TL recruiting SC2 writers - Page 11

We have always been honest and upfront about these kinds of things with community members, and this is no different. We simply don't care that some people may feel there is a chance that it's emotional manipulation. All the stuff we wrote about motivations and all that is true, and partially in response to users asking "why would people do this for no pay?" Frankly, just because you feel it its the "cleaner" way to remove all doubt about possible manipulation doesn't mean we're going to sacrifice openness and communication with our potential contributors. You can either believe us or not.


I only brought this up because organized religion has all sorts of issues that we don't typically deal with, especially in the United States. We don't ask for donations, we're not tax exempt, we don't expect our contributors to pray for TL. The fact that I have to list differences here for you is really silly, since the analogy you made in the first place comparing us to a religion is just unreasonable and frankly kind of insulting.


What makes something fair and not fair? I'm not going to get into a debate on why TL needs to own the content that we put out on our front page, because the implications are obvious there. It seems again you are very hung up on the fact that there is no monetary compensation, when in fact there is plenty of intangible non-monetary gains and rewards that our writers feel make it worth it for themselves. I posted some of these earlier, but you again said that it was manipulative to state what these possibly could be. You seem to believe that money is the only form of compensation, it is not.


The model I described obviously could exist but doesn't. Will it exist in the future? Maybe. I was responding to your accusation that the model exists and is viable right now but TL doesn't do it because we want to hoard money. That is what I said was not true, not that in general we want to keep costs down.


First, you seem to believe that just because our volunteers aren't paid means our business model "doesn't work." Do you feel other for-profit enterprises that have volunteers don't have business models that work? Volunteer work is pretty common in even mainstream sports, for example NFL cheerleaders receive virtually nominal pay ($100 a game or something) for essentially another fulltime job. Why do they do it? There are intangible nonmonetary benefits, personal and otherwise. Just like here. Many sports writers employed fulltime by sports teams are unpaid internships. Is it because the Yankees are manipulating their ballboys to accept lower than minimum wage? I don't believe so.

Second, you make it sound so easy to just "be" Wikipedia, a site with over 35 million users and 2.7 billion monthly pageviews. Let's not enter into a debate about whether a yearly donation drive asking for handouts from an audience that is notoriously made up of young frugal college students who already pay for content across a lot of other ESPORTS channels is wise or not. I would say "we need your donations to survive!!!" from our audience demographic is far more ethically dubious than asking for volunteer writers who know exactly what they're getting into.

Lastly, I would argue that allowing non-monetary contributions like writing and liquipedia editing is far more rewarding and mutually beneficial for people that want to contribute to TL than strictly donating money to us. If you notice, we don't ask for $ donations anywhere on this site, unlike the churches you seem to compare us to.