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Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

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Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#71

Post by klmr »

pimterry wrote: post #64
klmr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not true for moderators: they have specific tasks they must complete, and they must continue to be active, or they lose their moderation status. That’s not correct: especially on the small sites, it’s acceptable for moderators to be inactive for long periods of time. It’s not great, but it’s understood that moderators have lives, and that they’re … not employees. I can state this confidently because I used t…

> especially on the small sites, it’s acceptable for moderators to be inactive for long periods of time Interesting! I can see that being a case against the original point then: if moderators really are free to work or not work however they'd like, then that seems to suggest that they don't match this test, and they're nothing like employees at all. Do you have to turn up enough to keep up with the moderation queue o…

That’s exactly what happened, and no, I didn’t lose my status. There are internal metrics for showing individual moderators’ activity but — at least while I was a moderator —these were purely FYI, and not used to enforce activity. I eventually resigned because I was aware that my inactivity was causing backlog that created more work for other moderators. I don’t remember exactly what happened next but since moderators are elected yearly by the community I suspect that new elections were held. However, I need to emphasise that I was relatively inactive for more than a year, and completely inactive for many months.

Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#72

Post by wolfgke »

MoronInAHurry wrote: post #60

A bunch of non-lawyers taking a tiny chunk of law in isolation and speculating about whether something "seems illegal" based on it is really, really useless. And this HN thread is just going to be even more of that.

> A bunch of non-lawyers taking a tiny chunk of law in isolation and speculating about whether something "seems illegal" based on it is really, really useless.

To me, this is rather a sign that the law is far too complicated and should be radically simplified.

Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#73

Post by hombre_fatal »

DoctorNick wrote: post #49
adrianmonk wrote: post #25

Why just moderating? In a sense, it's every action you do that adds value to the site by drawing people in or improving their experience. When users write a comment (such as what I'm writing right now on Hacker News), they are acting as writers who generate text for people to read. When they submit a link, they are locating content for people to read. When they upvote or downvote, they are acting somewhat like editor…

The fact remains that moderating forums is labor, and stack exchange receives a lot of value from that labor that the mods themselves don't see a dime of.

I run a forum and there's no shortage of people who would happily volunteer for a mod role.

You have it wrong though: they get plenty of compensation through reputation, clout, and a feeling of power over their peers and being heard and helping out in a community that they love (or some combo of these). That's why they do it. Why is that not a fair trade without money exchanging hands?

Growing up, I used to mow an aging neighbor's lawn because he was basically couch-ridden. It made me feel good to help someone else out. Was I being exploited and should I have demanded payment, or was that just a fair trade that I volunteered for and could quit at any time?

Or look no further than HN. Participating on this forum writing content and enriching YC's coffers is "labor". And our compensation is procrastination and venting and feeling some satisfaction for scrawling our opinions online. If we didn't like that deal, we wouldn't be here.

Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#74

Post by danShumway »

csomar wrote: post #68
JoshTriplett wrote: post #3

This would break a lot more services, including a substantial number of Open Source projects and communities (specifically, any that are primarily run by a company rather than a non-profit).

If the Open Source project is free, then there are no profits generated from it. Doesn't seem to be applicable under this law.

You wouldn't say that Redhat is generating money from Linux?

Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#75

Post by shkkmo »

I am not whole opposed to the idea that companies that extract value from content created by their users should be forced to operate as non-profits that operate for the public good.

The biggest drawback I see is that this could lead to large scale lobbying to greatly reduce the limitations placed on sich non-profits.

Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#76

Post by fabian2k »

klmr wrote: post #56
pimterry wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about unpaid work though, it's employee-like unpaid work. https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/337123/345240 has some interesting discussion of this. In practice, that means that normal commenters or people using social media aren't relevant for two reasons: * There's minimal control over their actions from the 'employer'. There's some basic rules on what content is not allowed, but nobody says "you must write a…

> That's not true for moderators: they have specific tasks they must complete, and they must continue to be active, or they lose their moderation status. That’s not correct: especially on the small sites, it’s acceptable for moderators to be inactive for long periods of time. It’s not great, but it’s understood that moderators have lives, and that they’re … not employees. I can state this confidently because I used t…

The official limit is no activity for 6 months, at that point the moderator status is supposed to be removed. This has been enforced rather inconsistently at times.

Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#77

Post by jacobush »

wolfgke wrote: post #72
MoronInAHurry wrote: post #60

A bunch of non-lawyers taking a tiny chunk of law in isolation and speculating about whether something "seems illegal" based on it is really, really useless. And this HN thread is just going to be even more of that.

> A bunch of non-lawyers taking a tiny chunk of law in isolation and speculating about whether something "seems illegal" based on it is really, really useless. To me, this is rather a sign that the law is far too complicated and should be radically simplified.

Common Law is rarely simplified.

Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#78

Post by Spooky23 »

thekyle wrote: post #61
Spooky23 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What state allows for-profit organizations to solicit unpaid volunteer labor from people outside of prison? It’s a pretty obvious violation of Federal law and multiple state laws.

What are unpaid internships if not unpaid volunteer labor?

A: Big compliance issues!

Most employers that I’ve work with that utilize unpaid interns do so through a college to ensure a linkage to the interns development.

Outside of that, it’s cheaper to pay minimum wage than to deal with the overhead of making sure your managers follow the rules.

Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#79

Post by danShumway »

shkkmo wrote: post #70
danShumway wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really appreciate if you'd be willing to expand on this. It's not clear to me what the difference is between the moderation happening on StackOverflow and the moderation happening on Wikipedia, other than that Wikipedia is non-profit. But having non-profit designation be the key factor in deciding whether or not someone can volunteer seems like a rule that would have some really negative side-effects. The 5 point…

> having non-profit designation be the key factor in deciding whether or not someone can volunteer seems like a rule that would have some really negative side-effects. This is literally the distinction discussed in the posted question and is pretty standard law in the US. What negative consequences do you see as a result of this?

Not all Open Source companies are nonprofit.

See Redhat Linux, Gitlab, Chromium, Docker. If a volunteer helps triage issues for these projects, is it a violation of labor laws?

If only nonprofit Open Source companies can use the benefits of Open Source development -- community involvement, community moderation and support, 3rd-party patches, etc... that's a really big reduction in who can participate in Open Source, particularly during a time when we're increasingly worried about Open Source funding and sustainability.

Gitlab even organizes events around community contributions.[0] If the effect of a law is to make it harder for a community to get directly involved with a product, that's likely a negative consequence. I really like that I can get involved with Gitlab. I don't feel like Gitlab is exploiting me.

[0]: https://about.gitlab.com/community/issue-bash/

Re: Is Stack Exchange in violation of NY labor law by using volunteer moderators?

#80

Post by alistairSH »

thekyle wrote: post #61
Spooky23 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What state allows for-profit organizations to solicit unpaid volunteer labor from people outside of prison? It’s a pretty obvious violation of Federal law and multiple state laws.

What are unpaid internships if not unpaid volunteer labor?

There are specific criteria that should be met for an internship to be offered without payment. Generally, an unpaid internship must be purely educational, not displace employees, employer does not derive profit from the intern, and there is no expectation of a job offer at the end.

At my employer, interns are effectively additional staff for the duration of their employment, so they are paid market wages. The main difference between their position and that of a junior employee is hourly wages vs salaried.

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