[Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

[Edward Peschko]

> >
> > >Of all the online projects I've ever been involved in, Wikimedia is the
> > >most paranoid about power and money. I prefer facts to paranoia, and
> > >progress to stagnancy.
> > >
> > While I won't entirely disagree, I do think the paranoia serves its
> > purpose.  In addition to being the most paranoid, Wikimedia is also the
> > most _successful_ of the online projects I've been involved in---I've
> > seen quite a few other projects go pretty bad after money and power
> > hierarchies began to become heavily involved.
>

well, I'll throw in my two cents worth (note - coming from a relative 
newbie to mediawiki) ... 

I don't think that mediawiki should necessarily have only one
approach to moderation or karma. Mediawiki could support multiple
versions if these policies were decided via namespace.

The moderation/karma policy for the base namespace could be 
then be picked empirically.  Simply try multiple policies in 
smaller mediawikis, see which one works best, and then turn 
that policy 'on' for wikipedia itself. If none of them work out,
either make a command decision to keep moderation out or keep working
on finding one..

Ed

(
    ps - 
       FWIW - I don't think its *wise* to have a 'one size fits all' 
       policy for mediawiki. For some things - like controversial 
       discussion - a policy like slashdot's works quite well. 
       Ditto for science and/or research...
)