Slashdot Mirror
Online community volunteers under investigation?
NeoTron writes "An interesting story about AOL's "volunteers", and
how some people are getting the Labor Department to investigate whether using volunteer labor by AOL is violating the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
With
coverage like this I'm just wondering if/how this could affect Slashdot and other online communities that use volunteers... "
Slashdot volunteers don't need to fill out paperwork or provide a minimum number of hours of work. The work they do benefits the community. It is more of a side effect that it benefits slashdot. He could have left all the chaos alone.
If Rob proceeds where his says he will, with less restrictions on who can be a moderater, moderating becomes part of the service. The line blurs. How do you tell whether it is job-related or volunteer work.
Besides aren't these comments ours? This one mine, yours belongs to you. We are a community moderating our own discussions. Rob merely provides the forum and topics. Moderation is just another form of participation in the community. And it would suck if some one told me how I can and can't participate in a community of my choosing.
If you continue to follow their logic then isn't all of our comments and discussions a value added to slashdot. I don't think I should be compensated for being allowed to post to slashdot forums.
Later,
Xamot
?
I suspect that /. volunteers are not affected by this. The reason is that AOL guides are compensated with free service. This means that they are doing compensated work, not volunteer work. /. moderators are only compensated by the fact that they know they're helping /. stay a viable community. They don't get free services, or other extra priveleges.
ERROR: Null
Well, certainly the accounts are capable of doing more than just "volunteer activities", and may be used beyond the time allocated for volunteering. And so I'd have to agree that the accounts have the same value as every other AOL account. But is this because AOL was trying to barter the account for labor, or because it was simply more efficient to do that than create a separate type of account where usage would be tracked and non-volunteer services would be restricted? I tend to think it was the latter, though having that extra value was probably useful in persuading some of the moderators to volunteer.
Consider this, though. Suppose you volunteer at a local church barbeque. In my experience, the church usually lets the volunteers who make the event possible have a free lunch at the event. Should we then say that the church bartered for the volunteers' labor, and when some of the volunteers get tired of it should they go to the Department of Labor and complain? Suppose that after a few years of the barbeque, the church reduces the price of all-you-can-eat tickets. Yet the volunteers still get the ability to eat all they can for free as a benefit of volunteering. Has the benefit to the volunteers really decreased (as the disgruntled AOL volunteers seem to believe)? After all, they are receiving the same service; it is just that the cost of the service to non-volunteers has decreased. Granted, AOL is not your local church; but the spirit of volunteering for the good of the community is the same, I think.
As for how AOL "sold" the moderator idea to people, I'd imagine it was something inbetween your two choices. Getting free AOL was probably a help, but I think many of the volunteers were members of those communities already and felt they could help by being a moderator. Much like the church analogy, they volunteered in large part because they felt it would benefit their community, and the free lunch was an added benefit. How much of each aspect influenced a volunteer probably depended in large part upon that person's history and personality. So did some people volunteer just for the account? Quite possibly. Did some volunteer just for the sake of enhancing their community, and gaining the respect of their peers? That's also quite possible.
I think what's happening now is that the people who joined up simply for the free account have become tired of doing it, and want to get paid for their efforts. But communities work by people volunteering time and effort towards a common cause. There are sufficient numbers of volunteers who are willing to donate their time to help, so AOL doesn't need or want the people who are just in it for themselves. It's better to have people running the forums who actually care about the community than people in it just for some economic benefit. Plus, the article said there were some 10,000 volunteers. Were AOL forced to pay that many additional people (even part-time) the costs of the service would skyrocket, which also would be bad for the communities on AOL. And the majority of the 10,000 volunteers seem to agree, since you don't see any complaints except from a small but vocal minority.
They have requested an INVESTIGATION. There is an enormous difference between the two. It was explicitly stated that the former volunteers were not seeking compensation or back wages or anything. They are simply requesting the Labor Dept. check out whether this is a Fair Labor practice. I would tend to think that it is not, but that's up to them. Now, the Labor Dept. may decide that these people aren't volunteers - in which case they can require AOL to pay back wages for all of their volunteers. Thus the "explicit demands" line - the volunteers aren't asking for money, but they may end up receiving it anyway.
Slashdot might not be a not-for-profit, but unless Rob's getting a heck of a lot more money off of this than I think, he's not in any danger. Slashdot is more of a public service than a business, really. AOL is using these thousands of volunteers to do things that every other company pays people for. There is a problem with that.
Leilah
~ Leilah
Between AOL's model and Open Source development is this:
AOL holds these ppl's accounts over their heads -- they can't simply cease to volunteer and keep the same "screen name" (is that the correct term? I don't do AOL) that they have given out to everyone and his brother, the way I understand it... so they either change their entire identity (a pain in the !#$ to all of us who have moved and lost addresses, etc.) or keep doing it, right?
Open Source is a business model that has been in place in this country for years, under another name: Amish Barn-Raisings. Barns are certainly critical to the business of an Amish farmer, BUT the compensation involved is, in fact along the lines of "and one day I will ask you to do me a favor...". Similarly, I'll code up a couple routines for your browser, and then later you can code up a couple routines for my scanner-driver...
Never mind the compensation associated with the right to use a better product because you, like others, contributed to its development!?!!
Also, remember, nobody develops FOR Red Hat because Red Hat doesnt retain ownership of the product... They are simply facilitating development in return for the right to distribute nonexclusively a better piece of software.
And beta-testers certainly get compensated -- they get early access to the "latest and greatest" package... it's work-for-trade just like any other non-negotiable compensations.
Plus, there are exceptions to the FLSA, even in the for-profit arena... unpaid internships are a form of volunteer work (in return for experience) too... how many hospitals could remain operating as effectively without candy stripers?
So whether AOL can prevail or not, I wouldn't take this case as any sort of a "broader threat" to the sorts of volunteerism we actually care about.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
If you think that you are working to hard for a volunteer position, just unvolunteer. They say it's not worth the 21.95, then stop volunteering, lose the free account and pay for the account. I don't see how AOL was holding a gun to thier head.
I love the line:
When asked for compensation, AOL rejected, and removed the free account.
NO KIDDING They noticed someone who volunteered for a job, then said "Hey, why don't you pay me for all the time I spent on this".
You know what, I think I'm going back to my 4H leader and insist he pay me for the time I spent cleaning up the show rooms and barns. Not to mention the Red Cross for the times I donated time to a phone marathon.
And no, there IS NO Difference, if You volunteer for something, you are makeing a verbal contract that you are not going to ask for compensation. You want to ask them to HIRE YOU, that's different.
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
...As the Article points out, AOL is not the Red Cross, soup kitchen, church, mission, or school. It is also not a free software project or a free web site. It is a for-profit operation that otherwise charges people for access unless you agree to work for them.
Since Slashdot does not charge for access to it's web site, or any other "user fee" whatsoever, there's little parallel. Nor is the Free Software project in any danger, unless they are anywhere near making a profit (yeah, right).
Comparing Slashdot and other free and volunteer ventures to what AOL does for money is not a fair comparison, and I'm sure that none of these ventures are in any trouble.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Well, normally, I just stay back, but this could potentially have an impact on things that we hold near and dear - OpenSource (or whatever the PC moniker is for today).
Think about it: If the Labour department says that AOL must compensate volunteers for work that Aids their business, or performs some business function, what does that do for the non Netscape/AOL Mozilla developers? I don't think that projects like Linux would be affected in any significant way, because there is no company, but any project that has corporate sponsorship and support might be impacted by a negative verdict in this case.
It is sad to see that people are always out to ruin something that I think that we all treasure here... The online community, doing things for "The big picture", and helping to improve and extend the technology that makes the Internet work. I, for one, hope that the Labour department decides to keep out of this, and decide that Internet related volunteering is "out of scope".
Just my $0.02
McAlister
Think about it; one of the biggest examples of volunteering is in a for-profit environment: hospitals. Those candy-stripers do not get paid. Unfortunately, I do not know much about their duties; maybe someone else can elaborate, please? I do know about volunteering in two other for-profit environments: an animal hospital and the local DA's office. Allow me to elaborate on this.
My younger brother volunteered for 2.5 years at a local animal hospital (he works there now as a vet tech getting money for college). The vetinarian that hired him made a couple of things clear: the vet could only request a certain number of hours of work, but my brother could work more (up to the legal limit, since he was 15 and in school), and the vet could request and duties of him, although my brother could refuse to perform it, at which time the vet could not take an reconciliatory action toward him. As a volunteer, my brother actually got to do more, since the age labor laws do not apply to volunteers as long as they have parental permission. The minute my brother was hired though, he was unable to perform some of the tests and other activities he was doing do to the exact labor law that AOL is being sued over. I am assuming (although I might jumping too far here) that the vet checked out the labor laws; my brother approached him about it, then, after a discussion, the vet said it would be one month before he could start. I believe, if my memory serves me correctly, that this was to check out the labor laws.
My brother's friend volunteered in the local DA's office one summer, and performed such duties as paper-fetcher and -runner, wrote letters, typed up briefs, and several other duties I am not able to recall at this moment.
The point is that both of them work with NO compensation: no free account, no free cat/dog washes, no free legal services, etc. What might, if anything, cause AOL a problem is that they did compensate for the services, which can be construed as payment. If so, then, by law, they have pay minimum wage. This is for the judge to decide, though; just remember that, as long as NO compensation is given, then it really won't matter if you are for-profit or not.
-G.