[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

Fri May 26 14:26:39 UTC 2006

On 5/26/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> This isn't without risks; many initially grass-roots organizations have
> lost the essence of what initially made them work in the transition to
> large, professional organization (this is especially true, for example,
> of many environmentalist organizations).  It's not impossible to do
> right, but IMO needs to be done slowly and cautiously.  There are plenty
> of things that a grassroots organization can get people to do for free
> that an organization with a large, paid staff cannot.
>
> -Mark

But I'm not sure we lose the grassroots-type feel even if we had a
paid staff.  We still have tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of
people willing to do things for free, even with a paid staff.
Wikimedia has flourished under this volunteer oriented mindset, but I
don't see everyone suddenly saying, "Screw you WMF, you hired some
people, I ain't doing squat."  The volunteers would still be there,
and WMF would still enlist the services of them.  Or am I wrong?
--LV