[MUD-Dev] FW: [uodevlist] OT - Lawsuit on Lum's

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Mon, 25 Sep 2000, Jeff Freeman wrote:

> Dave Rickey wrote:
> >    Online communities can't exist without small armies of unpaid workers,
> >because they *are* small armies of unpaid workers.  
> 
> Uhm... no.  The players in an online game are a community.  The counselors
> are another community.  The difference is that one of those "communities"
> is directed by the game company.  If the company's business model depends
> on that second community then there's a problem with the business model.
> 
> Relying on volunteers isn't a problem.  Relying on volunteers that report
> to you - i.e. aren't really volunteers at all, they are *employees* - is a
> problem.  If the business model depends on that, then it isn't viable.

If the business model makes money over the long-term, then it is viable,
regardless of what theories you posit. If the courts (as I suspect they
will) keep open avenues for utilizing volunteer labour, then clearly, such
a model is viable. Certainly in the absence of legislation/court
decisions, they are viable.

 
> But I think any business model that depends on convincing a lot of people
> work for you for free (and I mean work for *you*, not for the community at
> large, but you, the company, as in: you will direct their work, schedule
> their hours, they will report to you, etc.), probably should be threatened
> by it.

It doesn't take _any_ convincing to get people to do this. I, for
instance, generally am in the position of having people try to convince me
that I should allow them to volunteer for Achaea. I turn down far more
people than I accept.

 
> >    Without them, the qeue will have to be handled the way I handled it on
> >graveyard shifts in EQ (when I was the only GM on duty, and would cover 10+
> >servers with no Guides on them): Ruthlessly.  Get a petition that asks for
> >help you can't give?  Delete it and move on, the time you'd spend arguing
> >over whether they should get help could be spent handling the petitions of
> >several people you *can* help.  Get a petition that doesn't explain what the
> >problem is?  Delete it.  Got a petition about "So and so is saying bad
> >things to me"?  Delete it, that kind of situation takes 15-60 minutes to
> >handle, during which you can do little or nothing else.  Get a petition that
> >says "Help, I'm stuck in a corner!", teleport to that player, unstick him,
> >and *go*, time spent chatting with him is better spent helping the next one.
> 
> Wow, if that's the customer service goal for Dark Age of Camelot, it's
> probably a good thing you guys don't have a website.

When you're paying $10/month, you can't reasonably expect anything but
crap customer service, particularly as you seem to think it's not ok for
the community to assist itself (and regardless of what you think,
community volunteers are helping both the community and the company. It's
called _customer_ service, not _company_ service for a reason. They are
serving the customers.)

--matt




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