On Mar 8, 2011, at 12:14 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 8 March 2011 13:24, Jimmy Wales <jwa...@wikia-inc.com> wrote: >> On 3/5/11 7:48 AM, MZMcBride wrote: >>> While most donations come from people outside the Wikimedia (editing) >>> community, the people within the community often feel that the very small >>> staff of the past was more productive, more agile, less bloated, and overall >>> more efficient than the larger staff of today. >> >> I think this is not true as a matter of content, and certainly not true >> as a matter of how people view the Foundation. Perhaps you don't >> remember how completely unresponsive and broken the Foundation was in >> the old days. >> >> The largest staff today is: more productive, more agile, and overall >> more efficient than the larger staff of today. >> >> I remember the bad old days, I was there. Woefully understaffed, we >> were unable to respond to just about any and all requests from chapters, >> potential partners, etc. > > The WMF is certainly able to do (and does) a great deal more useful > stuff now. It probably is less efficient, though. When Brion was the > only staff member, he probably spent 99% of his time on programme > work. Now there are quite a few staff members that don't do any > programme work and just support the rest of the office. That isn't > bloat, though, it's an inevitable part of growth. If the WMF tried to > do everything it is currently doing without those support staff, it > would be far *less* efficient. >
That's how it should have worked in theory (efficiency), but my experience was that small size of the office back in the St. Pete days didn't actually lend it any favors. -Dan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
