[Foundation-l] Concern with performance issues

[Ray Saintonge]

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.
>
>On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:49:26 -0800, Scott Nelson <scott at penguinstorm.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Jan 14.2005, at 09:29, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>After that the person could not be hired again for at least another
>>>six months.  One thing that this would accomplish is that it would
>>>avoid having people become dependent on the Foundation for a regular
>>>source of income.
>>>
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 
every member of a human environment is tolerant of being told by some 
Vulcan that he is not being logical.  Persons making decisions that will 
have long-term effects on the community need to retain the confidence of 
the community on a continuing basis.  Since the majority of us are 
clueless about the functioning of the underlying software we are content 
to let the developers "do their thing", and to content ourselves with an 
accasional whine about a bug in the system or a fantastic 
"Wouldn't-it-be-great-if..." comment.  Beyond that we will keep quiet 
about the software unless our activities are seriously cramped.

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.

Ec