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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?

#101

Post by tzs »

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.

Humans and human societies are the most complex systems we know of, and are full of people who will exploit any edge cases or loopholes.

I think that this greatly limits how much simplification you can have in a legal system and still have it be effective.

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

#102

Post by freedomben »

danShumway wrote: post #74
csomar wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Red Hat's money comes from support subscriptions, which are all provided by paid employees. Red Hat doesn't use volunteers to provide support to customers. Volunteer work is done at many levels (linux kernel, GNU libs, GNOME, Fedora, etc.) but Red Hat does not make money from those projects directly (no more than any other company would/could). In fact Red Hat employs people to just work on those projects, and gives all the output to the community for free to benefit everyone.

Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat but I'm speaking as myself, not as a Red Hat employee

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

#103

Post by MrStonedOne »

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.

If laymen can not read, parse, and understand law, then laymen can not follow the law, and laymen can not have due process.

Or in other words, lawyers are a value add, not a necessity.

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

#104

Post by mantap »

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.

Should we require the elderly to pay their adult children minimum wage for looking after them? Because that is far more like work than being a moderator on a website.

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

#105

Post by MrStonedOne »

jsonne wrote: post #29

Seems like there's also a good case for Reddit moderators to not be volunteers as well. To be honest I've always thought the community moderated model has seemed like somewhat of a loophole that was eventually going to be closed. It's having your cake and eating it too. IMHO you can either have UGI with a professional moderator team OR you can have professionally made content with no moderator team.

Not really.

Reddit doesn't claim ownership of the subreddits.

A subreddit is something 1 user creates, getting ownership of that subreddit, and then that 1 user is free to appoint other mods.

This is more akin to a facebook group.

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

#106

Post by lightedman »

Macha wrote: post #39
jsonne wrote: post #29

Seems like there's also a good case for Reddit moderators to not be volunteers as well. To be honest I've always thought the community moderated model has seemed like somewhat of a loophole that was eventually going to be closed. It's having your cake and eating it too. IMHO you can either have UGI with a professional moderator team OR you can have professionally made content with no moderator team.

I think Reddit moderators are less restricted/directed by Reddit so they fall closer on the spectrum to the guy running a debate club/whatever at the local community centre. I don't think anyone would argue that they're an employee of the community centre, even if the community centre prohibited alcohol at their events.

"I think Reddit moderators are less restricted/directed by Reddit"

Several former mods have gone public with how the Admins basically told them "Do this or we remove your community and ban you."

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

#107

Post by empath75 »

MrStonedOne wrote: post #105
jsonne wrote: post #29

Seems like there's also a good case for Reddit moderators to not be volunteers as well. To be honest I've always thought the community moderated model has seemed like somewhat of a loophole that was eventually going to be closed. It's having your cake and eating it too. IMHO you can either have UGI with a professional moderator team OR you can have professionally made content with no moderator team.

Not really. Reddit doesn't claim ownership of the subreddits. A subreddit is something 1 user creates, getting ownership of that subreddit, and then that 1 user is free to appoint other mods. This is more akin to a facebook group.

They take subreddits away from people from time to time.

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

#108

Post by balls187 »

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"

Motions, Petions, and Trial are essentially the same, except typically also include Lawyers in addition to non-lawyers (pro-se), and rather than speculation, it's called Argument.

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