[Foundation-l] Social networking (was: Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline)

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Brianna Laugher
<brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I think that is a false argument. If people don't want to write
> articles, they won't write articles, regardless of whether or not you
> take away their toys.

Huh?  If you give people reasons to hang around, burdening our systems
(and I'm not talking about the servers, I'm referring to things like
dispute resolution, copyright vetting, and the human workload of
monitoring RC), without doing anything even arguably related to the
mission then some will.   I don't see how there can be much question
over that.

> Cracking the whip doesn't mean much to
> volunteers.

Yet there are plenty of organizations which rely extensively on
volunteer labor and yet manage to preserve a professional and focused
working environment.

This often repeated claim that volunteers can't be directed false by
definition.   "A volunteer is someone who works for free for a
community or for the benefit of natural environment primarily because
they choose to do so."   If someone is unwilling to stick to the
mission because they'd rather be picking their nose then they probably
are not volunteers.  Just because we're very poor at organizing
volunteers (we make up for it with volume),and we have a lot of
non-volunteers doesn't mean that volunteers can't be organized.

Regardless,  this discussion isn't about directing volunteers, it's
about adding facilities which are external to the mission.  "Our
workers can smuggle in beer and drink on the job anyway, and we can't
really stop them.  Lets provide a keg."  Unless you hope to argue that
"social networking" would be a useful organization tool, but if so
you're using the wrong word ("social networking" is a tainted word;
linkedin doesn't describe themselves that way for example), and the
wrong arguments (that some people would enjoy using isn't a good
argument).

I think Pharos is generally on the ball with respect to the genuinely
useful uses: If the tools are generally on-topic then it's possible
for it to be productive.

> I also think such people are far less likely to make it to
> meta, compared to a large Wikipedia project. If you know about meta, I
> would say odds are extremely good that you are a Wikimedian.

OKAY. Then this is the pattern we've used in the past: Relegating
things to meta where they will cause no harm or effect.