Reward merits

I pray to disagree that without merit system the project is doomed or suffer. Please allow me to draw a comparison with the open source/free software movement.

If you disregard all socialist and hippy proclamations, in a nutshell the goal was extremely selfish: people didn't want to spend huge bucks on software. You either buy or steal or write it yourself. Pretty quickly it became very clear that if you write a program and I write a program and both give theirs away, pretty soon you have 1000x good stuff compared with your own coding efforts. The next step, to coordinate the development is trivial for engineers. Of course, along the road some made a really big buck off the common good (like RedHat and others), but overall all contributors were gratified, and the gratification of the rest was but a byproduct. (Sorry, I don't believe in pure altruism on big scale. Like, Donations are tax-deductible and good for PR :-)

In exactly the same way I am looking at wikipedia: The only gratification I seek is that the whole project is useful for me. Someone wrote something I found useful for my research. To keep this person doing this I wrote something that might be useful for his girlfriend. And this is how it works. Of course, some people have other goals in mind, like promoting their business or political or scientific agenda, etc., but all these spurious (ab)uses of wikipedia are well recognized and fought with. And there are people who have a knack and will to fight the abusers, just as there are people who want to be left alone and just write, write, write.

I see an repeated opinion that facebook and twitter drew many editors off wikipedia. I say good riddance. I've seen plenty of editors whose 80% of editing was socializing, exchanging barnstars, creating userboxes, playing chess and whatsnot. I suspect that it was these who drifted away to facebooks.

Concluding my rant, a Wikipedia's mission must be to retain editors who want to freely give and take knowledge, with no additional strings attached. I have an impression this was so from the very beginning, and I hope this will continue, without any carrot or stick.

Well, people are motivated differently. I agree with you that some people won't need anything more than the satisfaction to see something they wrote help others, and it appears you're one of them. Good for you! Maybe you're right that we should focus more on helping such people. So, what do you feel would be needed to keep people like you? (Please don't describe it here, just link to it, since I'd like to stick to the topic of this thread.)

For me, motivation depends more on the interaction I have with others. I'm not much of a writer, but I think I have been helpful in other areas, such as organizing categories and templates and as a mediator and admin.

But this thread is not just about how people like you or I feel. It is about empowering everybody to help with what they're good at. Ultimately, all of us depend on respect from others. If your edit gets reverted by someone who rather thinks he's right than taking the time to understand others, then it will come at a cost, regardless how you feel about it, because it will take your precious time away from what you're good at. Now, if we had an institutionalized form of empowerment that gives you some authority especially over such thoughtless editors, that would help both you and Wikipedia, wouldn't it?

satisfaction to see something they wrote help others, and it appears you're one of them

Sorry, I was too verbose and probably not clear enough. I don't write something to help others; more precisely, writing to help others is not my goal. My goal was to help myself, by taking part in creation of an infoportal from which I tap various knowledge. Like, today I had a fun to learn from wikipedia that "Mi cucu" is "My toot-toot" from 1985. For me, writing wikipedia is like paying taxes, only voluntarily.

"reverting", "empowerment":

unfortunately this is tough. I am sure you don't think that you are alone who is unhappy with this. But a simple and clean-cut solution is not found yet.

Thanks for the clarification. I see the difference you are making; it's really amazing how differently people are motivated - I think one of the main reasons for failure of organizations is that well meaning people assume everyone is motivated by the same things as they are. So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying while it may be nice to have some solution, it doesn't really make a big difference for you, because you feel you can do your part regardless. Correct?

You are right that finding a solution is tough, especially one that's fair. We could have readers vote on how helpful contributions are, but that only works in systems that prevent sockpuppet and map contributions to individual editors, which both isn't the case for us.

I do think we should be looking for such a solution. Any organization that doesn't work hard to connect their work with their clients' expectation will fail in the long run. That wasn't much of a problem for us in the past when a significant portion or our readers also joined in the editing. But the proportion of editors is shrinking, and readers are increasingly asked to contribute by donations instead. Which leads me to money, our most common (and often misused and and abused) reward system. I think we should openly discuss all these options.

I'm not regularly here, so to anyone who would like to continue the discussion, please alert me at en:user talk:SebastianHelm. Thanks!