[Foundation-l] Concern with performance issues

[Robert Scott Horning]

Robin Shannon wrote:

>Why, what is wrong with having "people dedendent on the Foundation for
>a regular source of income."? If we were to use only contract workers,
>a new person would have to learn the whole system every 3 months, and
>it would also make longer term projects more difficult to
>do. Contract workers, for sys admin is just crazy talk.
>
>
>  
>
>>On Jan 14.2005, at 09:29, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>After that the person could not be hired again for at least another
>>>six months.  One thing that this would accomplish is that it would
>>>avoid having people become dependent on the Foundation for a regular
>>>source of income.
>>>      
>>>
>
>  
>
If anybody is interested, another FOSS project that has been paying cash 
for doing development in this fashion is the Freenet Project 
(http://freenet.sourceforge.net/).  There are some projects that have 
"gone commercial" that perhaps could be compared as well, but the point 
here is that Wikipedia is growing to the point that having some sort of 
professional staff might just be necessary.

I think you can set some guidelines down on who would be elegible for 
recieving these funds, including perhaps a requirement that the 
developer must have been doing volunteer development work for a given 
number of months, nominated by the other developers, or "hired" by the 
community in some fashion that has widespread approval that the 
individual getting the contract really is worthy of getting paid. 
 Basically, this is "one of us" that is very good at what they are 
doing, and already working with the volunteer developers.  Sometimes 
this relationship may change with money being involved, but if they 
already have good relationship with the other developers before they are 
hired, I don't think this would change.  It would be a major mistake to 
hire from outside of the group of volunteer developers if you intend to 
keep the volunteer community together.

As an example, IMHO, of how volunteers have been pushed into a 
second-class category under professional staff, I would give the Open 
Directory Project (dmoz.org) as an example.  This is to show what can go 
wrong if professional staff doesn't listen to the community.  I have 
been a volunteer editor there for almost five years now, and for awhile 
there was a huge influx of volunteer "editors" who helped to sift 
through web links and edit the descriptions, and create category 
classifications to organize the internet.  On the whole a rather 
ambitious project, and something that I would still like to stay 
associated with.  

I became a regional editor or a rather large category, and frankly it 
was enough to keep me busy just keeping up with all of the work that I 
was going through.  The problem I was encountering was that the 
professional staff was not really "one of us", and often ran roughshod 
over the volunteers, including me.  I would see changes even to the 
portion of the ODP that I was responsible for, with no explaination or 
warning that changes were even going to be made.  When I would disagree 
with the changes, I would be publically ridiculed as not understanding 
what was going on, even if other volunteer editors would agree with my 
viewpoint.  Finally, I was going through huge turnover of volunteers who 
were assisting me in sub-categories "under" the one I was working on.  I 
just stopped working on the project for a few months, in part over my 
disgust over what has been going on, and in part due to the fact that 
I've had life come up and bite me so I can't put the hours into 
volunteer work like I've done in the past.  In short, I've been locked 
out as a volunteer editor now.  Yes, I could reapply, but at this point 
it is a barrier where I am not sure if I will ever be associated with 
the Open Directory Project again.

Wikipedia is in a similar position where it is growing in huge numbers, 
seemingly without end.  It also has, for the primary purpose of what it 
does, a relatively low barrier to entry for somebody new to come in and 
join in the work.  From my experience with the Open Directory Project, I 
can also point to a time when this growth will end in terms of gaining 
new people to write articles.  I've also been involved in other 
volunteer organizations (political, social, and youth groups) and the 
need to keep the volunteers happy should never be underestimated.  The 
fickle thing about volunteers is that if they don't like what is going 
on, they will leave quietly... often without the leaders or those "at 
the top" even being able to percieve that there is a problem.  If you 
hire somebody in any role (developer, PR work, accounting, etc.), you 
have to make sure that individual is committed to the goals of the 
organization, and if possible would be a volunteer if they would not get 
paid for their work.  This is true for Wikipedia as it is for the Red Cross.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning
218 Sunstone Circle
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 753-3330
robert_horning at netzero.net