PM from Kalinin that I thought should be copied over, mainly in response to me:
I noticed the now on-again discussion on 05 regarding incorporation of the site and how money is handled. I have some half-baked thoughts of my own on that matter, but before I get that far, you guys need to pick a better way to address this issue.
You mention that when/if you, the staff, decide to take any sort of course of action relating to how any money is handled, that you'll be beset by cries of favoritism and intellectual theft, and that you don't think there's any way that can be avoided. I know you from experience to be a reasonable person who cares about this wiki as much as I do, but you really, really need to revisit that statement, because it says to me that the staff is going about this in exactly the wrong way.
Firstly, yes, there will be cries of favoritism and intellectual theft when/if you guys start paying people. That's because those concerns have some merit to them. If staff is seriously considering not only handling revenue generated by the site, but also portioning the proceeds out to certain users, then you really, really need to revisit the staff selection process. Because right now, it is completely inadequate to the task of identifying people who should be trusted to handle what is now a business enterprise fueled by the collective creative output of the community.
I strongly suspect that favoritism is indeed a large component of the staff process. You have people granted that designation who have literally not done anything around here for years. I of course can't prove that, nor have I catalogued any potential proof because it didn't matter to me previously that staff has the appearances of what is essentially a Cool Kids Klub of users who are generally visible and friendly with the existing staff members. However, now that the possibility exists of that group of users determining what gets done with revenues generated in part off of work that I contributed towards, it matters indeed to me.
"But Kalinin, we vet and research our staff members and take public votes on 05", some might say. And that is indeed the partial elements of a process. But right now, you guys have a giant black box, in which private discussions in inaccessible areas take place regarding the actual qualifications of which users are to be given responsibility, and the entirety of the supposed research and vetting process takes place outside of the view of membership. That was all well and good when the only thing at stake was the modicum of status and associated ego boost that comes with staff membership, but that is wholly inappropriate for the role that you are now envisioning. Right now, you have no clear qualifications outlined for staff members, and no record whatsoever of the selection process prior to the formal vote. Also, I haven't checked this, but you don't seem to have a formal voting system for these either, since I've seen references that suggest that staff members need something other than a straight majority for selection. At heart, you are now looking at the prospect of selling what the entire community produces, and delegating the task of what to do with the proceeds to a group of people that are arbitrarily selected (if they're not, you've certainly not provided any means to prove otherwise) at the whim of who's currently got the reins. "Favoritism and intellectual theft" will indeed be concerns, they will not be baseless concerns, and they will be concerns that will likely be raised by myself when the time comes.
As for how this can be avoided, maybe you can't avoid the inevitable shitstorm entirely. What you certainly can do is take steps to reduce the controversy and keep the discussion to the actual merits of the situation, and at the very least not make this needlessly worse (by the way, you have several members on staff who will 100% make this worse than it needs to be if this discussion is left unguided by wiser heads amongst the other staff members). One thing that I feel you must absolutely do is find a way to have this discussion in a manner that involves the membership. While the staff are responsible for a good deal of the content on the wiki, they are not the sole producers of intellectual property. You obviously need a designated pool of decision-makers, but you also need to make some sort of effort to have this discussion in a manner that allows input from people who aren't staff or stalkers of 05 like myself. If you make at least some sort of attempt at an increased degree of openness, it will look a lot better to a lot of the membership.
On that matter, you guys supposedly have a dedicated team to site membership outreach/relations. They have been, to my knowledge, pretty much invisible (which isn't surprising, given that a good chunk of that team doesn't participate in the actual, visible community), but this would be a prime assignment for them. This is supposedly a group of users who has qualifications suited to the kind of outreach that you will absolutely will need to do to keep this site from destroying itself (and that is a very real possibility when it comes to this issue). I would recommend availing yourselves of this resource.
Wall of text over. Mostly. I am not messaging you this as a request to post on 05 (though you have my permission to share and/or reproduce any of this in whole or part), but in the hopes that you will internalize these viewpoints and, if not necessarily adopt them, recognize their existence in the discussion going forward. I also wanted to do this before I do anything else; I had considered starting a thread on the wiki and airing these points publicly, but thought that I should bring them to a staff member out of courtesy before starting anything that could turn ugly. I'll let this play out for a little bit, but fair warning: If I feel that membership is being ignored entirely on this, I will go back to my initial inclination and start this discussion publicly.
Final thoughts. The above doesn't really help my existing reputation as a dick. But I care deeply about this community and its members. I ask you as someone whose work as both an author and an administrator I respect greatly, please tread carefully with this.
Back to Drew:
Okay, there are some reasonable points in here regarding the internal structure of any organization that we may or may not adopt. I would like to point out that whatever that organization is, it would likely not have the same organization as the wiki Staff. If nothing else, I bet that there are people on Staff who would have violent allergic reactions to the idea of their duties becoming an actual official job, rather than just a hobby/volunteer effort. And there are people who don't/wouldn't have the skills or mindset to convert from "writing/moderating/administrating" to "running a business".
But this is all kind of putting the cart before the horse, since we need to decide whether or not we're actually going to finally go in this direction or not.
(account deleted)