http://evan.prodromou.name/Paying_wiki_contributors
Evan has collected some useful insights.
At this time, I will distill my insights and the arguments for and against paying wiki contributors down to one sentence:
Context for payment is vital to the health of the community and project
Why do you want to pay contributors? What is the desired outcome?
What is the social contract/business model/community arrangement, and how does funding fit into that?
What is the community saying about the proposed social contract/business model/community arrangement?
Cooperative based model: role of wiki contributors is not “employee”, but rather sharehldoer and thus a stakeolder in the overall business. This arrangement can transcend a large amount of legal boundaries by removing the “employee” status, and makign users shareholders. This is a form of:
revenue sharing. Users work together to create a Knowledge Commons. Any revenue generated from knowledge commons is shared with the Cooperative, and a small amount is tithed into a fund to maintain the cooperative. This model can scale beyond the group, to groups that connect the
KnowledgeCommons they are creating with other groups. A share of total combined revenue can be split up among contributors.
Biggest issue, how do you fairly account for roles and what they are worth in revenue shares?
