Kelly Martin wrote:
This is the core, underlying attitude that dooms
Wikipedia to
mediocrity. Thousands of volunteer projects exist worldwide that
places often quite strenuous obligations on their volunteers. (Think
Habitat for Humanity.) And yet these projects survive, even thrive.
Wikipedia already has a good core of volunteers who are willing to do
as requested. We need to stop pandering to the self-centered lazy
"volunteers" who will "only do what is fun" and instead target the
committed volunteer who is willing to do the hard stuff that needs to
be done.
By happy chance, and through Project Gutenberg's good graces, I've just
been reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer again. After the fence gets
painted, Twain ends the chapter with:
If [Tom] had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of
this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of
whatever a body is / obliged / to do, and that Play consists of
whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to
understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a
tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is
only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive
four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line,
in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money;
but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it
into work and then they would resign.
I think the only thing that has changed in 150 years is that treadmills
are no longer work, but play.
William