[Wikimedia-l] Strange, surprising, bold and unnecessary - reply to the WMF board statement

[James Heilman]

I think the concern regarding the WCA primarily arises from the
proposed paying of people who will be leading it. If these people are
equivalent to the editors of content on Wikipedia (ie volunteers) and
work from a virtual office than most concerns will disappear. So are
the leaders of the WCA paid or not? While the office be virtual or
not?

@Tom: The thematic organizations are funded by those involved and are
run entirely by volunteers and their offices are virtual in nature.
They claim no authority over the content of the projects and goal is
to provide benefits to Wikipedians ( Wiki Project Med is working to
get academic resources for editors through partnering with journals,
working to increase editors numbers by partnering with universities
such as UCSF, working to improve access to translation, and
collaborating with journals to give Wikipedians academic credit for
the work they do ).  If thematic groups and chapters do not provide a
benefit to editors than they have failed in their mission and will
hopefully fade away in reality.

-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian

The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com