111–120 of 155 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would kill 99.9% of the subs there and utterly change the culture.
Do you think it would make things better or worse?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes, but ...arrgh... they are doing this of their own free will and choice, perhaps because they enjoy it, they increase their social interactions, increase their skills... etc. It seems contrary to the concept of freedom if private parties cannot engage in such a relationship, if each and both so choose.
This type of discussion usually comes up in the context of internship positions, where federally an unpaid internship must not displace employees and must provide no value to the employer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ag…
This isn't the case with HN, where the main contribution of the forums to their business is mainly brand recognition.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is begging the question. > If only nonprofit Open Source companies can use the benefits of Open Source development -- community involvement, community moderation and support, 3rd-party patches, There is more involved here than any one of those things mentioned. There are certain requirements that need to be met. You listed the five criteria New York has, and so in New York's case, those requirements would have t…
Sure, but... that's what I asked. I wanted someone to expand on the requirements that had to be met. Would anyone be willing to explain in more detail on how the criteria differ and why this doesn't apply to Open Source companies like Gitlab/Wikipedia/etc? I brought up for-profit companies like Gitlab only to clarify why I thought drawing a bright line based on purely nonprofit status as the only distinction would ha…
I mean, they don't meet the criteria because they don't.
I guess I should ask: why do you think they meet all the criteria? What specific reasons makes you think that?
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…
My karma score is pretty big evidence against the theory that there’s no permanent relationship. Users can become highly invested in particular communities! I also abide by fairly strict code of conduct / moderation policies when writing on certain platforms. If I don’t abide by the community rules my posts can be flagged or even my account banned. Paid writing is absolutely a trade, so I can’t see how any policy tha…
Hold on a minute here, can you point me to where this is actually codified? I found "Publication 926 (2019), Household Employer's Tax Guide" but that doesn't seem to be quite right. Or I just didn't read enough of that rather lengthy document.
> my 1st amendment right to post here should override the interest of the State in establishing minimum wage requirements
I'm not sure I've ever run into a situation where constitutional law was used to continue doing a thing for free. Genuinely interesting POV there.
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…
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.
You couldn't do that in a job!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes, but ...arrgh... they are doing this of their own free will and choice, perhaps because they enjoy it, they increase their social interactions, increase their skills... etc. It seems contrary to the concept of freedom if private parties cannot engage in such a relationship, if each and both so choose.
All I'm saying that the situation is still exploitation, no matter how you cut it. More and more businesses derive their main value from unpaid contributors, and it's something that should give us all pause.
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.
I find it hard to get outraged that Reddit profits from user contributions and discussions given that the useful bits to me and others are provided at no cost.