[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

[Andrew Lih]

On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its
> amateurs.  While there may be evident need for some amount of
> administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a
> professional organization.  If you look at staff as an investment you
> are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free
> nature.

But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the
work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.)
offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be
more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in
what it does best.

A lot of the problems with this (and many discussions on this list) is
the misguided goal of trying to find The Way, or the "universal truth"
as Delirium said, to do everything. Online or face to face? Amateur or
professional? Volunteer or paid position? Bottom up or top down?

"You must err on the side of disorganization, or all is lost!"

Someone once described this as the "tyranny of wiki-fundamentalism."
It's quite an accurate label. We should try moving beyond the
fundamental belief that building a great online virtual encyclopedia
automatically provides the formula for building a legally and
financially responsible organization.

<troll>
That said, it should be completely obvious to all that the new
Wikimedia headquarters should be in... Hawaii, home of the wikiwiki.
</troll>

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)