‘people who disagree with me are all the same, banning people for dissent on a hair trigger’

looks at moderation history CW: bigotry

Charming.

in b4 ‘it was only tactical bigotry’: still bigotry

Hard to fault any of the bans/removals I see here, looks like centrist extremists are capable of being toxic AF too

I was thinking earlier about how fucked we are in the U.S., that the MAGA contingent, and to a degree the Dem contingent as well, have accepted mentalities that are incorrect and actively reject correction. That people (the population in general) are being trained to reject the fundamentals of logic, and associate all opposing viewpoints with an evil “other”.

On lemmy.ml pretty much all reddit-like boards.

You can’t really compare a stack exchange board about a specific topic with general purpose boards.

but I have no way of checking it since they don’t provide a breakdown of the salaries involved

Yes they do. It’s named by the individual, their position, and the exact salary they earned in each year. Look up the form 990s.

The main issue I take with your opening post is its vagueness. You don’t mention any details in it, so it effectively acts as a cue for people to discuss anything at all controversial about wikipedia.

Completely true. I decided that being vague wasn’t great but it was better than brigading against the person I had in mind when that wasn’t the point. I figured people who had seen the stuff would know what I was talking about and figure it out, which mostly turned out to be accurate.

The narrative that led me to make the post was that Wikipedia is doxxing its editors to any fascist government that asks. I talk more about it here:

https://ponder.cat/post/1100747/1312503

And the way you frame the discussion is that such narratives “are fundamentally false” because Wikipedia “is a force for truth in the world that’s less corruptible than a lot of the others”

Not quite. Personally, I think WP is a force for truth in the world, but that wasn’t why I am justifying this, it’s just me talking.

Also, I had legit forgotten that the government that WP has been fighting in court not to dox its users to, is India. I connected it to a later person who sent me a source from India.com, after spending so much time talking to people who think Israel is nuking Syria or Wikimedia is skimming $300 million of “excess” money off every single year (see the link above where someone references that misinformation and then I address it). Part of the reason I am short-tempered about false claims that make Wikipedia sound bad is that I’ve been talking with people who are making 4 or 5 different big ones just in these comments alone, and they all turn out to be bullshit, but the sum total of all of them getting repeated, I think, can be significant.

Just to be clear, I’m not necessarily saying you are one of those misinformation people. But the claim that Wikimedia has so much money that donations are unnecessary, putting “salaries” they’re spending donations on in quotes, things like that, is definitely one of those misinformation claims.

I do think, however, that a company that’s not drowning in money wouldn’t be giving a bunch of generic research grants.

To clarify, you don’t think not-for-profits should fund grants for things that (by vote of the board) aligns with their mission?

I’m trying to figure out your beef with them.

Thanks for the link! Yeah, $3M for hosting out of their massive budget is what I was talking about - Wikipedia could lose 90% of their cashflow and not be in any danger of going offline.

Is it your impression that paying the people who work for you is optional for a technology company?

What a bad-faith argument.

I’m just going to let that little exchange stand on its own.

I took a look at the most recent 990 form you reference, and it lists compensation for a mere 13 individuals, with a total compensation just over $4-million in sum.

Hm, you’re right. I had looked at some kind of summary that listed people for every year, and somehow thought that it was breaking down salaries for everyone, but it’s only the top people.

Let’s look a different way. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_2021_Form_990.pdf&page=9 says that there are 233 people who earn more than $100k (so basically, full-time people in a white-collar role). So if you make a ballpark estimate that for each one of those people, there’s one other person doing janitorial work or similar that makes average $50k/yr, and average out the $88M they spent on salary in 2022 over all those 466 people, you get $327k per year for the white collar people. Presumably there’s also some amount on part-time work, or grants, or something like that. But the point is, it’s not that there is some absurd amount of money going missing. It’s just that they employ a few hundred people and pay SF-tech-company salaries.

This is in no way counter-evidence that spending (ultimately due to the decisions of these executives) is at runaway levels. Salaries and wages have increased 22% compounding year-over-year for the last four years on average. This is a 120% increase in only four years (from $46,146,897 to $101,305,706).

These trends have been continuously called out for almost a decade now, but this exponential growth continues nonetheless. All while expenses for core responsibilities remain flat.

Didn’t you just get super offended that I pointed out that paying the people who work for you is, in fact, a “core reponsibility”, and so this argument doesn’t make sense?

I’m happy with Wikipedia paying their people. If there was one person making $5M per year, then I’d be fine with that, even though there isn’t. If there was one person making $50M per year, maybe I’d have some questions, but nothing like that is happening.

Wikipedia should be setup to succeeded indefinitely at this point if it weren’t for these decisions.

You said I sound hostile. Stuff like this is why. I’ve been dealing with maybe 5-10 different people who all have some kind of different reason of bending their way around to the conclusion “and so Wikipedia sucks.” I don’t think spending money that’s coming in, on paying people to do Wikipedia work, spells doom for Wikipedia. I don’t think that makes any sense. And, there’s been such a variety of “and so that’s why Wikipedia sucks” comments I’ve been reading that all don’t make any sense if you examine them, that it’s made me short-tempered to any given one.

I like Wikipedia. I think it’s good.

As I explained, I was going to donate. I did my due diligence about where my money would go and made my decision. I provided the link to Wikipedia’s own declared for the benefit of others and shared some of my reasonings elsewhere in this post.

But in your world, anyone who questions anything is a shill for Musk? Or just those who hold a differing opinion to yours?

salary expenses includes everyone from the HR department to the custodians, not just the rich CEOs.

No shit, Sherlock. But where did I mention CEOs? Where did I mention Musk, come to that?

Anyway, I’m done arguing with you. Goodbye.

Like I said, “reporting” is the thing people should be doing first. But OP is so bothered by whatever person’s bullshit that they felt the need to make a PSA about it, and that to me says they need to just block and move on with their life. I would give the same recommendation to other people who are getting fixated on individual bad actors.

Trolls don’t deserve to live in your head rent-free.

I’ve literally seen no one say that it’s forbidden. Maybe one of the comment chains from someone I already have blocked does, but there’s only four two of those.

I see plenty of people saying this is a stupid post. A post that is uselessly vague. A post that is almost entirely purposeless.

I understand wanting to avoid brigading, but as it stands this post amounts to “You all should know that I reported someone (I won’t say who, tee hee) for posting something that I think is misinformation about Wikipedia (I won’t say what, tee hee). It’s really bad, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. This person I won’t name is just the worst. You need to know they’re the worst. But you don’t need to know who they are or what they said, that’s not important! Also I have vague consipiratorial feelings about anyone who would speak ill of Wikipedia after Musk said bad things about it, because no one could possibly have grievances or concerns with Wikipedia that are still valid despite Musk’s derangement.”

If you wanted to spread awareness, you should have named the problem user. If you wanted to force the admins into action you should have named the problem user.

If you are willing to give the admins time to handle things properly, especially during the fucking holidays where they likely have other things to do, instead of needlessly raising an alarm on something pitifully small… then you should have waited a few days for them to do something before running off to play vigilante with this post.

If you want to make people waste time trying to evaluate if you’re a nutter, thin skinned, or otherwise blowing smoke… you make a post like this one.

Either you had enough evidence to make this warning/call out post legitimately, and then you make it with names, screenshots, and fucking receipts… or you give admins time to respond and sit until they show they won’t do something.

This weak, vague post just says that you’re too impatient to let the admins work, you don’t trust them to do what you think is the right thing, but you’re also chickenshit that they might ban you for talking about it. Rather than post this from a throwaway made on another instance you make this useless thing.

TL;DR- People are telling you that this attempt to “warn” people is worthless without actionable info.

a forbidden topic for discussion.

I’m not getting that from the responses. What I’ve seen is

• being vague is not effective
• bad opinions aren’t the same as objective misinformation
• the username checks out
• it’s pointless to platform these people

These all seem to reiterate the idea that “this is not a good post” and not “this subject is taboo”.

But, if you’re messing this up, does that jeopardize your own efforts?