[Foundation-l] new site notice now ready

[SJ Klein]

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>> 14. To the editors and other contributors--Wikipedia and all the other
>> projects do NOT exist so that a bunch of bored people have some place to play in
>> their leisure time. They exist to spread free knowledge and free culture. Our
>> target audience is not the editor per se, but the user-without-a-user-name who
>> comes to rely on our projects for information, whether its a student, a
>> traveller, or someone with an obscure interest and a passion for learning. As
>> editors and contributors we are serving them, and not being served. That is why
>> we keep all the sites going, no matter how costly it is. And let's be
>> grateful  to the groups and organizations that help us meet these costs.
>>
>> Danny
>>
> I hope this isn't a prevalent attitude among all board members to slam
> editor/contributors this hard.
>
> I do agree with the general sentiment that we need to be mindful that
> there are individuals beyond the active editor/commentator community
> that typically participates with the creation of Wikimedia content, but
> at the same time an acknowledgement needs to be made that without the
> active and contientious maintainance of Wikimedia content the WMF would
> have nothing to host.  Or it would age and "bit rot" away.
>
> Forgetting or trivializing the work of the people who have developed the
> content will only drive away current and future contributors.
> -- 
> Robert Scott Horning


Robert, I couldn't agree more.  I'm amazed to hear people saying "we're 
GROWING so fast... it NO LONGER SCALES to support our efforts through our 
community".  To the contrary, that seems like the only long-term scalable 
solution, and one that the foundation could do more to acknowledge.

It is unintentionally patronizing to say "every donation is appreciated... 
thank you... but we need more than your small donations can manage", and
it is also misguided.  Hundreds of millions of dollars are regularly 
raised for charities and political campaigns through small donations.
We have even discussed some of these efforts on this list in recent months.


As to the repeated asides that there are key things that need to be done 
'for the good of the project' that the Wikipedia community isn't doing, I 
would like to see some specifics; a lack of organized priorities among the 
community is different from a lack of interest, time, or expertise.


SJ