WikiWork
I think Evan Prodromou's weblog post about paying for Wiki content is excellent, and if I were in his shoes, or that of anybody working at the back end of a Wiki based company, like AboutUs, I would not be very motivated to pay for Wiki content.
Anybody that has spent any time with people in the Wiki community realizes there is an almost religious zealotry and passion for “Wiki ways” – no problem with that! Take a trip to the back end operations at such companies and you will see highly motivated and passionate people with a day job they love, and that puts food on their table.
These few people that start up Wiki based companies, and their back end employees, are like the “chosen few”, able to do work they like and get paid for it.
What about the rest of the populace? The rest of the populace reads all the upside “stuff” about Wiki and sees the happy faces of those involved, and wonders, “is there any way that I can leverage this phenomenon to put food on my own table – because I currently hate my day job?”
So it should be no wonder that within this warm and embracing Wiki culture there are content providers that are not employed by the Wiki companies, having thoughts about how they might make some money in the process, just as do the “insiders” at the Wiki company.
There are many in the Wiki community that want to make the world a better place – I commend them for this attitude. It is not a stretch to say that if a lot more folks had decent paying jobs they liked, again like the folks on payroll at Wiki companies, the world would be a better place. The problem is the current Wiki processes are not addressing such work related issues, and may never do so. Sharing and editing “content” is a lot different problem than “how can I make money to put food on my table?” – and so far I see no novel solutions to the latter problem, that have a chance to impact a large percentage of the populace.
So for those of you with day jobs you hate, or no day job at all, suck it up – and when you have some free time, contribute to some Wiki pages. MartinPfahler
MartinPfahler, I actually had a day/night job that I loved for many years, while I worked on my passion for wiki. I left that job, much better paying than an internet start up job, for a vision of something that might be better, not in terms of money for me, but in terms of benefit for the larger world. Utopian I know, something that I have always had to contend with, "am I being utopian (read, mental masturbation) or am I really doing something?" I know that my work has benefited many people in my life. I hope this wiki endeavor does also. As a union organizer, I am interested in work and the organization of work. My excitement about wiki comes from one of the basic ideas, whoever shows up builds it and we never know what ideas will emerge. I believe that wiki is truly an emergent experience. What ideas about money and work will emerge from these interactions... MarkDilley
MarkDilley you make some great points! There is a difference between leaving a job that pays more, to take on a job that pays less, and having a job one hates, or having a job that pays so little one cannot feed themselves.
Evan states one reason that one should not pay for Wiki content is:
2. Low payment a disincentive. When people work for a noble purpose, they are told that their work is highly valued. When people work for $0.75/hour, they are told that their work is very low-valued. Which kind of work do you want to do?
Most of us still have to live in the market economy where ones day job pay is reflected by market place conditions. In such regard in effect Evan admits that using ones time to add Wiki content is viewed by the market place as “low value” work. There are only so many hours in a person’s day, and to put food on ones table they are often faced with having to decide if their limited time should be spent on activity that the market place views as higher value – its simply tough to feed yourself at $0.75/hour (assuming this number that Evan states is a true reflection of Wiki content value in the market place).
When one factors in a person’s day job hours (lots of folks have to work two jobs just to make ends meet), and perhaps other activities such as spending time with children, doing chores around the house, etc., many people find themselves in situations where they simply have little or no time for “online” activity. In the future such folks can find themselves increasingly marginalized and disenfranchised.
I also think there is exciting stuff going on in the Wiki community. That said I think addressing such work issues as related to online activity is still outside the solution range of current Wiki modes – and I realize one can make a good argument that Wiki’s never had this intent in the first place. Personally I’m hoping somewhere along the evolution of the Internet a better “day job” mechanism is invented because I think that would be very empowering for lots of people.
One thing that still amazes me is how few smart minds involved with the Internet or R&D or intellectual pursuits spend time trying to gain better day job mechanisms for the populace (if we can put a man on the moon why can’t we - - - - ). Perhaps it is because these folks already have their good day job.MartinPfahler
What a great point you make, Martin. I agree that building more of a commons-based economy is really important. It's really hard to get paid to work in Open Content or Open Source software today. You pretty much have to spend hundreds -- thousands -- of hours working for free, in your own spare time, and maybe somehow that will translate into a job that will pay your bills. Then again, that's not an infrequent pattern in the world of arts, anyways. And typically you're doing it because you love it and care about it, so it's not such a bad thing.
It would be great to discuss some ways to make it easier for people to either work full-time or supplement their income with work they do for the commons. --Evan 20:22, 17 July 2007 (PDT)