Another thought: perhaps more investment could be made
in providing career
development support for our volunteers of all kinds. It's relatively common
in the United States for organizations with lots of volunteers to put some
investment explicitly into helping the volunteers develop skills snd
experience that are useful for both their voluntary and paid work CVs. If
more of that kind of investment was made by WMF, volunteering would be more
attractive *and* WMF would benefit by having more ability to fill paid
positions from the ranks of volunteers.
Pine
I'm curious, concretely speaking, what do you have in mind?
FWIW, I'm very thankful to say that Wikimedia has given me many
opportunities to develop skills etc. When I made my first edit I
didn't know how to program, now that's what I do for living. Much of
that is thanks to help and guidance of many Wikimedians. Obviously
that's a different type of mentoring than you're suggesting, but
nonetheless much of what I know can be directly attributed to
mentoring by various people associated with the movement.
--
bawolff