WF
1
Aw, I was expecting something positive. I hope this isn’t the truth. Here’s what it says as the screenshot isn’t appearing for me:
*winces* I know many businesses pay freelancers really low through work sites, but wikiHow?? I hope it isn’t true…
WF
5
I mean if that’s the pay you’re being offered just don’t take the work lol. Unless they’re offering a contract that pays more and not delivering there’s literally nothing wrong with it.
Yeah, read through the article guys before anything. I didn’t find anything shocking or gasp worthy. I think that’s fairly standard. I mean, the article cites pay as low as .40 for newer illustrators, per image. You also gotta factor in the exchange rate which is something like .40-1.00 /20-50 in Philippine Pesos.
@InfernoTerra
Even accounting for conversion rates and average costs, 20 Phillippine Pesos wouldn’t cover a sizable amount of your rent. Even aside from that, a lot
of people are going to find that questionable.
And I have to be honest in that I am
pretty shocked that artists who are located in the US were let go over this. We had some artists a few years ago whose work was vital in terms of creating the style guidelines shown in that article. I don’t know where they were located, but if they were part of the group that were let go, that’s a giant slap in the face to them.
There’s a lot that needs to be said, but I’m going to wait on staff’s response before I say anything further.
This doesn’t feel right. Only 40 cents?! And the images are so detailed, they may take hours or days!
Unless it’s not illustrations. Then it’s not really worth much.
@JustJoshua
As someone with photography and photo editing experience, photographs and screenshot editing can be worth quite a bit, too. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes time and effort put into it. It looks deceptively simple, but that’s kind of the point. (That’s why professional photography can cost so much money.)
It’s the value put on the work by the company, no one is being forced to do it if the money isn’t enough.
That’s 30p! And to think about all the effort to make just one image.
I read the article linked in the tweet, and I find quite a few of their claims sketchy, the article is published by an account on medium.com
(a blogging platform) called OneZero (which I have never heard of). Also, the article cites no sources to back up their wage claim, and while the article includes links to wikiHow articles and wikiHow staff’s LinkedIn profiles, it does not include any links to the alleged job postings, even though it would have been exceedingly easy to do so.
Also, even the article says that the artist who was paid 40 cents was paid that through a third party, so it’s possible that even if that was true, the artist who was paid that wage was scammed by the third party that managed to trick wikiHow into thinking that they were the artist when they really only passed on the pictures from the original artist.
Another thing that makes me doubt this story is that it does not appear that OneZero tried to contact wikiHow to respond to the wage allegations, which is a huge violation of journalistic integrity, and makes me question the validity of the entire story. Any half decent news outlet would always ask a company for their side of the story when their is any negative news about said company, and the fact the the author of this OneZero story failed to do this shows that they don’t appear to be a serious news outlet that cares about objectivity and integrity.
I would take these claims and this tweet with a grain of salt and I would wait for wikiHow staff to respond. I would also remember that a story from The Atlantic, which is a much more respectable news organization, did not make any of these claims in their story a few months ago, and even said that wikiHow has never been accused of taking advantage of it’s users. If the claims in the OneZero story were true, I’m sure that The Atlantic would have found evidence of what they described during their investigation.
I’ve read over the article, and I feel bummed out right now. If that’s really the case, I’m never asking Wikivisual for images again…
Okay, I’ve also had time to reread through the article and wake up a little more. I think there are some things that staff needs to address here but I also have to automatically side with wH here (call me bias) and take anything /Medium/ a blogging site with a paywall (ugh) says with a large grain of salt.
Everything R2 said above rings true. Especially about sources. To quote Chris H from the article, “We’ve paid over $1,000 for some images,” he said. “It’s a really wide range, and that diversity is a function of where we’re hiring and what the project is, and the special skills involved in doing it.”
I gotta believe that .40 cents is an oddity and reserved for low effort projects and/or newbies. I don’t know but I will be waiting on a reply from wH. Please, don’t disappoint here. I have a lot of faith in this company and don’t want to be let down.
JayneG
17
Hi everyone, I just wanted to pop in with a quick note over the weekend.
Unfortunately the author of this article is intentionally trying to paint wikiHow in a negative light. They have referenced a lot of outdated information, and even referenced staff who haven’t worked at wikiHow for a number of years.
Regarding the image price, as it has been noted, the alleged price paid to the one particular contractor referenced was through a third party. Please know that this means that wikiHow did not necessarily set that price for the artist to be paid.
wikiHow always seeks to pay people an appropriate, market rate for where they live. We work with people all over the world, and these rates may vary from one country to another. The wikiHow team also works with these people to help them become better artists, and has even given interest-free loans for people to buy equipment so they can improve and do more involved projects - often with other companies.
I hope you all know that wikiHow would never intentionally underpay anyone, and that the goal is to always build working relationships in a way that’s good and fair for everybody.
I appreciate R2 reminding us of The Atlantic
article. In these times, it’s a good reminder to focus on respectable, current journalistic writing.
Chris_H
18
Thanks to everyone who responded here. It says a lot about the character of our community that so many of you are concerned about the artists who work on the Wikivisual project. I’d like to elaborate on Jayne’s points with a little more detail.
I spoke to the reporter who wrote the story that inspired this thread, and I’m disappointed by the way he chose to portray our relationships with the artists who help us make our articles the best how-to articles articles on the internet. We are proud to work with the many talented artists on the Wikivisual project, and we have always sought to make sure that they are treated fairly.
The article makes sensational claims, such as the reporter’s statement that four or five years ago, someone working for a third party contractor (not wikiHow) earned only $.40/image doing wikiHow illustrations. This sort of claim is great for getting attention, but that has never been a rate wikiHow has paid its illustrators. It is possible that someone was paid that rate by a third party, but it was never something that the Wikivisual team approved.
We want our articles to be the best that they can be, and we want to work with great people in doing so. You can’t do that if you treat people poorly. The Wikivisual team works with talented, trained, and tech-savvy artists from across the globe – and has great relationships with the majority of them. Most of the team has worked for us for years, and most of the people applying to work with us on the visual project today are friends, colleagues, or classmates of current artists. The Wikivisual team meets with our artists to help them connect and develop their skills, we support them in getting the software and equipment they need to improve what they can do, and we pay them fairly for their work.
I’m sorry that the Wikivisual project – which we are proud of, and which has helped millions of readers – was portrayed in a negative light. We aspire to do great things at wikiHow, and we can’t do them if we neglect our values. I hope that Jayne and I have been able to help address some of the misconceptions presented in the Medium article, and I’m grateful for the concerns people have shown in this discussion that are a reminder of the importance of staying true to our values.
I think the big thing - do not trust misinformation! Remember, the web has a lot of misinformation. There are a variety of extensions, such as NewsGuard, that will tell you whether the source is reliable.
Atleast we know that there are people who want to tarnish the good image of our wikiHow.
