[Foundation-l] The fallacy of power

[David Gerard]

2008/5/1 Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>:
>  --- On Wed, 4/30/08, Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:

>  How can it support the community if it
>  > doesn't
>  > understand it because most of the people
>  > "supporting" it just wanted a job?

>  This is so off-base I really don't know where to begin.  What mature person "just wants a job"?  Do you realize that the large majority of people spend more energy focused on their job than anything outside of their nuclear family?  If anyone was hired that only cared to collect a paycheck, they would quit in a month. There are much easier paychecks around. Do you realize the public crap WMF employees get from this list alone? And it must be threefold flowing around the informal blogs and IRC chat rooms floating around that are less public but guaranteed to eventually get back to the subject.  It was nearly unbearable for me to have one gossiping troublemaker in an office.  I can't imagine what it is like to be exposed to this crap on such widespread forums as WMF employees are.  And it is not like they can go on wikibreak when it gets too stressful.  This is their *job*.  Many  of them have moved to a new city and invested in a new life for this career.


Indeed. People don't go to work for small charities (and in this
context WMF is a very small charity) for the beer and chicks. They
generally take a substantial opportunity cost hit in order to do
something for a living that helps the world.


- d.