[Wikimedia-l] Apparently, Wikipedia is ugly

[Ray Saintonge]

On 07/26/12 4:41 AM, Birgitte_sb at yahoo.com wrote:
> On Jul 26, 2012, at 5:33 AM, Andreas Kolbe<jayen466 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:42 AM, Ray Saintonge<saintonge at telus.net>  wrote:
>>> On 07/25/12 12:48 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
>>>> So there were how many years of faffing about before they hired *one guy*
>>>> for this project? This is an organisation with a $20m annual budget, now
>>>> acquiring umpteen paid chapter officials.
>>>>
>>>> The "paid chapter officials" are employees of the chapters themselves.
>> The money comes from the same pot, as you know. The chapters are funded
>> from the same donations as the Foundation.
>>> The best way to bring hostility against your own pet projects is by being
>>> hostile towards the projects of others. What makes one project more
>>> deserving than another.
>> Simplistically, chapters are marketing, while programmers and designers are
>> product development. Marketing is important, but not more so than product
>> development. To be fair, the Foundation is hiring product development
>> staff, and it's not a choice of either/or.
>>
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings
> You must live in a very simplistic world, but I am afraid it does resemble reality very well. Here are how some various types of things and people are funded. Tool server=chapter. Developers= Mostly WMF but some chapter. Marketing professionals=WMF but no chapter I am aware of. Legal professionals=WMF and chapter.  Administration of fundraising campaign=WMF and chapters. You will not find any bright lines in reality.
>
>
To this must be added work with the GLAM community. This is largely 
driven by the chapters. Their ability to contact these institutions is 
likely key to opening up access to large stores of material. It would be 
far more difficult to do this as a foreign organization.

Ray