Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board
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 Only after all stipends were withdrawn, they started to engage in voluntary work for the NGOs.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.w...@gmail.comwrote: 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 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- __ dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak profesor zarządzania kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board
On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:46 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: ... It is sad that those who are very well off are so quick to exclude the possibility of helping impoverished long term contributors. WMF is not a welfare system. Donors would rightly complain if the money was used for purposes other than those described in the donation solicitation messaging. Impoverished long term contributors should get a job. -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board
On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 2:26 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: Impoverished long term contributors should get a job. That's not really helpful, John. The flaw is what one considers impoverished. It is very possible to be worth a lot on paper and owe more than that sum on paper. The entire premise is erroneous. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board
On 10/24/2012 3:38 PM, James Salsman wrote: The Funds Dissemination Committee was originally proposed by Sue to the board with explicit support for both groups and individuals,[1] but at some point after, all mention of individual editors was removed.[2] Could someone please say whether this was the decision of the board, someone else's decision, or a mistake? I ask because I have reason to believe that about 18% of English Wikipedia administrators are living below the poverty line, and it seems that support for such individual editors is reasonable. Local fire departments and the International Red Cross both have paid personnel and volunteer staff working alongside each other without any motivational crowding. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Draft_FDC_Proposal_for_the_Board#Application_process_and_timeline [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Eligibility_criteria I suspect you may have formed for yourself a rather different conception of the proposed system than what was actually contemplated. To your first footnote, I find it strange that you would focus on the section headed Application process and timeline for an eligibility question when there's a section immediately above it regarding eligibility, and that section is exclusively about groups (entities), not individuals. The page in your second footnote is pretty clearly an expansion of that eligibility section, so it's not surprising if they're consistent with each other. If I understand things correctly, anything in the FDC materials that refers to individuals receiving funds should probably be interpreted as referring to the Wikimedia grants program, which does invite individual applicants and will continue on as far as I'm aware. The grants program as a whole would naturally be under the purview of the FDC, but that's at another level of the process, so individuals wouldn't be directly participating in the FDC process in that sense. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board
While this is a tangent, it's an interesting one! I don't think anyone has done great empirical testing on the income demographics of Wikipedia administrators. It looks like income was not included in the 2011 survey; it does say that 42% of all respondents were unemployed, but this is likely driven by the number of students and minors. In any case, poverty line is a subjective definition that varies dramatically by jurisdiction. In the U.S., approximately 15% of the population lives below the U.S. definition of the poverty line. Given that, it seems extremely unlikely that 18% (or even 15% or 10%) of American Wikipedians live below that line; for other jurisdictions or definitions of the line, it seems hard to speculate. On the larger question, I'm with Jamesofur that I don't think supporting Wikipedians financially (other than via fellowships as part of the program budget) was ever on the table. Or at least if it was, I certainly didn't hear about it. ~Nathan ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board
... I have reason to believe that about 18% of English Wikipedia administrators are living below the poverty line, ... ... citation desperately needed for this stat. In February I performed a survey of over 300 inactive English Wikipedia administrators based on a survey which had been approved on the Strategy Wiki more than two years prior. I added financial demographic questions to the survey. Steven Walling, who I thought had agreed to act as the Foundation point of contact for the survey during a public IRC office hour (he disagrees) has access to all of the original data I collected as a Google Forms document available to his Google Drive account. Shortly afterward, I was told that the survey was a violation of policy (two months later I was told it was not), and that I was violating the privacy policy because I asked for contact information to follow up. I was banned from Meta and told to contact the Legal Department if I had further questions. I did, and I am still waiting for their response. After several weeks without reply from the Legal Department, I followed up with some of the respondents, and performed an additional survey which I do not wish to describe in detail until I have an answer to my questions from the Legal Department. If the statistic is in doubt, I suggest that the Foundation perform their own survey of long term contributor financial status. As of May, by the way, more than 30 of the original survey respondent administrators had returned to active status, having made more than 50 edits each after having gone at least six months without editing. Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board
On Oct 24, 2012 9:46 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@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. Well said. Sj ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
