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-severity-burnout-specia...
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: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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