Who was bold enough to ask you to write this? (You have been saying this for some time, but who in or outside the WMF had the courage to ask you to put this in a semi-official publication?) Robert McClenon ( talk) 05:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
(The comment below was moved here from User talk:The Quixotic Potato -- Guy Macon ( talk) 12:52, 7 February 2017 (UTC))
[2] It may be possible to find a more elegant solution for the sentence about the chessboard problem. I prefer using parentheses inside a sentence (like this). (This looks weird.) ((( The Quixotic Potato))) ( talk) 04:56, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
It may be a good idea to mention the discrepancy between the fundraising goal for December 2014 (20 million USD) and the amount that was actually raised (30.6 million USD). ((( The Quixotic Potato))) ( talk) 05:03, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
I made a lot of copyedits near the beginning of the article (feel free to change or revert) and put some bullets below just reading through it closely with a critical eye. I think I would rework the article to focus on what spending WMF is doing that you feel is wasteful and putting forth specific constructive feedback on where to make cuts after digging into their annual report. The article comes off a bit like a guy on the sidwalk saying "the end is near." It's a daily occurrance around here for an editor to make overly-dramatic doomsday predictions on how the whole site is going to fall apart if the community/WMF does not adopt whatever their proposal is. Sometimes a more reasonable and toned down approach is actually more persuasive.
A few critiques while I was reading
Hope this helps! Best regards. CorporateM ( Talk) 21:08, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
I understand what hyperbole is, but I am concerned that you'll cause real offense with this article to cancer sufferers and those who've lost relatives to the disease.
I'd strongly recommend you find another metaphor - or none - or the important points you're trying to make will be drowned out by noise about what ought to be merely a mere frippery. -- Dweller ( talk) Become old fashioned! 14:09, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
It's a well substantiated metaphor. I don't think that watering it down is necessary. This is kind of like the plot of the book Fahrenheit 451, is my thought process at least. And it works well as an attention grabber for the essay. (albeit a bit lowbrow) Brettwardo ( talk) 19:06, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
I thought we already did hit the point where we stopped increasing the budget, with excess in funds raised going to the endowment. Looking at the plans on Meta, the 2016-2017 plan looks 2 million dollars smaller than the 2015-2016 plan (65m > 63m, link). The WMF is able to get a lot of important work done with its current budget, and I would hope for the budget to stabilize around $50-60 million, which seems both effective and responsible. -- Yair rand ( talk) 20:11, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
I welcome anyone who edits the editorial, and so far it looks like every edit has been an improvement. Without wanting to discourage anyone, I have a question about this one: [3] Is it just me, or does the editorial now imply that the two books The Mythical Man-Month (1975) and Peopleware (1987) extensively document Wikipedia's poor handling of software development? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 13:13, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
I appreciate that my perspective as someone who spent two years working for one of the chapters is going to be somewhat skewed. But I've also worked in many other places including in and around IT. There are some very basic things that Wikipedia didn't have in the early days, a backup datacentre being just one of them. I'd be a little nervous if the money got so tight that we went back to a single datacentre. Of course it is valid to ask what the movement would do if income fell, and how much of the expenditure is on keeping the lights on as opposed to attempting to improve things. But just as the exponential growth argument doesn't apply to an organisation whose exponential growth period looks over; A criticism based on the costs of Wikipedia in 2004 is always going to be vulnerable to people saying Wikipedia and its sister sites are one of the world's ten busiest websites. How many of the top 100 websites have as small a budget? Another perspective is to do a comparison with other charities, financially the movement is bigger, maybe twice as big as The Donkey Sanctuary but it is less that half the size of The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, and those are just UK charities, the Wikimedia movement is global. I appreciate that bigger than the Donkey sanctuary sounds somewhat unthreatening, feel free to think through some alternative comparisons. But it is a good idea to make such comparisons if you are trying to convince people that financially the WMF and chapters have grown too big. Ϣere SpielChequers 23:49, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
At User talk:Jimbo Wales#What do you think about ads on Wikipedia? User:DHeyward wrote:
I don't see how this in any way nullifies the basic law of reality that nothing can grow exponentially forever. Eventually, you run out of organizations willing to give you grants, and if the exponential increases in spending continue, you end up in the same situation that you had without grants. When a fast-growing cancer starts using up all of the body's resources, feeding it more and more resources is just a temporary stop gap.
In addition, grants have their own problem, which is the strings that get attached to them. The WMF may very well start by only accepting no-strings grants, but when the revenues inevitably stop growing, the temptation to support the ever-growing spending by accepting a few strings then a lot of strings will be hard to resist.
As I wrote in my editorial, we should make spending transparent, publish a detailed account of what the money is being spent on and answer any reasonable questions asking for more details. We should freeze spending increases to no more than inflation plus a percent or two, build up our endowment, and restructure the endowment so that the WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad. Is there anyone here who actually disagrees with my proposed solution? Anyone who thinks we should not limit spending, make spending transparent, build up our endowment, or arrange things so that the WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 03:06, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
Guy Macon, thanks for your continued efforts on this. It's in much better shape than the earlier version I read, and much closer to publication-ready. A couple points:
Here's what I suggest for the graphic. (It's pretty low resolution, which I don't know how to easily change -- I output this from Google Docs, I could try doing it from LibreOffice which gives more options but is trickier. However, I think for our purposes it's probably good enough.) I think this is the best way to balance the concerns -- we can still include the chart with the detailed info, but this will clearly present the data you're most focused on. - Pete Forsyth ( talk) 01:49, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
I got my answer at [ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Graphic_Lab/Illustration_workshop#Wikimedia_Foundation_financial_development ].
All you have to do is open the .svg file (not one of the .png files) in a text editor (I used VIM but I tested it and Windows Notepad works fine), and it shows you...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <svg version="1.1" id="Ebene_1" xmlns=" http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink=" http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" x="0px" y="0px" width="600px" height="842.553px" viewBox="12 -785.504 581 842.553" enable-background="new 12 -785.504 581 842.553" xml:space="preserve"> <title>Wikimedia Foundation financial development</title>
...and so forth.
Clearly the above can be edited and saved as a new .svg file. Simple! -- Guy Macon ( talk) 19:23, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
I was looking at the graphic [13] and noticed something.
Imagine that we were having this discussion when the the latest data we had was 2013-2014 for revenue and 2014-2015 for spending. Sort of looks like it may be flattening out into something like a Sigmoid function, doesn't it?
Alas, the latest data shows spending once again closely resembling an Exponential function.
I am having trouble remembering the name of the "boom and bust" curve that starts out exponential, levels out, then crashes. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 15:15, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
Related: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Is The Signpost a RS? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 11:54, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Who was bold enough to ask you to write this? (You have been saying this for some time, but who in or outside the WMF had the courage to ask you to put this in a semi-official publication?) Robert McClenon ( talk) 05:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
(The comment below was moved here from User talk:The Quixotic Potato -- Guy Macon ( talk) 12:52, 7 February 2017 (UTC))
[2] It may be possible to find a more elegant solution for the sentence about the chessboard problem. I prefer using parentheses inside a sentence (like this). (This looks weird.) ((( The Quixotic Potato))) ( talk) 04:56, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
It may be a good idea to mention the discrepancy between the fundraising goal for December 2014 (20 million USD) and the amount that was actually raised (30.6 million USD). ((( The Quixotic Potato))) ( talk) 05:03, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
I made a lot of copyedits near the beginning of the article (feel free to change or revert) and put some bullets below just reading through it closely with a critical eye. I think I would rework the article to focus on what spending WMF is doing that you feel is wasteful and putting forth specific constructive feedback on where to make cuts after digging into their annual report. The article comes off a bit like a guy on the sidwalk saying "the end is near." It's a daily occurrance around here for an editor to make overly-dramatic doomsday predictions on how the whole site is going to fall apart if the community/WMF does not adopt whatever their proposal is. Sometimes a more reasonable and toned down approach is actually more persuasive.
A few critiques while I was reading
Hope this helps! Best regards. CorporateM ( Talk) 21:08, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
I understand what hyperbole is, but I am concerned that you'll cause real offense with this article to cancer sufferers and those who've lost relatives to the disease.
I'd strongly recommend you find another metaphor - or none - or the important points you're trying to make will be drowned out by noise about what ought to be merely a mere frippery. -- Dweller ( talk) Become old fashioned! 14:09, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
It's a well substantiated metaphor. I don't think that watering it down is necessary. This is kind of like the plot of the book Fahrenheit 451, is my thought process at least. And it works well as an attention grabber for the essay. (albeit a bit lowbrow) Brettwardo ( talk) 19:06, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
I thought we already did hit the point where we stopped increasing the budget, with excess in funds raised going to the endowment. Looking at the plans on Meta, the 2016-2017 plan looks 2 million dollars smaller than the 2015-2016 plan (65m > 63m, link). The WMF is able to get a lot of important work done with its current budget, and I would hope for the budget to stabilize around $50-60 million, which seems both effective and responsible. -- Yair rand ( talk) 20:11, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
I welcome anyone who edits the editorial, and so far it looks like every edit has been an improvement. Without wanting to discourage anyone, I have a question about this one: [3] Is it just me, or does the editorial now imply that the two books The Mythical Man-Month (1975) and Peopleware (1987) extensively document Wikipedia's poor handling of software development? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 13:13, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
I appreciate that my perspective as someone who spent two years working for one of the chapters is going to be somewhat skewed. But I've also worked in many other places including in and around IT. There are some very basic things that Wikipedia didn't have in the early days, a backup datacentre being just one of them. I'd be a little nervous if the money got so tight that we went back to a single datacentre. Of course it is valid to ask what the movement would do if income fell, and how much of the expenditure is on keeping the lights on as opposed to attempting to improve things. But just as the exponential growth argument doesn't apply to an organisation whose exponential growth period looks over; A criticism based on the costs of Wikipedia in 2004 is always going to be vulnerable to people saying Wikipedia and its sister sites are one of the world's ten busiest websites. How many of the top 100 websites have as small a budget? Another perspective is to do a comparison with other charities, financially the movement is bigger, maybe twice as big as The Donkey Sanctuary but it is less that half the size of The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, and those are just UK charities, the Wikimedia movement is global. I appreciate that bigger than the Donkey sanctuary sounds somewhat unthreatening, feel free to think through some alternative comparisons. But it is a good idea to make such comparisons if you are trying to convince people that financially the WMF and chapters have grown too big. Ϣere SpielChequers 23:49, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
At User talk:Jimbo Wales#What do you think about ads on Wikipedia? User:DHeyward wrote:
I don't see how this in any way nullifies the basic law of reality that nothing can grow exponentially forever. Eventually, you run out of organizations willing to give you grants, and if the exponential increases in spending continue, you end up in the same situation that you had without grants. When a fast-growing cancer starts using up all of the body's resources, feeding it more and more resources is just a temporary stop gap.
In addition, grants have their own problem, which is the strings that get attached to them. The WMF may very well start by only accepting no-strings grants, but when the revenues inevitably stop growing, the temptation to support the ever-growing spending by accepting a few strings then a lot of strings will be hard to resist.
As I wrote in my editorial, we should make spending transparent, publish a detailed account of what the money is being spent on and answer any reasonable questions asking for more details. We should freeze spending increases to no more than inflation plus a percent or two, build up our endowment, and restructure the endowment so that the WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad. Is there anyone here who actually disagrees with my proposed solution? Anyone who thinks we should not limit spending, make spending transparent, build up our endowment, or arrange things so that the WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 03:06, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
Guy Macon, thanks for your continued efforts on this. It's in much better shape than the earlier version I read, and much closer to publication-ready. A couple points:
Here's what I suggest for the graphic. (It's pretty low resolution, which I don't know how to easily change -- I output this from Google Docs, I could try doing it from LibreOffice which gives more options but is trickier. However, I think for our purposes it's probably good enough.) I think this is the best way to balance the concerns -- we can still include the chart with the detailed info, but this will clearly present the data you're most focused on. - Pete Forsyth ( talk) 01:49, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
I got my answer at [ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Graphic_Lab/Illustration_workshop#Wikimedia_Foundation_financial_development ].
All you have to do is open the .svg file (not one of the .png files) in a text editor (I used VIM but I tested it and Windows Notepad works fine), and it shows you...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <svg version="1.1" id="Ebene_1" xmlns=" http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink=" http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" x="0px" y="0px" width="600px" height="842.553px" viewBox="12 -785.504 581 842.553" enable-background="new 12 -785.504 581 842.553" xml:space="preserve"> <title>Wikimedia Foundation financial development</title>
...and so forth.
Clearly the above can be edited and saved as a new .svg file. Simple! -- Guy Macon ( talk) 19:23, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
I was looking at the graphic [13] and noticed something.
Imagine that we were having this discussion when the the latest data we had was 2013-2014 for revenue and 2014-2015 for spending. Sort of looks like it may be flattening out into something like a Sigmoid function, doesn't it?
Alas, the latest data shows spending once again closely resembling an Exponential function.
I am having trouble remembering the name of the "boom and bust" curve that starts out exponential, levels out, then crashes. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 15:15, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
Related: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Is The Signpost a RS? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 11:54, 21 April 2020 (UTC)