[MUD-Dev] Criminalize Community Volunteers?

[Willowreed at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/8/2000 12:56:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
brian at psychochild.org writes:

> 
>  >     Hey, hey, back off here.  That was a very specific response to the
>  > contention of "if the volunteers went away, they'd just have to hire
>  > people."  If they go away, the companies *can't* just hire people, not on
>  > anywhere near the same scale.
>  
>  Heh, that venom wasn't entirely meant for you.  "They won't make money"
>  a fairly common cry from some of the stuff I've been reading.  The way
>  you put it is much better.
>  


The problem with the AOL situation is that AOL insists on certain things from 
its volunteers.  Its not the same in other situations in the online/gaming 
community.
There are reports that have to be filed. There are stipulations as to when 
emails have to be read. The in-house folks get huffy if these rules are not 
complied with. 

Its not like, you or I can go in and do our shift of duty, and then be done. 
No, we have to file reports with the higherups, we have minimum time 
requirements, we have days/times to fulfill these particular requirements.  
God Forbid if you don't read an email righthatminute.  They can actually fire 
you from a volunteer job if you don't answer an email within 24 hours.  These 
are "volunteer" jobs, mind you.  My real life boss doesn't treat me that way, 
and I get PAID for that job.

In my opinion, there is a fine line between volunteering and slave-labor.  
Once a service/community/game gets to where they are really jerking their 
volunteers around, then those volunteers are really in trouble if they can't 
stand up for themselves and voice their opinion.  If they do voice their 
opinion, guess what?  They are not employees therefore they do *not* count.  
Sad, really..when you think of it.

My problem with the AOL situation is that they really ARE treating their 
volunteers as employees. They require set times/hours, etc, and they really 
get over-heated if you make the mistake of failing their standards.  Am not 
talking about 'average' volunteers, am talking about people with a clue that 
have been dedicated to building the forums since the early days.

I know that when the MUD my associates and I are working on..goes live, we 
sure do want volunteers but we refuse to treat them the way AOL has been 
treating their volunteers.

Wils

PS: if the volunteers took their ball and went home, aol would go down so 
fast everyone's heads would spin.  I refuse to let that happen in my own 
business.  But then again the law may make it so that it will be impossible 
to do what we want to do...alas.



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