Talk:Patience
Pace of non-profits v. tech companies edit
Hi. Thanks for posting this here. I enjoyed reading it.
I think a related point is, at least from my experience, non-profits and foundations move very slowly. And as they get older, they only get slower. So the Wikimedia Foundation, which is already commonly known as being "big for a non-profit, but small for a tech company" (in terms of staff size in particular), also has to try to balance these two extreme paces: non-profits/foundations being notoriously slow and tech companies being notoriously fast. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:28, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
- Beware your assumptions, I question the correctness of the things you call "commonly known" and "notorious". I doubt the urge to "get things done", pointed out in the essay, is lower in non-profits. All in all, what this essay points to is mistrust. I came to the conclusion that it's a consequence of MeatBall:CommunityMayNotScale: «When this happens, community standards and unwritten rules stop working. The group loses focus. Things fall apart». The WMF is already too big and messy to be an organic community even within itself. --Nemo 10:10, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
- When you look at comparable tech companies, the number of employees at the Wikimedia Foundation is lower. When you look at comparable non-profits, the number of employees at the Wikimedia Foundation is higher. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:00, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
- You're just moving your assumption under the definition of "comparable", so this formulation is logically equivalent to the first. --Nemo 15:14, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
- Sure, what I said is as true now as it was when I said it before. :-) If you research non-profits and tech companies (in the United States), I think you'll find that I'm correct about both pace and size. Though I'd obviously be very interested if you find research to suggest that I'm not! --MZMcBride (talk) 15:55, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
- You're just moving your assumption under the definition of "comparable", so this formulation is logically equivalent to the first. --Nemo 15:14, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
- When you look at comparable tech companies, the number of employees at the Wikimedia Foundation is lower. When you look at comparable non-profits, the number of employees at the Wikimedia Foundation is higher. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:00, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Wikis and cooperation edit
Comments to the essay have been echo'ing some comments to the MeatBall page above, for instance «effective cooperation is only sustainable when SoftSecurity has more power than HardSecurity». Also, whether wikis are "fast" as in efficient or effective. This is not an uncommon paradox: when something is cheap, you end up spending more on it; wikis reduce transaction cost and increase efficiency of the single operation, but it wouldn't be surprising if they end up raising the total energy intensity. --Nemo 10:10, 16 May 2013 (UTC)