[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

Sun Jun 4 17:18:51 UTC 2006

Andrew Lih wrote:
> But you can also make the case that getting professionals to do the
> work that needs to be done (legal, finance, fundraising, etc.)
> offloads those tasks so that the "strength of the amateurs" can be
> more productively tapped and scaled up to keep Wikipedia evolving in
> what it does best.

I think this is a really important point.  For me, one of the most
important aspects of bringing in some professional staff is precisely to
allow me, an amateur, a community member, to do what I do best, which is
work in the community as a volunteer to help organize and focus
discussions about how to achieve our charitable goals.

There are some things that the foundation has traditionally done quite
well, and some things we have traditionally done quite badly.  As we
have grown, the opportunities missed by the fact that we do some things
badly have grown as well.

As an example: donor relations.  We finally managed to send out a proper
thank-you card to people who donated money last holiday season, but we
have no program in place to stay in contact with larger donors who might
be easily encouraged to donate more.  Why do we not do this?  Simply
put: there has been no means available to do it.  We have every reason
to think that, done well, a little money spent in this area could have
great rewards.

Ideally, the foundation should be run to optimally empower the community
to fulfill the fundamental charitable goals of the foundation.  (At the
core: to give a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet.)

This will take many different kinds of people, with many different kinds
of relationships to the foundation.  It takes editors and writers.  It
takes people to run the tech side of things.  It takes fundraising,
legal, finance.  It takes business partnerships.  It takes people who
work primarily on the wiki, people who work best in email, people who
enjoy irc meetings, people who can do face-to-face outreach to other
organizations, people who can interact with the press, etc.

A big mistake is for any of us to accidentally overvalue our own
contribution, and think that the contributions of others is not important.

--Jimbo