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.
Your observations are important, and reflect the reality of
organizations that depend significantly on the work of volunteers.
There is a tremendous difference between all volunteer environments, and
those with regular employees. At the same time their is evident need
that some tasks MUST be done by someone who must go beyond what we can
expect of the most competent of our volunteers. When I go on long road
trips I make a point of detouring to see small town museums. I've seen
two types with significant differences. One is owned and significantly
funded by senior governments which then hires people to do the day to
day management. Everything on display is well-organized and documented;
the facility is well-maintained and free of safety hazards; it is clean
to the point of sterility. Contrast that with a privately owned museum
with minimal support from public funds. The exhibits are chaos and
clutter with minimal documentation, buildings are often run-down
fire-hazards; one wonders what else is breeding in the exhibits besides
interest. A commercial parallel to this situation might be between the
highly structured 7-11 operation and the mom-and-pop convenience store.
Full time employees profoundly alter the nature of an organization. It
begins to put the needs of the employees above the needs of its
mission. It becomes caught up in a succession of statutory obligations
regarding the treatment of employees. The employees are there "all the
time", and consequently become more familiar with the operation than the
volunteers, a point which can be used as evidence to support their way
of doing things. Funding decisions become dominated by making sure that
there is enough in the pot to pay salaries.
If the wiki way implies promoting the right to edit as fundamental to
academic freedom of the entire population, we also need to examine
closely those other social structures that can have a bearing on that
right.
Ec