[MUD-Dev] paying volunteers

[Patrick Dughi]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, Matthew Mihaly wrote:

> Alright, now here is an interesting question. Achaea has a currency that
> is both in-game and out of game. You can buy it from other players,
> in-game, with gold, or with whatever currency the other player will
> accept. You can buy it out-of-game with real money.
> 
> We pay our Guides in credits. Since paying the Guides in credits doesn't
> cost us money (though it does cost us potential money from those players),
> it seems that we could pay the Guides minimum wage in credits, (which is
> still 6x what they get now, as what they get now is a token thank you) and
> not run afoul of the law if these OSI and AOL wankers win their suit. It's
> not actually an expense, as they cost nothing to produce. 
> 
> Any comments on this? Seems a potentially good strategy for other
> companies.

	I haven't spoken up about this general topic (volunteers &
remuneration vs lawsuits & legality) mainly because I have no bias one way
or the other.  However, as someone who's only played, volunteered (player,
admin, and programming time) free muds, I feel that volunteering is it's
own reward.  

	To offer an incentive degrades that into a new sort of race, and
this is particularly bad when you're giving incetives so that people will
perform creative duties.  In fact, you lower the quality of work produced
by those people, while at the same time, driving away those who would have
produced higher quality work - for free.  

	I don't know about the legal aspects, and I'm not talking about
player appreciation, except as a by product.  If you attempt any change in
your system at all, you will have negative reprecutions.  However, if you
want high-quality, motivated, consistent guides/admins/programmers/world
builders, you will give them nothing more than the tools required to do
their (volunteer) job. 

	Those whom require 'material motiviation' are not the sort that
will produce this output in the first place.  As long as you have enough 
people to fill the ranks, you can afford to let them go. 

	While examining some issues for re-releasing a certain mud
codebase under the GPL, I stumbled across this link;

Studies Find Reward Often No Motivator
Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html

	In a related vein, yes, this should apply to situations where the
creative volunteer has to pay simply to enter the realm of his preferred
creative expression.  People do it all the time.  I know I had to purchase
a computer and software, as well as internet access, and a decent percent
of my paycheck goes to increasing my technical library - all so I could do
more hobby programming.  I couldn't easily generate code without those
things.
				.
				.
				.
	
	So, while the strategy you present does seem like an effective
legal dodge, and probably works fairly well since it is at no expense to
you, I do wonder how much more effective your volunteer system would be
without it.

	It's probably too late to change it though.
					
					PjD			
					

					





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