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Reason #4000 to not have a physical presence in the state of New York. I'm sorry but this law is kinda ridiculous.
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.
This raises some serious questions for anywhere with user/volunteer based content/moderation. Sites like Reddit operate on a model very similar to Stack Exchange, and any user-moderated forum that runs ads to pay for hosting/maintenance costs would seem to have the same issues. It also raises questions about the status of Instagram influencers, you-tube personalities, or anyone on a platform that derives it's value f…
I'm not a lawyer, but there is a common-sense difference between Stack Exchange and Reddit. On Reddit, it's just a community having a discussion. The participants, even the moderators, are mainly involved in guiding a discussion, and Reddit just facilitates that. On Stack Overflow, the moderators really are working directly on improving the site's content. They're practically unpaid editors.
So do non-moderators. In fact, there are some users who do more work towards improving the site’s content (via editing, handling suggestions, etc.) than some moderators. In fact, “trusted users” have access to many of the same moderation tools as moderators, and editing content is actively encouraged (via functionality, badges …) for all users.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry, maybe I was mistaken that the ex-moderators were engaging in the transphobic behavior of misgendering trans folks?
As far as has been publicly stated, nobody was advocating misgendering, there was only a question over details of the policy. See footnote 1 to the OP here https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-... "as a professional writer I, by training, write in a gender-neutral way specifically to avoid gender landmines, and sought clarification that this would continue to be ok"
That isn’t true. Monica didn’t advocate misgendering but there was at least one other moderator (since resigned) who did. I’m not sure if that’s what iron1003 was referring to since it wasn’t as well publicised as Monica being kicked out (not resigned) but it triggered some of the subsequent events.
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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…
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 on those small sites though? If there were a whole bunch of flags waiting on a small site for a while, and as a moderator you weren't helping out, would you lose your moderator status there?
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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?
Will they have to quit being a moderator immediately? Accepting payment from SE would definitely be violating immigration laws.
I read through the comments specifically to see how long it would be until someone recommended the question be closed as off topic. Was not disappointed.
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).
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it wouldn't. It's not just the fact that people are doing unpaid work. There are a number of other requirements that have to be met, which SE seems to meet with regards to how it handles moderators. Just being an unpaid moderator doesn't run afoul of the laws.
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…
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?