Hi David,
I just repeated the formulation of James's proposal (our messages crossed, I did not react to your message).
Concerning your earlier question on whether "people getting money to learn to listen" would work - well, it might. But than these people should be clearly distinguished from the rest of the community and might not create content, at least not with their special accounts. (I already explained why I think paying people to create content is a bad idea, and why having people in the community who are paid alongside with these who are doing the same job and are not paid is a bad idea). This is, as far as I understand it, the idea of the WMF community engagement team (in particular, community health). However, whereas in principle it might work, I do not see how it could be scaled up - you need people speaking several dozens of languages, and who are professionally qualified. And I also agree that whereas there are clearly things which are not healthy in the community, large-scale psychoterapy is not what we should and can provide. If people are engaged to the point that they get addicted and need some rehabilitation, they should disengage (and possibly even forcibly be disengaged, as happened to one recently globally banned user who meant well but was unable to stop) and seek professional assistance outside Wikimedia movement. Wikimedia is about creating free content and propagating free knowledge, it is not about making friends, creating social networks, or getting the hobbies monetized. (To be clear, I do not imply at all that you have these intentions or need rehabilitation or smth, but the sentiment repeats much too often).
Cheers Yaroslav
On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 9:28 AM, David Cuenca Tudela dacuetu@gmail.com wrote:
Yaroslav, what do you mean by people working at the front? Do you mean that you would like some leadership in the movement? (understanding leadership as the capacity to listen to many voices, and challenge them)
I never heard of any company where there are rotations of people who matter... in fact it is quite the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_retention
Why do you feel that rotations are necessary? And wouldn't be the loss greater than the gain?
Cheers, Micru
On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 9:00 PM Yaroslav Blanter ymbalt@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, concerning the group of people working "at the front" might
work
(as soon as it is not just about the support of the English Wikipedia),
and
I would not count sending them to Wikimania as a monetary reward -
assuming
this group undergoes regular rotations, and people who stop working leave the group.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 8:18 PM, Anders Wennersten < mail@anderswennersten.se
wrote:
James, I think you yourself earlier today put forwards a possible first step in this direction.
Support a group of people working "at the front" in neutralizing paid editing and other bad editing, by giving them possiblity to meet IRL,
and
why not at a session commited to this issue at WIkimania?
Anders
Den 2018-06-10 kl. 20:09, skrev James Heilman:
There is a fair bit of literature on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Wikipedia has been mostly built on the first. Introducing greater extrinsic motivation may decrease intrinsic motivation. Doing so should thus be
done
with great care, at a small scale that can be reversed, and be well studied to make sure the positive outweigh the negatives before being
expanded.
Not saying we should not look at this just that it may not result in the benefits we hope far. With respect to burn out, emergency physicians
are
generally paid well yet over half are experiencing burnout. https://wire.ama-assn.org/life-career/report-reveals-severit y-burnout-specialty
James
On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 11:45 AM, Yaroslav Blanter ymbalt@gmail.com wrote:
Hi David,
Well, I did not reply because I disagree but in my experience having
long
arguments with people one disagrees with usually does not lead to agreement and is also very tiring. You gave your opinion, I gave mine, it is up
to
other readers to decide whose arguments are stronger. I really hate
this
"last word" game. If Natacha did not raise exactly the same argument again, I would not even respond.
Concerning people who do the job and do not feel appreciated - I absolutely agree with you that they should be rewarded. The appreciation can
come
from both the community and the WMF (and possibly sometimes from the
external
parties). I just disagree that this appreciation should be monetary. There are many ways to reward people and at the same to avoid introducing additional factors which I believe are harmful for the community.
Concerning the premise that the existed model does not work anymore
- I
just disagree with the premise. Indeed, we have for example burnout
of
volunteers - I myself resigned the admin tools in the English
Wikipedia
in January, and stopped editing for a month in February, after the
community
failed to do anything about long-term harassment of a certain user directed at me - but this unfortunately happened before and will happen later. Specifically concerning the administrator issue, in the English Wikipedia I would still like to see any evidence that there is work which
requires
an
admin attention and does not get it. All backlogs I am aware of
originate
not because administrators are lazy or there are too few of them, but because things are being asked are not submitted to a right place -
such
as for example someone asking to resolve a long-standing content dispute claiming it is vandalism.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 7:21 PM, David Cuenca Tudela <
dacuetu@gmail.com>
wrote:
Yaroslav,
Yes, you already made your point earlier, and I addressed it here
[1]
and also in the draft proposal to enable some volunteers to receive donations for their work [2]. The fact that you neither commented on my reply
to
your
initial concern, nor on the proposal suggests me several
possibilities.
The
first one is that you are not listening to me [3], because you are
not
interacting with the proposals that could counter your fears, and
you
are not asking questions about them. The second one is that you don't
trust
your own capacity to listen to other people even when money is
involved.
That could also be, because people with the biggest fear that others
do
not
listen to them are indeed not well equiped to listen to other
people.
And the third one could be that you are a victim of your own
observations,
you
might be so used to see white swans (people being paid not
listening)
in
your life that the mere idea that black swans (people being paid who listen) exist might seem inconceibable for you. It could also be
that
you find something wrong or that could be done better in my proposal or
that
you have a better one, but since you haven't voiced your opinion, I don't know what.
Concerning time and motivation, I consider that the people who are contributing during their official working hours without explicit
permision
to do so are effectively STEALING resources from their employer.
This
is
of
course a partial view, because who owns actually the planetary resources? And who is there to say that it is not reasonable to invest some in Wikimedia projects? Although I understand and I feel empathy for the volunteers that Bodhisattwa mentions, I feel that what Aubrey said before holds true here: "You can't do good if there's no "you" in the first place". So if I ever meet people like that I will tell them: you are
not
doing any good here, because you are not putting yourself first.
You say that "we indeed have a lot of people who shout loud, do very little, and get all kinds of credits for the work others have done".
But
we
also have many people who speak quietly, do very much, and get no
credit
for what they are doing, and I do not see harm in recognizing their
work
with donations, specially if they commit to improve themselves and
to
listen. You don't explain why you don't like people who listen and
who
get
donations. Tbh, I do not like to have slaves in our movement, and I think we should free them from this kind of ungrateful slavery that many
seem
to
be very happy about. At least slaves got some food, and a place to sleep.
And also listen to what Anders is saying, our model is not working
any
more
(it was not sustainable to start with), we have reached the limit,
and
now
it is time to reinvent ourselves. And as far as I know most of us
here
are
"bottom", so we are building "bottom-up".
@Aubrey: Thanks for your long answer :) I'll address it later on, to
write
this email took me at least 5h of coming to the keyboard and leaving
to
manage the stress. I hope a reply to your email takes me a bit
less...
Regards, Micru
May/090365.html
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Micru/Draft_RFC [3] https://www.csh.umn.edu/education/focus-areas/whole- systems-healing/leadership/deep-listening _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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