[Foundation-l] Update of Foundation organization

[teun spaans]

There are many ways in which people can express their respect for fellow
volunteers.
The giving of barn-stars is one of them, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Barnstars That also gives people
"status"

On 3/6/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 3/5/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > You cannot oblige anybody to work a specified number of hours
> > per week unless they are getting something out of it.  That something
> > may still be intangible, like personal satisfaction, instead of money;
> > pure altruism is unlikely to be enough.
>
> What's the difference between having personal satisfaction as the only
> reward and pure altruism?  Even if there's a philosophical difference,
> there doesn't seem to be a practical one.
>
> That said, a common intangible reward for volunteers is status in a
> hierarchical system.  Everything2 has its experience system.  Slashdot
> has its karma system.  The volunteer fire department has probies and
> drivers and officers etc.  The Wikimedia community has some hierarchy,
> but not a lot, and there are strong feelings that it not be used as a
> reward.  It'd be perfectly possible to require all admins to commit to
> 2 hours a week of some particular duty to stay admins, and many people
> would still sign up for adminship, but the culture of Wikimedia is
> such that this would probably cause a huge backlash.
>
> Anthony
>
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