I feel like I'm gonna get into a lot of trouble if I keep asking this question.
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Anyway, I don't see how you can see yourself as a "volunteer" and also be mad that people won't pay money. Feels sort of contradictory.
I think many purists at the center of the fediverse movement have expectations that align more with philanthropy. But if those folks actually talked to other philanthropic orgs, they would learn something pretty quickly. If you want people to give, you have to spend *a lot* of time telling a story that makes them want to do that.
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This brings me to another issue I've been chewing on for a while now. I think the fediverse IS telling a story. There's not a lot of intentionality behind it. But it's there. The challenge may be that they overestimate how many people want their version of the fediverse. People definitely want something. But this ain't it. It's a good start because it opens up our thinking about what's possible. But we have to keep going.
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Another issue for philanthropic orgs is building trust in your ability to execute. It's not only about whether I want this future to exist. You also have to convince me that *you* are the ones that can actually accomplish it. Many open source communities are going to fall down here. Because they still think coding harder is the solution to everything. That's how they promise to spend any funds. And they're surprised when that doesn't get people to open their wallets.
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@polotek when you put it that way, it sounds more like a public internship. So it's only for rich people with connections?
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@craignicol these people definitely are not rich. They're actually experiencing a lot of pain trying to reconcile these things.
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@polotek I think the spirit of the post above is that it feels fine to be volunteering in a space until somebody comes and just plops down a big safe full of money in the middle of the space, and then the act of volunteering starts to feel kind of weird. You're responding as if this is about who gets the money (and you're right, that deciding who gets the money and how is a hard problem), but this isn't quite responsive if the objection is "to whom are the benefits of the volunteering accruing?"
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What we see is that the fediverse is *losing* the people who went all in on this vision of the future because they didn't have enough support. We should be hearing about wins. Not people burning out and giving up every day. Some of that is going to happen, but it shouldn't feel like it's the most common story. But all of the news is about burn out, people trying to monetize, or nerds having nerd battles about stuff we're not sure even matters at this stage.
https://strangeobject.space/@esther/113186552978176117 -
@mcc maybe. But part of my critique is that the objection is not very coherent. Volunteers don't really get to decide where money goes. Unless the governance is set up that way. People can feel however they want about it. But it's not magic.
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Very few of the problems we're discussing these days are going to be solved with technology. There are different people who could be telling a more compelling story about the future of the fediverse. But from what I can see, those folks are often shouted down and/or pushed out. There is a concerted effort to make it all about technology. And I'll just say it again plainly. That's just not going to work.
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Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:replied to Marco Rogers last edited by
@polotek
I think a big part of the problem here is the amount of emotional abuse people are willing to shovel onto the people running these big servers, when what they need most is emotional support. At the moment, the people who start servers need to be able to handle random abuse and unfounded accusations from all angles, because a small group of people who've gained influence on the network would rather find reasons to take issue with everyone else than give people the benefit of the doubt.Not every server is going to be perfect at handling this stuff, not all of us are going to make great decisions at all times, but if you can expect people to at least be decent and handle the worst of the moderation concerns, that's a server you should be federating with, not fighting with.
We need to stop infighting. It's holding the network back.
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Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:replied to Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon: last edited by
@polotek
And Esther is citing transmisogyny on the network as a reason she doesn't want to run the server anymore, and I can honestly understand that. Sometimes, people who should be allies end up getting involved in this drama.Without naming names, there are people who need drop the minor grievances they are finding and blowing to massive proportions, and learn how to talk it out, and they are surrounded by people who feel like it is somehow their duty to go along with this rather than stopping, thinking, and saying, "maybe you shouldn't be brigading Queer/Jewish/Black instance over a single perceived case of mild Queerphobia/Antisemitism/Racism, maybe you should figure out if this is a pattern or just a minor incident, maybe you should ask if their marginalization or your own prejudices are complicating this, maybe you should ask if this is even worth the collateral damage you're about to cause."
Too many people want to tear each other down, when we need to be building people up.
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Audubon Ballroomreplied to Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon: last edited by
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@mcc @polotek I think the above captures this well.
There are dozens of existing projects in the Fediverse. Why did the Social Web Foundation decide to only invite three of the long term projects that have existed in this space?
And did the people who started FediForum (who were new to the space) reach out to any of the people behind the projects of the Fediverse? From my vantage point of talking to the people who work on lots of those projects, it sure didn’t sound like it.
As for whether it is truly volunteering: for a lot of projects, it truly is. Many of the projects in this ecosystem are developed by people in their spare time and they’re happy with that. But there’s also a reason I included the “(or grant supported)” paraenthetical, because by and large the projects which have people working on them full time are receiving a lot of funding from grant giving orgs.
Realistically what this comes down to is that a lot of people keep setting up organizations and things around the fediverse but if they’re talking to the people who’ve been building it they’ve certainly not been talking to many of them.
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Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:replied to Audubon Ballroom last edited by [email protected]
@blackunityoverdisagreement @polotek
I don't name names or link links because I don't want people to think I'm taking a side, or that they have to defend themselves. I want people to move on from these things, because I GET why people are mad about the things they're mad about, but I don't like that the go-to method for resolving them seems to be "have a big public fight" or "call out the other minority server on FediBlock."I don't want us to infight, I want us to think about what we're doing when we fight, and try harder to get along.
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@erincandescent @mcc @polotek it was on me to get companies and Open Source projects on board for launch.
It sounds like you think there are some others that have the financial and time resources to dedicate to Fediverse-wide projects.
If you have some specific ideas for groups I should reach out to, lmk here or DM. Otherwise, I'll keep working on it.
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@polotek I don't know if I'm missing something, but I don't think the quoted post comes down to money. I think it's more about their work being valued and about corporations not overstepping and taking over the things they built. FOSS contributors from what I've seen do care a lot about their work but not usually in the sense of making money. Money seems to be at times introduced as a matter of survivability (of the project or the individuals).
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@mothwaves I was talking about the specific phrasing of viewing themselves as "volunteers" and how that falls directly in line with other people making decisions without them. Volunteers are generally not consulted when it's time to do business. If people want that to change, perhaps they should start by viewing themselves and their position differently.
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@polotek Ahh, that makes sense. I think that probably has something to do with differing perspectives on the ownership of labor. The FOSS community is not entirely leftist but it is really leftist in values and goals at the end of the day, and it attracts a lot of people with those values and goals. I think that makes it so that volunteer work is seen as still owning the work that is done.
There is also something to be said about the peculiar position of software where the work done on it is intrinsically connected with the direction and design of the project in question. Most volunteer work can easily be led by one group and labored by another but software is slightly more intertwined (even if designing and programming software are two very different activities, my point is you need developers for both). -
@mothwaves
> I think that makes it so that volunteer work is seen as still owning the work that is done.This is not leftism.
> the work done on it is intrinsically connected with the direction and design of the project in question.
This is definitely true. And what we see is that usually another group wants to influence the direction and design of the project. And when they are better organized and not contemptuous of users, people will follow them.