[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

Tue May 30 19:42:43 UTC 2006

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>What you seem to forget is that Wikipedia's strength rests with its
>>>amateurs.  While there may be evident need for some amount of
>>>administrative staff it is as important to avoid pretensions of being a
>>>professional organization.  If you look at staff as an investment you
>>>are assuming an economic model that runs contrary to Wikipedia's free
>>>nature.
>>>      
>>>
>>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.
>>    
>>
>Exactly. The amateur model just does not scale well *at all* for the Wikimedia Foundation
>(Wikipedia and the other wikis are a different matter). I, for example, am an amateur when it
>comes to finance. My day job and education have nothing to do with it. And yet I'm the CFO. Which
>may have been fine when Wikipedia was a top 500 website and had a small budget, but not now. 
>
>I'm a quick learner and always have been able to handle widely varied responsibilities that
>require different skill sets (thus my ability, with the help of the Wikimedia treasurer who does
>have the relevant experience and training, to perform in my role), but there simply is a limit to
>what I can do; both from a time perspective (I can only devote an hour or two - at most - a day to
>this) AND, perhaps more importantly, from an experience/education perspective.  
>
>That is why I've had a standing letter of resignation that will go into effect once the foundation
>finally gets around to hiring a properly qualified finance director. 
>
>The foundation is not a wiki. It needs to grow up. 
>
I don't dispute the need for the Foundation to have some level of paid 
staff.  I also feel some concern about the way you have been hung out to 
dry in the CFO job.  While you have no doubt worked at the position to 
the best of your ability, Wikipedians having a little more familiarity 
with such matters probably could see the potential difficulties, and 
avoided volunteering for the task.  I really don't think that the Board 
has ever been on top of this portfolio.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia are indeed two different 
concepts, and the relative roles of professionals and amateurs will 
indeed be different in these two organizations.  In many respects we 
need to start building a firewall between the two.  This would leave the 
WMF responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructural assets, while 
Wikipedia and its sisterprojects could be free to pursue their 
innovative strategies without the need to be guided by a paranoia that 
any small legal oversight could bring the entire empire crashing.  There 
are certainly profitable enterprises out there who would welcome that 
development with great glee.  There needs to be an arm's length 
relationship between the two, and I don't see much being said to address 
that.

Ec