[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Exactly. The amateur model just does not scale well *at all* for the Wikimedia Foundation
(Wikipedia and the other wikis are a different matter). I, for example, am an amateur when it
comes to finance. My day job and education have nothing to do with it. And yet I'm the CFO. Which
may have been fine when Wikipedia was a top 500 website and had a small budget, but not now. 

I'm a quick learner and always have been able to handle widely varied responsibilities that
require different skill sets (thus my ability, with the help of the Wikimedia treasurer who does
have the relevant experience and training, to perform in my role), but there simply is a limit to
what I can do; both from a time perspective (I can only devote an hour or two - at most - a day to
this) AND, perhaps more importantly, from an experience/education perspective.  

That is why I've had a standing letter of resignation that will go into effect once the foundation
finally gets around to hiring a properly qualified finance director. 

The foundation is not a wiki. It needs to grow up. 

-- mav

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