EPT1. Brass tax
There are over 200 contributors to TL, and hundreds more if not thousands who are contributing to the community in some manner, putting in tens if not hundreds of hours every month. If we attempt to distinguish between what is quality content deserving of pay, where do you draw the line? Do we pay people every time they start and maintain an LR thread? Do we start paying people for writing articles and blogs? Do we pay people for contributing to the strategy forums? If we restrict the pay to people who occupy a specific role already, mods, writers, liquipedia editors, etc, how would payment be quantified? Do we start tracking a user's log in info on rigid time schedules and say "you were only X amount active on TL this month, 10% pay deduction for you"? Some very simple math would reveal that if they were paid on an hourly basis that TL would close down with in months having to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in accordance with minimum wage levels in respective countries (hundreds of contributors x hundreds of hours x single or double digit wage rates = ????).
2. What does this actually encourage?
So far it's been obvious that the reason why the quality of content is relatively high on TL is the passion for esports, do you HONESTLY want to replace that passion with a drive for financial gain? Have you seen the gaming journalism industry and what avarice has turned that into? The truth of the matter is financial gain is in reality usually incongruous with the quality of the service or product that is provided, it's all about marketing and bells and whistles. Do you want TL's threads to turn into gigantic advertising campaigns? We already have enough of those, many of us turn to TL for a respite from those commercial cesspools, not to see it turned into another one.
3. What does this actually mean for writers?
- Content would have to be checked and approved on a regular basis to ensure that it means "employment qualifications" or "work quotas" or "quality assurance", control is taken away from the community itself and put into the hands of editors and admins as regards to what content is put out on TL.
- Quantification of quality of an articles means inevitable conflicts of financial interest between different segments of the community, "Why should that strategy forum writer get paid more for putting out X when I have to put out Y for the general forums?", "Why should BW writers get paid the same as a SC2 writer when SC2 writers do more work due to the active community?", etc etc etc.
- Inevitably more restrictive rubrics limiting how a writer can construct his/her post, taking away from alot of the actual humour and interesting content that TL is known for.
4. The will of the individual and consent.
Let's not be ridiculous and suggest that writers are being "ripped off" when they could be doing their service for a premium. They are agreeing to terms after being made fully aware of how they should or shouldn't act or expect when they commit to something like this. In legal terms there is absolutely no problem with what TL is doing. TL's writers aren't people speaking a different language who are incapable of understanding the terms of their service rendered and its effects on the community, if you honestly think that take your trolling else where.
5. What's in it for the writer?
- Contributing to a site they are obviously passionate about for a subject that they are passionate about.
- A already popular avenue for them to voice their opinions on an existing medium that they don't have to go through the process of growing themselves.
- Community recognition and comradery.
- An opportunity and motivation to continue a constructive hobby.
- Experience
- Doing so under a relatively lax and friendly environment where they can see their work actually amounting to some value.
6. Hypocrisy?
Is it inherently hypocritical for TL, a site which operates on a for profit basis (regardless of the actual financial situation of the site, whether or not it is making a net profit on a monthly basis, among other information that we are not entitled to know) to ask for its writers to work with out pay?
There are two ways to look at this, the corporate angle, and the passion angle.
Under the corporate angle, all individuals and corporate entities are looking out to maximize personal short term financial gain while holding stakeholders interests as irrelevant, under this angle it isn't HYPOCRISY that TL is trying to get away with this action, it is in fact LEGITIMATE ABUSE of a demographic that they understand. For Profit companies (not to mention a shit tonne of supposedly not for profit organizations) do shit like this all the bloody time in the real world with in the legal constraints of local law. If TL.net was just a corporate entity making marketing decisions on this basis, they would trumpet a no pay position from the rooftops as the privilege of being a part of something great and bigger than they (the writers) are among other shameful emotional appeals. If you are truly a cynic you can obviously understand this.
Is this quote "unethical" unquote? I thought we already disregarded ethics when we are talking from a purely capitalist corporate angle, who's the hypocrite now?
Under the passion angle, it is obvious that it isn't hypocritical at all when the primary concern or gain of the writer and TL is to contribute to esports where financial gain is secondary or tertiary to the main goal.
7. Is financial gain a legitimate motivating force for better content?
Yes. But only if financial gain was directly proportional to the quality of the content, hence the problems listed above regarding how you quantify quality in a diverse community. It would also be inequitable to only apply this principle to one portion of the site, do you want to see the commercialization of everything on TL? I certainly don't.
There, argument over, can we please get back to people talking about writing?
