Wikipedia talk:TWA/1/Who

Almost all of our editors are volunteers.

Why "Almost"? Ijon (talk) 00:41, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ijon: WMF Staff, Chapter Staff, Wikimedia Foundation Grantees, Wikipedians in Residence, Paid editors... Ocaasi^{t | c} 01:11, 6 December 2013 (;UTC)

I think it's misleading: none of the above are paid to edit, except for so-called "paid editors", whom we should not be allowing to prevent us from asserting that all Wikipedia editors are volunteers. Ijon (talk) 17:52, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. You are several times over a grantee yourself; do you not consider yourself a volunteer editor? Ijon (talk) 17:53, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ijon You're right that very very nearly all of our article writers are volunteers. I was, however, using 'edit' in the general sense of 'make any change to a wikimedia site', whether in NS0 or otherwise.

My IEG of course didn't fund content contributions; however, the hundreds of edits I made to the mediawiki namespace for The Wikipedia Adventure, or the Wikipedia namespace for The Wikipedia Library, we indeed 'funded'. I consider myself a volunteer--moreso a dyed-in-the-wool movement advocate (can one be a paid volunteer?).

Nonetheless, we do have editors, broadly defined, who are here and paid to be here, certainly for non-content work (such as WMF and Chapter Staff), and even then some of them for content work (by their employers, like Wikipedians in Residence--which we like--and with other paid editors, which we strongly discourage, but do not ban, particularly not for 'non-controversial' changes.).

I was hesitant to use the word all, because there are always exceptions. You're saying that it gives the impression some content creators are paid--presumably by WMF--which is indeed incorrect (aside from office actions at least).

So, I could change the text to say, "Almost every single one of our editors is a volunteer", or "Aside from nonprofit staff and contractors, all of our article writers are volunteers", or "People contribute as volunteers, just because they want to help out", or something else you suggest. Do you have a phrasing you would prefer? I'm happy to look at it. Cheers, Ocaasi^{t | c} 11:14, 7 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]