User:Andrevan/Wikipedia is not a company, it's a charity

Wikipedia is a nonprofit organization. One of the world's largest open source projects and communities. It is not a company. Nobody can be fired from Wikipedia, and nobody is paid a salary for working on Wikipedia (generally, with the exception of COI situations that must be disclosed).

Charity is part of the value system of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an act of selfless giving, of service to others, and Wikipedia's norms and rules create a space where charity is centered. Even small infractions of the kindness to newbies policy, WP:BITE, can be punished, because the sanctity of kindness is sacred on Wikipedia, especially for new users, and more well-established users may even find themselves taken to task for forgetting that new users may not know the rules or norms, and should be given many chances and the benefit of the doubt.

We should also practice charity in characterizing and representing opposing positions. This has a number of organizational benefits. Charity enables us to represent, a la steel man, the best version of an argument so that we do not straw man.