Pondering Wikimedia UK, Good guys and hangers on? Options

[dogbiscuit]

Within Wikipedia we know that there are some genuine characters who are intent on doing Good Works through Wikipedia. Others have other motivations. Within Wikimedia UK, I'd assume the same is true. I am sure that some people there are genuinely trying to make the world a better place through Wikipedia, however misguided we might believe them to be. On the other hand, our dear friend Fae has no obvious motivation for engaging in the bureaucracy of Wikipedia other than being a would-be bureaucrat as far as I can see from the profile we have seen from his editing.

What of the others on Wikimedia UK?

Who are the Good Guys, people who that believe that they are doing good works with Wikipedia and believe in the mission, and who are the gamers and who are just there to extract some money while it is on offer?

[lilburne]

In summary, mostly middle England types who are motivated by an obsession or ideology, rather than fellow travellers or in it for the money.

Sounds like most orgs, I can relate many of those caricatures to members of my village committee. Including the smug twit that put together the village website that 404s all over the place, and thinks he's the 133t haxor.

The IT background though isn't quite correct. Mostly they seem to be systems server monkeys, or the types that generate reports from database queries. Scripting wonks in PEARL, or PHP, that hanker after using something like C# if only it wasn't M$ so maybe a bit of ruby or python. But nevertheless mostly engaged in shepherding someone else's content from A -> B.

[Peter Damian]

In summary, mostly middle England types who are motivated by an obsession or ideology, rather than fellow travellers or in it for the money.

Sounds like most orgs, I can relate many of those caricatures to members of my village committee.

Do you have a shed?

The IT background though isn't quite correct. Mostly they seem to be systems server monkeys, or the types that generate reports from database queries. Scripting wonks in PEARL, or PHP, that hanker after using something like C# if only it wasn't M$ so maybe a bit of ruby or python. But nevertheless mostly engaged in shepherding someone else's content from A -> B.

Isn't this IT? What actually is IT? What is M$?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Sun 12th February 2012, 1:17pm

[lilburne]

In summary, mostly middle England types who are motivated by an obsession or ideology, rather than fellow travellers or in it for the money.

Sounds like most orgs, I can relate many of those caricatures to members of my village committee.

Do you have a shed?

Something like that, but a lot warmer.

The IT background though isn't quite correct. Mostly they seem to be systems server monkeys, or the types that generate reports from database queries. Scripting wonks in PEARL, or PHP, that hanker after using something like C# if only it wasn't M$ so maybe a bit of ruby or python. But nevertheless mostly engaged in shepherding someone else's content from A -> B.

Isn't this IT? What actually is IT? What is M$?

IT encompasses a lot of things, from operating a spreadsheet, invoking SQL queries on a database and converting the result into a webpage, defining the datatables and relationships within a database (which can get pretty complex for large enterprises), all the way to writing an actual database program like Oracle, postgress, or MySQL. The later though is a job that is mostly complete and the bulk of the IT activities are at the spreadsheet/sql-query level.

M$ is Frei Kultur Kinder speak for Microsoft.