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Comments on Voluntariness vs. Responsibility, which of them should be considered as a priority for the community team?
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Voluntariness vs. Responsibility, which of them should be considered as a priority for the community team?
Before starting the concern, I want to appreciate and acknowledge the community team for their volunteer efforts to run Codidact and handle its issues as far as they can.
When I sometimes talk to some people about the state of some unhandled issues, I am answered explicitly or implicitly that "the community team are unpaid volunteers", "they have not free time to handle any issue", "Codidact is an open source platform so that anyone can fix a problem", and so on.
I agree that no one should expect a volunteer to do some work, but for an aspiring community there should be a difference between "voluntariness" and "responsibility". In such a community the community team, though they may be unpaid volunteers, try to run the community like that they are paid staff.
The Codidact community team have accepted to be the staff and run the community. So, in my opinion, if Codidact is an aspiring platform, one may expect that they work as paid staff do.
Am I right?
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The initial version of this answer is the accepted and the best answer. You can find the initial version here (Please note the current version of this answer is not original and not valid).
tl,dr: No. I'm sorry, but this just isn't possible. First of all, we all are people with a real life. We all …
3y ago
Working with volunteers is very different to working with paid staff, and if you try to bring the same expectations then …
3y ago
> The Codidact community team have accepted to be the staff and run the community. So, in my opinion, if Codidact is an …
3y ago
> I agree that no one should expect a volunteer to do some work Full-stop. > The Codidact community team have acce …
3y ago
If you wish the staff to start acting like paid employees, maybe you should discuss how you can pay them. Maybe set up s …
3y ago
Since the other answers did not satisfactorily address my concerns, I'll post my answer to the question. If we want t …
3y ago
Post
tl,dr: No.
I'm sorry, but this just isn't possible.
First of all, we all are people with a real life. We all have full-time responsibilities in real life. These responsibilities are unquestionable more important than running a virtual community. For example, I'll have a major change in my life in the next weeks and will have to prepare for it.
And still we are coming here (almost) every day to support our communities. We fix urgent issues, when they arise (sometimes even if real life is calling too).
Also, we all spend a lot of stuff – time, energy and sometimes money (the servers don't pay themselves!) – into Codidact. Because we believe in the project and want it to be successful. We spend this without any form of "compensation".
I'm not saying this to complain, just stating the fact that may not be entirely noticeable to everyone. Y'know, I don't really want to get any compensation for this. It's fun. It's rewarding to get to learn new stuff and new amazing people .
BUT
We CANNOT provide the same 24/7 support as a professional provider. It's just not possible. Neither emotionally nor financially.
Maybe, in a few years from now, we'll be able to employ a person or two to take care of the software and community full-time. Maybe. I don't even know if we really want that. I don't know if we are ever going to have enough money to do this.
But until then it's just not possible. We'll try to support the awesome communities to the best we can as volunteers. But not beyond.
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