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.
James
On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 11:45 AM, Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt(a)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(a)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
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018- 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
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