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/leadersh...