Ever dissented on a wiki only to have the highly defensive paid staff ram things down your throat? It sucks.

Tactics used by paid staff to stifle volunteer dissent include claiming some of these things:

• that you are casting aspersions on how hard they work for the good of the site
• that you are scaring away thousands of potential users because you don't like the new things being introduced; doesn't matter that the new things were landed on the wiki community without discussion nor without consideration for upsetting existing users (whom one would think possibly matter a little more than new users in terms of keeping happy)
• that you are being obstructionist
• that you don't understand the point (never mind that the point has never been made clear until the paid member rams it down your throat)
• that you're small and dispensable bug on the site; that the only real "bugs" in the system are the volunteer contributors who clog the place up
• that you are unreasonable
• that you come to the site of your own free will, so you can leave on same terms (never mind that jobs are also of one's own free will to select too)
• that you are assuming bad faith rather than good faith about the paid person and his or her efforts on the site
• that you just don't get the wiki collaboration thing - at all. Pity they don't either.

Oh yes, it goes on and on in a litany of self-pity for the paid staff member. Poor fellow, poor lass, your lives are so hard. Nobody ever stops to thank the volunteers for raising pertinent and real issues; nobody ever reins in their rude tongues to respect the problems that the volunteers genuinely have.

Signs of this are signs of self destruction. Rein in your employees - they are frightening the guests.

AboutUs "Unprofessional Employee" Claim - interesting comment here. Perhaps gathering these would be a very interesting research exercise.