Quote for the Day

[lizvogel]

Ran across this via network. The context is entirely unrelated to why I'm posting it, but it struck me strongly enough that I wanted to immortalize it here.

"If one wants to be treated as a community member rather than as a customer, one must put in work that will be hard and often unpleasant. It is not actually unethical to ask people to do this work."
     -chestnut_pod, 20 May 2023

They're talking about the OTW mess, but I found the sentiment remarkably applicable (again, with very different context) to a certain convention I may or may not be running. No, it's not unethical to ask people to do the work for the thing they want to have -- and people who act like it is probably aren't trying to build the same thing.

Comments

[duskpeterson]

While I heartily agree with "contribute to your community" (*waves civic-duty banner*), I guess I'd want to nuance that quotation a little, because not all community members can easily do the same type of work. For example, I'm good at web searches and Joe is good at phone calls. Joe doesn't have the same level of experience to handle web searches, and I have disabilities that clash with phone calling. So right now, I'm doing web searches for housing, and he's doing the phone calls. We're both working hard. But if someone said to me, "This is your community, so you need to make phone calls" . . . Well, that would be a sticking point.

[lizvogel]

That's not nuance, that's just basic personnel management. ;-)

Especially for a volunteer organization, but really for any group, the questions are "What can you do, what are you good at doing, what do you want to do?" Sometimes that last one has to take a back seat; the IRS doesn't care if nobody wants to do the taxes, somebody had darned well better. And in any organization that survives more than five minutes, there's one person who will buckle down and do the unpleasant stuff because it's got to be done. But in general, you match the tasks that need doing to the abilities and interests of the people available. So if we were all in an organization together, I'd be saying, "Dusk, you're good at web searches? Would you be willing to research this and this and let me know what you find out?" And to Joe I'd say, "You're good on the phone? Oh, thank ghod; I hate making phone calls! Would you mind calling these people and asking about these things, and let me know what the organization needs to do next regarding them?"

The point is you're both working hard on necessary steps to achieve an agreed-upon goal, and the division of labor sounds reasonably balanced given the resources available. You are not, for example, saying, "I am too important in this community to do menial stuff like web searches" and then sitting on the sidelines and criticizing the people who are doing the actual work for not meeting some vague philosophical standard for web searches that even you can't define.

[duskpeterson]

So we're in perfect agreement. :)

[lizvogel]

Sounds like, yup. :)