[Foundation-l] Concern with performance issues

[Ray Saintonge]

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Robin Shannon wrote:
>
>> Why, what is wrong with having "people dedendent 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 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 anybody is interested, another FOSS project that has been paying 
>> cash for doing development in this fashion is the Freenet Project 
>> (http://freenet.sourceforge.net/).  There are some projects that have 
>> "gone commercial" that perhaps could be compared as well, but the 
>> point here is that Wikipedia is growing to the point that having some 
>> sort of professional staff might just be necessary.
>
> I think you can set some guidelines down on who would be elegible for 
> recieving these funds, including perhaps a requirement that the 
> developer must have been doing volunteer development work for a given 
> number of months, nominated by the other developers, or "hired" by the 
> community in some fashion that has widespread approval that the 
> individual getting the contract really is worthy of getting paid. 
> Basically, this is "one of us" that is very good at what they are 
> doing, and already working with the volunteer developers.  Sometimes 
> this relationship may change with money being involved, but if they 
> already have good relationship with the other developers before they 
> are hired, I don't think this would change.  It would be a major 
> mistake to hire from outside of the group of volunteer developers if 
> you intend to keep the volunteer community together.
>
> As an example, IMHO, of how volunteers have been pushed into a 
> second-class category under professional staff, I would give the Open 
> Directory Project (dmoz.org) as an example.  This is to show what can 
> go wrong if professional staff doesn't listen to the community.  I 
> have been a volunteer editor there for almost five years now, and for 
> awhile there was a huge influx of volunteer "editors" who helped to 
> sift through web links and edit the descriptions, and create category 
> classifications to organize the internet.  On the whole a rather 
> ambitious project, and something that I would still like to stay 
> associated with. 
> I became a regional editor or a rather large category, and frankly it 
> was enough to keep me busy just keeping up with all of the work that I 
> was going through.  The problem I was encountering was that the 
> professional staff was not really "one of us", and often ran roughshod 
> over the volunteers, including me.  I would see changes even to the 
> portion of the ODP that I was responsible for, with no explaination or 
> warning that changes were even going to be made.  When I would 
> disagree with the changes, I would be publically ridiculed as not 
> understanding what was going on, even if other volunteer editors would 
> agree with my viewpoint.  Finally, I was going through huge turnover 
> of volunteers who were assisting me in sub-categories "under" the one 
> I was working on.  I just stopped working on the project for a few 
> months, in part over my disgust over what has been going on, and in 
> part due to the fact that I've had life come up and bite me so I can't 
> put the hours into volunteer work like I've done in the past.  In 
> short, I've been locked out as a volunteer editor now.  Yes, I could 
> reapply, but at this point it is a barrier where I am not sure if I 
> will ever be associated with the Open Directory Project again.
>
> Wikipedia is in a similar position where it is growing in huge 
> numbers, seemingly without end.  It also has, for the primary purpose 
> of what it does, a relatively low barrier to entry for somebody new to 
> come in and join in the work.  From my experience with the Open 
> Directory Project, I can also point to a time when this growth will 
> end in terms of gaining new people to write articles.  I've also been 
> involved in other volunteer organizations (political, social, and 
> youth groups) and the need to keep the volunteers happy should never 
> be underestimated.  The fickle thing about volunteers is that if they 
> don't like what is going on, they will leave quietly... often without 
> the leaders or those "at the top" even being able to percieve that 
> there is a problem.  If you hire somebody in any role (developer, PR 
> work, accounting, etc.), you have to make sure that individual is 
> committed to the goals of the organization, and if possible would be a 
> volunteer if they would not get paid for their work.  This is true for 
> Wikipedia as it is for the Red Cross.

Your observations are important, and reflect the reality of 
organizations that depend significantly on the work of volunteers.  
There is a tremendous difference between all volunteer environments, and 
those with regular employees.  At the same time their is evident need 
that some tasks MUST be done by someone who must go beyond what we can 
expect of the most competent of our volunteers.  When I go on long road 
trips I make a point of detouring to see small town museums.  I've seen 
two types with significant differences.  One is owned and significantly 
funded by senior governments which then hires people to do the day to 
day management.  Everything on display is well-organized and documented; 
the facility is well-maintained and free of safety hazards; it is clean 
to the point of sterility. Contrast that with a privately owned museum 
with minimal support from public funds.  The exhibits are chaos and 
clutter with minimal documentation, buildings are often run-down 
fire-hazards; one wonders what else is breeding in the exhibits besides 
interest.  A commercial parallel to this situation might be between the 
highly structured 7-11 operation and the mom-and-pop convenience store.

Full time employees profoundly alter the nature of an organization.  It 
begins to put the needs of the employees above the needs of its 
mission.  It becomes caught up in a succession of statutory obligations 
regarding the treatment of employees.  The employees are there "all the 
time", and consequently become more familiar with the operation than the 
volunteers, a point which can be used as evidence to support their way 
of doing things.  Funding decisions become dominated by making sure that 
there is enough in the pot to pay salaries. 

If the wiki way implies promoting the right to edit as fundamental to 
academic freedom of the entire population, we also need to examine 
closely those other social structures that can have a bearing on that 
right. 

Ec