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Comment by iterance | Hacker News Reader

There are labor law concerns. It is very unwise to be paying people to do for you what others do for you for free. As the boundary between a volunteer and employee blurs, the difference between paid and unpaid labor must remain clear and well-defined, or one risks running afoul of the law.

As a general practice, it's liable to devalue volunteer contributions. Money poisons the good will of a free exchange in the mind of a volunteer. Strict remuneration policies are an important part of making volunteer labor feel fair, free, and balanced. I suspect there would be room for targeted bounties on specific articles, but it would nevertheless irrevocably alter the emotional economy of contribution.

A 3rd party paying editors introduces a host of other concerns, but is probably not as harmful to the emotional economy. But I'm sure Wikimedia's community team has thoroughly discussed this topic.

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> There are labor law concerns. It is very unwise to be paying people to do for you what others do for you for free.

Wikipedia could fund Oka or other organizations. That places the responsibility in the hands of a third party. As long as Wikipedia remains hands-off, then there is no bias or unfairness on the part of Wikipedia.

> As a general practice, it's liable to devalue volunteer contributions.

> A 3rd party paying editors introduces a host of other concerns, but is probably not as harmful to the emotional economy.

Perhaps. But it seems like Oka will proceed anyway.

I suppose one analogue we can look to is Linux Kernel contributions. Many of the contributors are on the payroll of tech companies, though some contributors are simply volunteers.

There can be a tremendous amount of emotional stress and drama in open source contribution. So you're probably right about that bit. But the community does work and software still gets made.

> Wikipedia could fund Oka or other organizations. That places the responsibility in the hands of a third party. As long as Wikipedia remains hands-off, then there is no

I don't agree. Let say that Wikimedia Foundation founds OKA, and OKA pays freelancers to systematically edit/moderate content with a certain political view, or a strong bias towards a certain religion. I would keep Wikimedia Foundation accountable just as if they did it directly.

> Wikipedia could fund Oka or other organizations.

It's possible, though I do not know if this is sufficient to cover their legal risk in this scenario. Likely it would require analysis of details beyond what could be reasoned through in hypothetical.

Isn't there precedent with Firefighters?

Firefighting in the US is not (generally?) done by private corporations.

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