[Foundation-l] Wikimedia "Storyteller" job opening

[Pronoein]

Le 01/03/2011 17:26, David Gerard a écrit :
> On 1 March 2011 20:22, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> 
>> The part where adding this person leads to better content? Wikimedia's
>> mission is to educate the world with free content. I'm not sure how a
>> Propaganda Minister really furthers that goal. There is a very finite amount
>> of resources for staff hires; I just don't see how this passes any type of
>> reasonable cost/benefit analysis.
>> If it's the outside world's perception of Wikimedia that is the underlying
>> concern, I think hiring someone whose job description includes "make
>> something incredibly beautiful every month" might be more detrimental to
>> Wikimedia's image and mission than anything else. There are a lot of people
>> who would be (more) willing to donate to Wikimedia if they didn't feel their
>> donations would be spent like this, in my view.
> 
> 
> You appear to be generalising from your personal preferences to the
> world here. This is a common fallacy and a really bad idea in general.

No, I subscribe to this point of view and all my circle of relations
feel the same about donating to non-profit organizations who show too
much interest into receiving money. I'm not insinuating any accusation
but stating a fact about a category of minds.

David, your sentence wasn't very clear. You're "doubting"[1] that the
ethical-driven concerns expressed by MZMcBride can be generalized. Are
you saying that this point of view is so minoritary, maybe even unique,
that it should be disconsidered?

Let's pretend you're right for a second.

If there is such a minority of ethical concerns, it could be one of the
reasons that volunteers are leaving the boat. Nobody likes being
exploited, in particular volunteers. This is a common mistake of
volunteers management. (aka "butchering the golden egg producing
chicken"). This hypothesis would be worth checking. A survey could be
drawn about why the very active wikipedians left since 2001.

[1]: in fact you even say it would be a fallacy.