take American Express, famous for slamming merchants with even deeper fees. Using alternate forms of electronic money transfer often involves even higher fees, less clear reporting, and more money going missing. When people grouse about Visa / Mastercard being a monopoly, there's a reason for it! This is not a serious proposal. SnowFire (talk) 21:53, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  The payment processing % is a distraction. Even if it can be decreased from 4% to 2% it doesn't tell us anything about how to spend the saved money. Alaexis_¿question? 10:25, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  First, we have to make the decision that we have the money, and the decision that we are ready to spend it on the community, on making the projects sustainable, on making contributing a valu-able thing to do. If you rely on volunteer time, nothing actually is going to happen and it will always be the rich white biased etc because other people can't donate that much time.

  I have lots of ideas about how the money can be spent, but nobody listening and even WMF is rejecting proposed projects. Wikimedia Science Hub for instance got 80 sign ons in just a few weeks but then was rejected by WMF so it is basically withering on the vine. similar to e.g., capacity exchange, wikijournals and etc, which are great in theory but not coordinated and etc.

  Honestly i think give 20 million to like a community board of trustees, commit to actually empowering the community, and support them in doing the work that WMF is often taking on and even taking out of volunteer's hands. For instance, Science hub was putting together some curriculum for researchers to engage with Wiki. Without any prior discussion with us or etc, WMF published their own version. great that they had the initiative and etc, and apparently were able to do it faster than us, but they are not actually researchers, so it is a bit generic, they duplicated our efforts, and we so easily could have done it together - we could have promoted it for instance, but instead its like ok they did it and promoted it etc, so we wasted our efforts and actually didn't get acknowledged or etc. should we put more (unpaid) effort in or just like WMF do it? NabuKudurru (talk) 11:08, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

• If we want to support communities, there are better ways to do it. We know of community members that do not have access to a PC or laptop, and edit from mobile out of necessity. Like the book donation scheme WMF has set up, a laptop donation scheme for those in good standing with a decent amount of edits might make sense. We can build on the success of the community tech team too, by reinstating a community tech team, but also by extending this concept to a community research team, and perhaps a community design team. Having some people paid for by grants however, especially if it's grants with barely a contribution to wikimedia, does not feel fair to all the volunteers out there. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 07:09, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Hi, I like the idea of a community donation and computers distribution scheme.

  in my mind there are many many ways to contribute, not just editing. and if the CEO can get 50,000 USD of community funds without any editing history, then talking about editing history is no longer a useful metric in my opinion.

  in my mind the best would be to shift WMF from trying to do everything itsself, and paying a small number of people really a lot to do it, to WMF facilitating the community. instead of one person getting 30k a month, maybe 15 people get 2k or 30 get 1k. this has many benefits, it empowers the community, and WMF also doesn't have to maintain as much control because all the chips are not on such a small number of people. NabuKudurru (talk) 11:37, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Nabu above you wrote isnt this focus only on edits exactly the type of problematic measurement.... I agree it is a problematic measurement. For instance, my roughly 2000 edits a year for the past several years don't reflect the time I have spent working on enwiki issues, let alone global issues (including affiliate ones) through my work on the U4C. I am guessing your 100 edits don't reflect your time either. However, I have other ways of showing my competence and understanding of English Wikipedia. Your suggestion that the answer is for the foundation to start paying people to edit suggests you not only don't have an understanding of English Wikipedia, it suggests you don't have an understanding of the volunteerism that drives contributors of every project. Whether through editing or other means, I would suggest you spend more time learning about the projects that are at the heart of the WMF's work so you are better positioned to make suggestions for reforms of the foundation. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:43, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Where did i suggest the foundation pay people to edit? contribute can include editing, i guess, but i would say it is more for the stuff that is neglected because nobody wants to do it, and that does include organize things, develop things, or etc.

  to me it seems like more and more people are kind of seeing that the way things have been going is not really sustainable, or at least potentially not sustainable, so my question is how to make it sustainable. that is the point of Wikiscience and etc. work NabuKudurru (talk) 18:27, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  Measuring someone's contribution linearly by their edit count is famously problematic, but that's a very different thing to measuring overall contributions to the projects, and I've come to really dislike this idea that people who contribute little on the projects and tools are Wikimedians to the same extent that people who contribute a lot. Wikimedia is the projects. I don't care if someone has 1000 or 100000 edits -- I really don't -- but I care what they've achieved for us in that. Everyone earns their place in the community through the work they do on the projects, whether they fix typos or draft ArbCom PDs. It's part of what makes this site so brilliant.

  So much is said about how to spend money to make people happy, and the response from the community (i.e. the people that edit the damn site), the response is always the same: spend the money on the projects. Not on Wikimedians, or on outreach, or on vanity projects. On tools. On teams to build things. The WMF is a topic that causes so, so much debate among people, and yet there is a striking cohesion among community members on this particular issue.

  I don't mean to sound exclusionary. I would love if the people who thought they could fix our problems got more involved in editing. I would love to have more community members advocate for what they feel is right. I don't know at what point the funding conversations started missing the forest for the trees; stopped seeing what the projects really were about. But the bloat in our ecosystem around things that never filter down to the projects, and making funding decisions based on ideas rather than testimony, well, that's a real part of it. Giraffer (talk) 20:02, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  As i said elsewhere, we are not going to edit ourselves out of this problem. and even at this point editing is not the most valuable work that can be done (in my opinion). and even perhaps editing at this point is only a distraction like the person who continues painting to get the details perfect while the house around them crumbles in an earthquake.

  Building things takes time and costs money. to have WMF do it costs a lot of money, to have a community led team do it might probably will cost less money. I have no data about whether the results will be better or worse but i think it is clear how things are going right now is not that good in any case so might as well try something new (also as indicated by all the talk). my point above is that we are often taking work that volunteers or community people want to be doing and are even ready to do it for nearly free, and giving it to people for whom it is a task or a job and for which they really get a lot of money to do it.

  in my opinion the project is about making knowledge open - I am trying to do that by organizing scientists to get engaged - I see that as more important than editing directly, you can disagree of course. but if i can make editing a normal or good thing to do among academics, we will have a truly multigenerational and high quality source of edits for many years to come - millions of edits rather than just my few hundred or thousands of edits. academic publishing is 10 billion a year, if wikimedia can capture 10% of that we would be set to do many other things we want NabuKudurru (talk) 10:15, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  we are not going to edit ourselves out of this problem Well, you're certainly not. Maybe you should at least try it for a bit so you can understand what everyone here has been telling you. This whole discussion is one of the most wild things I've read on-wiki ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:53, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  It seems like i have really riled up an arbitration committee or something. to me it seems like a reaction formation. NabuKudurru (talk) 07:20, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  Well, if by "an" you meant "the" and if "reaction formation" you meant "collective sense of shock at how little you seem to be reading of everybody's responses", then yes. I think you're right on the money.

  I am going to ask you a question that genuinely I'm interested in hearing the answer to: why don't you, @NabuKudurru, edit Wikipedia? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 07:27, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  the movement is supposedly more than 200,000 people a month, so 15 or 20 that i don't know telling me i am crazy is .. not really anything @GreenLipstickLesbian. and i am an academic, my job is kind of to have ideas that other people don't and often that involves people saying it is weird or wrong at first.

  Honestly, I don't find that much that i personally should add. I added some small things as i find them, but in general i think it is quite ok. also some times when i tried to add something it was reverted, or my draft article deleted. I don't have time to waste like that. Also, I work actually in a quite competitive field, and I do not have tenure yet, so i am in some ways overworked. This is also why i work on the projects i do (see link below), which are mostly about getting scientists in general credit or opportunities or funding for working with wikimedia. There are too many stories of the person who was running a wiki related project but didn't get tenure or they are a post doc when they should be a professor, or they are a professor when they should have their own institute. I definitely give many volunteer hours, for instance i wrote this COST Action and helped start the WikiScience Hub, but they are simply not editing directly.

  in my opinion what the movement needs is organization between all the people ideas and projects, so that is what i prefer to spend my volunteer time on, rather than an edit which half the time just gets deleted anyways ;)

  https://openreview.net/attachment?id=9AhIrXEmDB&name=stage_two_submission NabuKudurru (talk) 08:25, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

• $177,000 is likely not close to the salary of the average WMF employee. "Salaries and benefits" includes things like insurance, leave, reimbursements, professional development, retirement, and equipment, which in the WMF's case is a pretty comprehensive package. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)^{Talk to Me!} 17:30, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  these are the listed offerings of the positions that are open at WMF right now. These are first year and etc starting salaries and for nobody higher than manager, so it does not appear to be that far off.

  . The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$133,121 to US$ 207,388

  The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$129,068 to US$201,074

  The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$95,164 to US$148,729

  The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$  116,633  to US$  181,243  

  The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$113,082 to US$175,725

  The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$92,267 to US$144,201  

  The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$106,227 to US$167,858

  The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$113,082 to US$175,725

  The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$113,082  to US$175,725

  The anticipated annual pay range of this position for applicants based within the United States is US$132,439  to US$192,799 NabuKudurru (talk) 18:30, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  my question is what is the average salary on grants, and or other community projects that are funded by WMF or in support of the community not funded by WMF, and should we or not work toward equality in these numbers. as i said we did a study and found that many people are contributing on work time and struggling to get credit for it (e.g., not getting tenure, not publishing as much as their peers and etc). NabuKudurru (talk) 18:33, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

  you are mixing up fully loaded vs not fully loaded salaries. The article is also misleading as its only counting employees not contractors and a significant number of wmf "employees" are actually contractors. Regardless, yes WMF pays high salaries relative to the average american salary. That is because they are mostly hiring programmers, a relatively in-demamd profession (perhaps soon to not be if AI eats it). We live in a capitalist society, not a fair one. If you want to hire people with in-demand skills its going to cost more than unskilled labour. WMF pays low salaries relative to the industry.Bawolff (talk) 02:15, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Bawolff do you mean gross gross vs net? I am more concerned about WMF salaries vs community salaries. only a few of those positions listed above are for programmers NabuKudurru (talk) 07:23, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  no, i mean the word "fully loaded", which is not the same thing as net or gross. Also it seems like about half of those positions were programmer, programmer adjacent (designer, SRE, data scientist, things people colloquially refer to as "programmers"), or a manager of programmers. Several of the non programmer jobs were things like senior lawyer, which are famously high paying jobs. Bawolff (talk) 09:22, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

• Insane to me that they pulled my piece setting up real investigative journalism to publish this terrible proposal which is frankly a waste of time. Czarking0 (talk) 03:26, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  How would you fund your proposal about real investigative journalism? NabuKudurru (talk) 10:18, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  un huh, sounds like a sustainable proposal! NabuKudurru (talk) 07:23, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  I believe Czarking0 means that they wrote an article which involved investigative journalism, which was not published in the Signpost because your proposal was published instead. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 11:53, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

• Broadly, yes, more money should be spent on the community, but this proposal gets a lot wrong. I'd sooner see us cut grant money in half than double it. Grants are not an effective way to spend WMF money. Also, a lot of community groups like Affiliates are currently black hole money pits...money goes in...no idea what comes out. The issue is so serious that even the Foundation (long loose with the purse strings) is tightening the rules around Affiliate expenditures; see Meta:Updating_the_ecosystem_of_Wikimedia_organizations/Recognition_and_Funding_for_Movement_Organizations/Funding_Eligibility. Any suggestion to start paying contributors en masse is a non-starter. Wikipedia only works because most folks aren't paid. You start attracting new kinds of riff-raff and grifters once you bring money into the picture. The money needs to stay in-house and be used on teams that serve the community, focusing on teams like TnS and tech. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 09:12, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  How would you propose to increase spending on or supporting the community, if not through grants, more WMF employees basically? Your profile has a quote where you say you spend 10 to 20 hours a week editing. How do you sustain this activity in terms of .. your livelihood, is it a part of your work? we found in one study of ours that people were spending work time on wiki but then not really getting professional credit for it - so for instance perhaps they are less likely to get tenure, or to get a grant, or etc, because they are working on wiki rather than writing papers or etc.

  I am not necessarily pro affiliate or etc, and i agree about some or many being a black hole, it is just an example of what could be done with the extra money - and i figure affiliates would get on board if they thought maybe there is another full time person for them). my impression is they (affiliates, wmf) need to focus on recruiting new editors so much because not enough stick around (because editing is not a sustainable or attractive activity). for recruiting new editors edit-a-thons and etc are the easiest method even if they are tired not really effective. In this case it makes sense for edit a thons and etc to be emphasized heavily. NabuKudurru (talk) 10:28, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  The WMF has conducted a literature review of why people edit. It found that [f]inancial motivation has no impact on contribution for Wikipedia users (indeed, Wikipedia contributors tend to find the thought of remuneration for their work abhorrent). I edit because it is fun. I don't need payment. I strongly disagree with editing is not a sustainable or attractive activity—respectfully, I'd ask you listen to the perspectives of people who have made thousands of edits when they say that yes, editing is a sustainable and attractive activity for the right kind of person. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 13:51, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  I believe it is fun and i am glad you find enjoyment in it. I wonder though then how you explain the falling reader and editor counts, the concerns about stagnating community, etc etc? will wikimedia die pieces and etc? are these just a few radicals or a sign that something more serious is happening?

  Again, I want to make clear that i am not encouraging getting paid for normal activity like editing. but for organizing, for spending work time, for *working* on the project, then i think it is a different matter. NabuKudurru (talk) 16:14, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  especially if we as a community should try new things fast or in some way be responsible in any way for saving the movement, the foundation or etc. as i said to asilverling above, to me it doesn't make that much sense that there are 'broke' arbs or that people have to rely on welfare to get by when they are going above and beyond for Wiki. wiki has the money NabuKudurru (talk) 16:16, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  It may interest you to know that HouseBlaster is also one of our arbs, and therefore presumably included in asilvering's statement that As a member of English Wikipedia's arbitration committee, I know that I speak for all 15 of us when I say that we do not want to be paid for our work as arbs.. If you would like to know who else in this conversation is or has been an arb on enwiki, you may find the list here. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 21:56, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  Thank you for the link. as i asked asilverling here Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2026-07-13/Op-ed#c-NabuKudurru-20260715132700-Asilvering-20260715124100, don't you think you/ we could get better or more work, less turnover, or higher quality effort if the memebrs of the committee were not worried or stressed about money? they refused to answer so i am taking that as an indication that the answer is not something they want to say NabuKudurru (talk) 07:27, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  That is a strange interpretation of their response; asilvering quite explicitly said that they stopped answering because they are a volunteer and can therefore choose to spend their time in more rewarding ways than talking to someone who is not listening. I will be wise enough to do the same soon, but I edit Wikipedia in part because I gain intrinsic satisfaction by answering questions from very confused people. So I'll say clearly, no, I do not think Wikipedia would get more or better work out of me -- as an editor, an AfC reviewer, an NPP patroller, or an administrator -- if I was paid to do it. I consider it an obvious inevitability that once you are paid to do your hobby, it stops being your hobby and stops being fun. (One of my friends killed her love of knitting by opening an Etsy store, for example.) The best way to avoid burnout is to freely take breaks. If I were being paid, the sense of pressure during my low-edit periods would make it very difficult to take breaks properly, and I'm sure it would kill my love of editing. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 10:21, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  @NabuKudurru I can't speak for any individual person (though I suspect I speak for many): the reason I edit Wikipedia is because I am autistic. It is, in a certain way, a special interest, and it allows me to share my other special interests with the world and get some form of validation for it. That validation looks different for everybody; some people try and turn every article they write into a WP:GA or WP:FA. I like knowing that I've written what is often the longest and most freely accessible piece of literature on something important. And I like showing that work off at WP:DYK or WP:ITN. It's a massive high, going from the real world to here, where I can share a cool fact I found and I can see thousands of people go "huh, yeah. That is a cool fact".(User:GreenLipstickLesbian/DYK)

  You may not get that. That's okay. But, as a researcher, your job is to listen. Not project your own ideas onto a community as to what makes them tick. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 13:57, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  We did a survey of academics that are engaged with wikimedia in 2024, we found that people wanted to be doing more than they could, but also were spending work time and struggling to get credit for it. the study we did last year found that 20,000 acadmics had written about wikimedia in a title or abstract of paper (so pretty central), but only a few hundred had written more than 2 or 3, and the wikiresearch community is only a few hundred max. so this is evidence in my opinion of a lack of sustainability @HouseBlaster NabuKudurru (talk) 16:18, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  I want more people to come and to be able to stay and have good lives. NabuKudurru (talk) 16:18, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  Well, I'd want to talk to the academics who do spend time editing Wikipedia to see what motivates them to contribute. Like asilvering, who has responded extensively above.

  Research is only useful to the extent it allows us to improve Wikipedia. Generating more research is not the destination; it's a way to help us on the journey. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 17:12, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  We surveyed wikimedians who are academics, mostly. the second study looked at papers published and the number of academics who are writing about Wikipedia at least appears to be going down already quite a bit. we found the number of research papers has done down substantially, about 50% since 2021. This is not due to science publishing less or the database we were looking in having fewer papers.

  year: 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 - 2019 - 2020 - 2021 - 2022 - 2023 - 2024

  n papers: 1,108 - 1,034 - 986 - 937 - 924 - 970 - 978 - 709 - 641 - 452

  n papers published: 9,944,236 - 10,254,684 - 10,093,887 - 10,103,766 - 10,442,213 - 11,163,589 - 10,237,173 - 9,840,988 - 10,412,726 - 10,193,047 NabuKudurru (talk) 19:30, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  Sorry, I feel like I must be misunderstanding something here. In your opinion, it is a problem for Wikipedia if there are fewer research papers published about Wikipedia? I don't see the connection to the encyclopedia's goals. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 22:04, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  It is just another indicator showing that the community is either leaving disengaging or that less work is being done in general on the project. to me research is a leading indicator of interest and problem solving effort. if anything i would say we need more research to solve the problems we have, not less. and also i think engaging scientists or researchers are very high quality contributors. NabuKudurru (talk) 07:31, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  As an academic myself, naturally I agree that academics make very high quality contributors. However, I disagree that academic research about Wikipedia is a useful indicator of trends in activity by actual editors. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 10:23, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  I didn't say it was, but as a measure of health of the community, at least the research community, it is useful (which is what i am using it for) NabuKudurru (talk) 11:38, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  @HouseBlaster In the essay I kind of took it for granted, given all the talk on the list serv and etc, that there is a problem. is your idea that there is no problem? it seems like people at the foundation as well are quite worried and i guess they know more than us NabuKudurru (talk) 19:33, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  "took it for granted"...what does it refer to here? And which list serv would that be? I would hesitate to say that any of the list servs are places where actual governance is happening. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:43, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

  @CaptainEek, i mean in the first few sentences i said ok there are problems and there have been calls for proposals on what to do and then gave some citations. Wiki L email list has several threads in the dozens or hundreds of emails about problems and how to react to e.g., falling viewer and editor numbers NabuKudurru (talk) 07:29, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

• This article seems to conflate supporting the community with putting money into efforts that have the word "community" in the name, which is not the same thing. I think it could be reasonable to have a frank discussion on where the movement should put its money and if the current structure is serving us well, but this is not that. This is just buzzwords. Bawolff (talk) 02:24, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Bawolff, as i have asked several times but never really get an answer - what other mechanisms, other than grants made to the community, are used by WMF to disperse funds or to encourage community actions and organization?

  I encourage you to make a suggestion on how to spend those 200 million. 'we' have it. as I told @Asilvering , for the cost of a single average WMF employee (~175,000USD), we can make sure that there are no 'broke arbs' or arbs that need welfare to get by - as he/she/they said existed. To me it makes no sense that there are broke administrators while those at wikimedia are in the 1%. this distribution is not really equal, and the movement is not really open, if this is the case. in my opinion at least. NabuKudurru (talk) 07:54, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  supporting the community is not the same as "disperse funds or to encourage community actions and organization". To many people they may even be opposing goals given directing money from one goal means taking it away from another.

  I'm not even in principle opposed to giving arbs an honorarium of some sort. They certainly do demanding critical work. There are a lot of political complications to that though and fear how money might change dynamics. However there is a big gap between throw arbs some money and what you are suggesting.

  re make my own suggestion - i dont have all the answers, i just think the status quo, for all its flaws, is much much better than what you are suggesting. Bawolff (talk) 09:39, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Bawolff, so you don't think putting more funds toward supporting the community is a good idea? NabuKudurru (talk) 10:24, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  still nobody has given any evidence that grants are not the main mechanism through which community funded actions occur, or through which the community is organized.

  As i told silverling, i want you to be able to get funds for whatever potential solution you have to the problem. propose it. I think there should be funds for signpost, and for an editor union, and this and that.

  I don't want to say that any way is better than another, but funds should be available if we want people to try things quickly, as is the slogan so to speak NabuKudurru (talk) 10:29, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  some people said they dont like how grant money is being spent, but then they don't put together their own proposal. why not? do they not have any better ideas or is it just not attractive as an activity to do for some reason or other? NabuKudurru (talk) 10:34, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  I believe for a lot of people is simply is not worth the money, so maybe we should increase the money?? : D NabuKudurru (talk) 10:44, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  NabuKudurru, this is a volunteer project. The main mechanism through which the community is organized is not through "funded actions" at all, it is through consensus. Consensus is another word for "people showing up on a Talk page and hashing things out". It's happening to you right now. You published an article in our widely-advertised newspaper, and now people are talking about it. The consensus is that you do not have the correct operational theory for how enwiki operates, and are thus not able to propose constructive interventions to its system. People will probably still tell you how enwiki does work, but you have to show some sign that you are reading what they say. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 10:34, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  @~le valyn So you are saying there is no project at all for which you think funds could be usefully applied? or you think only WMF should be in charge of implementing those projects? I dont understand. NabuKudurru (talk) 10:45, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  Okay, if you would like to understand, I think answering your question with a question might help. In this discussion, you and several other people have given examples of things that could get funded. If you make a list of everything you have mentioned as a possible way to spend the WMF's money, and everything that other editors have mentioned, what patterns and differences can you see between the two lists? I am genuinely asking you to look through this discussion again and make two bulleted lists. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 10:56, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  The most common one i saw essentially was WMF hiring more people either trust and safety or tech teams, also on facebook someone said put it into a fund for wiki future or keep going the way things are now. to me WMF hiring one more person is less effective than hiring 10 community people e.g., an arbitration committee at 10% time each. Just my opinion, you can differ.

  actually nobody has, as far as i see, put forward a real proposal like ok we need 5 people at x% time to do this, or we need funds for this. one person wanted to manage a program to get editors old computers, sounds good - should we hire someone at WMF to do it or give the person who had the idea a 10% or 20% position so they can manage it?

  if we say ok we will put 1 person effort worth of funding into that (or any) idea, would you rather one new person at WMF be hired who doesn't really know about the idea or maybe 5 people at 20% - perhaps people who have already engaged in the project. I think hire the 5 people already engaged. NabuKudurru (talk) 11:29, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  Sure, you sort of tried to answer my question. Here is my answer.

Others have suggested spending WMF money on:

You have suggested spending WMF money on:

Movement Communications staff technical development Trust & Safety/Legal staff Moderator Tools staff the backlog of Phab tickets not laying off the developers of the Community Tech team WikiEducation laptop donations, like the existing book donations reinstating the community tech team and adding community research and design teams [presumably to carry out community-voted work as with CommTech] tools, and the teams to build them (Several of these got multiple mentions but I don't list them more than once.)

paying Barkeep "capacity exchange or training" "having a federation of organizations" "set up a committee of volunteers and pay them 1 or 2000 a month for part of their time" "community maintenance, writing big grants, administration, organizing things" paying the arbitration committee paying "community leaders" for their time your own group of 4-5 researchers who are applying for an EU grant "the stuff that is neglected because nobody wants to do it, and that does include organize things, develop things, or etc." paying administrators

When I look at those two lists, I notice several important differences. The experienced Wikipedians name specific successful programs that they would like to expand, and pain points (like technical tooling) where improvements can be made. The primary focus is making volunteer work easier. In contrast, your suggestions are quite vague, but have a recurring theme of funding people, through experimental grants. The primary focus is making people not be volunteers any more.

Personally, I don't think the constant churn of grant cycles is good for serious, in-depth infrastructural work. Indeed, I suspect few would say that 'pursuing and administering grants' is an effective and desirable part of academia that the rest of society should emulate. If there is something the WMF wants to have happen, they can accomplish it much more directly by just hiring someone to do it. I think there are still some situations where small grants make sense -- I think highly of the work accomplished by Wikimedians in Residence, for example, and the WikiPortraits photographers. But I appreciate them because it is easy to see how they help build the encyclopedia. That's the core value that I think all WMF expenditures should enable. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 12:28, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

• @NabuKudurru i support spending money on the community, which is why I'm opposed to your plan to divert money from the community to frivolous pursuits. Bawolff (talk) 10:49, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  so by your logic affiliates, user groups, small conferences, etc should not exist? What about eg wikidata, that started external to wmf no, wikied, I feel like there are many examples where the project would not be the same if not for grants.

  I would say ok I can give you 50k to put in the direction or project that you want to work on to make wiki better, but it sounds like you don't have one? keep in mind we have 200 million a year to spend and if i don't give the 50k to you i will give it to someone else who will probably spend it frivolously like on rent in San Francisco NabuKudurru (talk) 10:55, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  I am not saying that. Just because i think your plan is bad does not mean i think every grant funded initiative in the history of Wikimedia was bad. "I would say ok I can give you 50k to put in the direction or project that you want to work on to make wiki better, but it sounds like you don't have one?" - i dont know if you aware, but a reasonable portion of my income does actually come from grants (As a contractor working for someone who is grant funded). So no need to hypothetically give me something i already have. Bawolff (talk) 11:23, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  ok perfect, so you actually benefit from the grants system, but you don't see the benefit in making available more money to those or similar grantees? I was not aware of that, (in general i don't know who you are, sorry to say) What about your compensation, does it allow you live a nice life, in the way those from WMF have a good life? I looked at community grants the salaries were in general very small - which is also why i suggested making more funding available. If the funding is not the same, is there a fundamental reason your work is less valuable? NabuKudurru (talk) 11:35, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  You don't think more positions like that should be made available, or should be made available at a rate that is actually livable? e.g., not 1000 a month for half your working time, but like you know a similar rate at which WMF employees are compensated - in the name of equality NabuKudurru (talk) 11:37, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  i'm happy with my choices. If i wasn't i would make different ones. I also worked at WMF back in the day (long time ago now). Pay wasn't that great and quite frankly the corporate culture at the time was a bit toxic. When I left WMF i went to a corporate job, pay was much much much better, but i found it stresful and lacked meaning. Money isn't everything. I'm happy that i can be paid to do things i like and i feel helps Wikimedia (hope at least), but ultimately that's a privledge, and should be taken away if the time comes where there is a better use for the money elsewhere. Its not about me at the end of the day. As far as if my compensation is fair, that is between me and my boss (I'm not a direct grant recipient, i just work as a contract programmer, with a variety of clients, one of whom, as far as i understand is partially funded by a wikimedia grant) Bawolff (talk) 11:55, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  I would like to help more people get paid to do the things they like to help wiki, that the main point of the article. and i think you shouldnt really have to sacrifice money the same way WMF employees dont really have to NabuKudurru (talk) 12:00, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  @Bawolff ultimately though, you would like to see that position go away, given that it is grant funding and you want grant funding to go down? NabuKudurru (talk) 12:10, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

  i would not describe that as an accurate summary of my views Bawolff (talk) 12:26, 16 July 2026 (UTC)
  

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