[Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Dan Rosenthal]

On Mar 8, 2011, at 12:14 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> On 8 March 2011 13:24, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia-inc.com> wrote:
>> On 3/5/11 7:48 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
>>> While most donations come from people outside the Wikimedia (editing)
>>> community, the people within the community often feel that the very small
>>> staff of the past was more productive, more agile, less bloated, and overall
>>> more efficient than the larger staff of today.
>> 
>> I think this is not true as a matter of content, and certainly not true
>> as a matter of how people view the Foundation.  Perhaps you don't
>> remember how completely unresponsive and broken the Foundation was in
>> the old days.
>> 
>> The largest staff today is: more productive, more agile, and overall
>> more efficient than the larger staff of today.
>> 
>> I remember the bad old days, I was there.  Woefully understaffed, we
>> were unable to respond to just about any and all requests from chapters,
>> potential partners, etc.
> 
> The WMF is certainly able to do (and does) a great deal more useful
> stuff now. It probably is less efficient, though. When Brion was the
> only staff member, he probably spent 99% of his time on programme
> work. Now there are quite a few staff members that don't do any
> programme work and just support the rest of the office. That isn't
> bloat, though, it's an inevitable part of growth. If the WMF tried to
> do everything it is currently doing without those support staff, it
> would be far *less* efficient.
> 

That's how it should have worked in theory (efficiency), but my experience was that small size of the office back in the St. Pete days didn't actually lend it any favors.

-Dan