[Foundation-l] Corporate Social Responsibility

[Dan Rosenthal]

On Nov 20, 2010, at 6:00 PM, Noein wrote:

> Thank you everybody for explaining your views.
> Most of the US inhabitants who answered me seem to be living and
> believing in a hierarchical and competitive world where the highest
> ranked ones- who are praised as gods - take from the lowest ones - who
> are just good enough to give their money and effort. As a matter of
> fact, their society seems organized to maximize money and it is echoed
> in their opinion about how to manage this huge collaborative effort
> about knowledge called Wikipedia.

I think this is a gross misrepresentation of what I've seen from the replies so far. I think a more accurate representation is that you place transparency as a higher priority than personal privacy, even when such transparency is beyond what is necessary and would cause harm to the individual, on the sake of principle; you also seem unwilling to accept that employees can be paid a competitive salary and provide a valuable service to the foundation that merits such a salary (despite that we pay well below competitive salaries for attorneys -- as Fred Bauder pointed out, the standard salary for a first year attorney (or a 2nd year law student as a summer associate) at a major New York or D.C. law firm is 160,000 before bonuses -- more than Mike makes. ) But it is a ridiculous assertion to suggest that people on this list believe in a world of cold, unfeeling, unfettered capitalism where the acquisition of money is the single highest priority in life.

Your  perspective seems to be that Gordon Gekko would be right at home working for Wikimedia. My experience with the staff over the years has been the exact opposite.

-Dan