Re: Discussion: should volunteer content creators get rewarded?
Huh, that made me think of something. Generally, when one uses the volunteer system, it tends to be in support of non-profit or charitable company event. When it is directly inolved in the financial aspects of another organization or business, it tends to be volunteered time for free work of the main organization's employee to provide a skill or service... for someone else. Generally, you really do not want to use volunteers for a for-profit endever without compensation, that tends to look really bad.
Now, we're talking about compensating building staff in a game with a virtual currency purchased with actual currency. The volunteer work does financially benefit the main entities of the mud, with whatever contributions the volunteers build hopefully making players more motivated to throw cash. Even if the donations aren't a serious form of income for the game and its owners, its still getting income.
At this point, mud builders in muds with a donation model are less volunteers and more unpaid part-time workers. I'm not sure how much time,, R& D and other such thing went into designing and programming the financial currency system, but I'm 99% sure it wasn't much. And it probably would not hurt a bottom line with a small staff to reward $5 of whatever currency per month for builders who perform consistent work. And realistically, none of them were probably going to spend $55 from January to November before dumping that $100-$200 donation on December. (scale upwards depending on average costs of donator perks that are commonly bought).
TL-Dr: Muds who accept donations from players for perks should not be calling staff volunteers and compensate them in some minor form for part-time work with said virtual currency.
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