[Wikipedia-l] Re: Paid adminstrator (Money.. Mark)

Mon Oct 13 03:32:06 UTC 2003

Stevertigo wrote:
> 
> 
> Tim Starling wrote:
>  
>  >I think we should pay photographers and illustrators. It's very
>  >necessary, and uncontroversial.
>  
> Being an illustrator, I would not disagree with any funds coming my 
> way... but I would still like Brion, Erik, Magnus, *You and whoever else 
> has donated free custom code to get some first.  Then maybe Mav's idea 
> for some "startup funds".. and with the last fifteen bucks...
>  
> ~S~

I won't be accepting any money. As much as I'd like to do my bit for 
Australia's CAD, I already spend far too much time on Wikipedia as it 
is. My supervisor thinks my 6 hours per week of permissible paid work 
should probably be spent teaching physics rather than programming, and I 
have to say I can see his point.

It's true however that programmers are in oddly short supply. That's why 
I switched from editing to programming. We have lots of people who are 
willing to write articles on programming topics (albeit mostly on an 
undergrad level), but very few who want to apply that knowledge in any 
significant way. Perhaps our money would be better spent on increasing 
the size of the development team, rather than paying hard-core 
wikipediholics like myself for work that we would have done anyway.

-- Tim Starling.