[Foundation-l] On Wikinews

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:48:58 +0200, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 16:17, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> My main point (although I *did* make it clear), was that volunteer-work
>> is
>> what this movement is built on. Tell me a single content project that
was
>> built by paid employees? If we abandon our identity, then how would we
>> still
>> be volunteer-driven and open. I can argue volunteers do inherently
better
>> work than paid staff, because they believe in what they do and are
>> passionate about it. It is however, just a job for most people who get
>> paid
>> to do the same. You can not pay someone to care, is what my point was.
> 
> Theo, volunteers do not care about things which require to be
> accurate. Besides that, more and more volunteer positions were
> replaced by paid staff, beginning with Brion. And that's not the
> problem of principle, but the problem of having job done.
> 

Actually, a precise statement would be SOME volunteers do not care. Or
even MANY volunteers do not care. I always had difficulties, at least when
I was still active on Russian Wikipedia, but I believe this is the issue on
all projects, to explain that some things just need to be done DOES NOT
MATTER WHAT. And these things need to be done properly. And if nobody was
doing them I felt myself personally responsible for doing this stupid,
uninteresting, dull but necessary staff, and was obliged to hear arguments
about the wiki way, working for pleasure, and advises of not doing things
if I do not find them interesting enough. I must say this was a very
frustrating experience. But I hope I am not the only one. 

Cheers
Yaroslav