According to this
list, there are 36 officials admin staff and mods. Let's say their average wage is a grand a month, and that will cost 36K for a month and 432K for a year. They are human and need money to run and make this place civilized. They have full rights that don't need to be questioned, IMO.
No mod is paid a wage per se (except for maybe Cyrus and co with his
Cryptios company but I don't know the terms of that deal). It all depends on how much 'work' you do, but it's capped at a certain amount. If you do nothing you'll get nothing. If you do a little you'll get a little. Last month almost 1btc was paid out between 26 mods ($9157). Three of those received nothing. 8 of those received less than $100 or just a little bit more.
Thanks for bringing it up. Well, I think mods deserve to get paid for their hard work. And I don't care how much money spent from this forum donations. Honestly, I tried to mine a few satoshis in 2010, but I didn't have much interest in bitcoin and cryptocurrency until I found the ethereum presale wallet in this forum. And I think all of the admins and staff have done a super great job and the money is not enough to pay their sacrifices and efforts. Bitcointalk is one of the largest tech community and family in the world, and you guys are rock!