[Wikimedia-l] Question for Board

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

good point, Keegan! Also, my experience with NGOs in the Soros Foundation
wide network (about 12 Invisible Colleges) was that when gifted students
were given minor stipends, they developed a really demanding attitude. They
kept complaining that their stipends are too low, and that they deserve
more. Only after all stipends were withdrawn, they started to engage in
voluntary work for the NGOs.

This anecdotal evidence is symptomatic of some more general phenomenon - a
lot of people treat whatever they do for the money as a chore, labor,
something that is the antithesis of a hobby and fun. Much more than the
possible loss of quitting power I would worry about the fact that paid
editors would start treating editing as any other job, and on a competitive
market they would immediately see, that we cannot really pay competitive
wages. One way to make editing a chore is paying for it.

Regarding James' thesis of 18% below the poverty line - besides obvious
issues with the definition of poverty line (in some countries poverty means
starvation, in some it means not being able to eat out as often), as well
as clearly non-representative sample of the poll, poorly devised questions,
and serious ethical considerations of a possible misuse of private data and
expanding the research beyond of its original and approved scope, there are
just minor practical problems with singling out the poorest editors for
support, obvious for anybody familiar with the state social benefits
programs (borderline cases, reporting, etc.), major even when needed to be
addressed within ONE country, and not as a worldwide policy.

Finally,  my understanding is that formally the big general governance
picture is that FDC is meant for the largest proposals from Wikimedia
entities, while grants are meant for the smaller ones and individuals, so
the whole discussion clearly does not apply to FDC concern.

best,

dariusz



On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 6:46 AM, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.wiki at gmail.com>wrote:

> When you subsidize volunteers they a) are no longer volunteers and b) the
> same problem with paid editors: losing the power to walk away.
>
> Give me money to administrate Wikipedia and I give up my bit.  The freedom
> to pick and choose what we do on the website is one of our greatest
> strengths.
>
> --
> ~Keegan
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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-- 

__________________________
dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
profesor zarządzania
kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
i centrum badawczego CROW
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl