Ray Saintonge (saintonge@telus.net) [050118 07:20]:
Robin Shannon wrote:
Why, what is wrong with having "people dependent 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.
If you are looking at this from a strictly logical mechanistic perspective, you are of course right. Certain efficiences are a normal by-product of system experience. This all presupposes that the employee has a very free hand in the decisions that he must make, and that his orders come from a single responsible source. Wikipedia is as much a human environment as it is a technical one. Not
[....]
At the same time the employee will be under pressure to produce, even if that pressure only comes from within himself. Contracts to perform specific pre-determined tasks that have already been approved by the community will allow the person to focus on the task at hand, without the need to schmooz for the purpose of continuing his employment beyond the contract period.
If the planned employee is a sysadmin, I can tell you (as a sysadmin who knows *lots* of sysadmins) that there are any number of highly skilled and professional [[BOFH]]s who would *jump* at the chance to tend machines for the Foundation. And be clueful about the Wiki way in all its interesting glory. These people have survived Usenet, after all. Now you just need one in St Petersburg :-D
(Dev is not my field so I cannot offer free advice worth every penny there ;-)
- d.