It’s always bothered me how extremely rare I see ISD to in help chat, especially when racial slurs or trump drama gets dragged in (and a response from a GM to intervene is several hours away via support ticket). I recently asked an ISD some questions about the job, and from their answers it suddenly all made sense: they were unpaid volunteers. Of course they didn’t want to spend any reasonable amount of time doing unpaid work – especially for, of all things, a for-profit corporation!
Most forms of volunteering come with some sort of minor perks to offset the work: a nicer resume, tax breaks, free meals, working education (in the sense of internships), moral fulfillment, etc. But not ISD. In fact, they’re specifically prohibited from doing tasks to earn ISK casually while hanging out in chat (mining ore, ratting, etc). So in short, every moment they spend in chat helping others they’re actively losing income – and all in order to assist a for-profit company. One could even make the argument they’re being used as unpaid labor since their presence in chat means fewer actual staff workhours they need to moderate it, or deal with support tickets concerning questions or moderation.
Hence I propose ISDs be paid a very modest amount of ISK to – if nothing else – offset the opportunity costs of being prohibited from earning ISK while in help chat. The exact details would need to be hammered out, like some sort of monthly review to make sure ISDs are actually doing their role during the periods they are claiming as working hours. Or how much exactly their compensation should be. But give these people something – anything, even if a relatively tiny amount – for their hard work and maybe they’d be a bit more inclined to spend time doing said work.
Do they even need the ISK?
I don’t think I’ve actually seen them do anything that’d require them to spend ISK.
I just notice them floating around combat zones or deployment regions flying their Polaris ships and then they disappear after taking some pictures and waving at us in local.
I guess I should have clarified that I was specifically talking about STAR (the guys who answer questions and moderate help chat), but I’m hardly opposed to the notion of all ISD being compensated for their unpaid work – assuming they’re actually doing something productive.
To be fair, I wouldn’t blame them even if they were goofing off one-hundred percent of the time (though I’m sure most don’t) because they aren’t compensated for their efforts in any way. I’m sure you or I would hardly be outstanding examples of hard work if our total compensation was essentially a green pen to make all our writing a different color than the rest of the office.
Do ISDs, specifically STAR guys, need the ISK? If they don’t need the ISK, then paying them doesn’t really mean anything since they’ve got no use for it.
I see STAR people even less than I see ISDs in space or in markets, much less actually doing things with ISK.
I think the point is that ISD are also players and have characters. And that they might not be allowed to use an ISD log in and a character at the same time.
IMO ISD is basically offering free manpower to CCP.
People are usually paid to not take advantage of a situation they have power in. In ISD case, you just can’t play instead, that’s a double penalty. Also you have to deal with stupid people (like me) and you can’t even get paid for job related issues after that (like the need to kill kitten).
Sorry, I just don’t get this ISD nonsense. They can’t even ban people from the chan when those people are obviously here for the sole reason of insulting people and have hate speech. They should just stop working for free until they are given more right, less restriction, and are no more considered as slaves.
Without meaning to diminish the ISDs work elsewhere - i cant actually comment on that at all - but in terms of ‘help’ chat it is more than seldom to actually seeing any in there. Most of the time it is actually a very closed player group that almost exclusively answers all kinds of questions over the period of an entire day.
It is also still common habit to post EVE University’s wiki pages while official support pages simply lack basic information and often cant even be used to solve a players question. So instead of thinking about ‘paying’ ISDs ingame it might be a better idea to have them actually look at the available documentation or the lack of it and pay that work.
While you are not totally wrong OP, but as a frequent community volunteer, I don’t get paid… Volunteers do not get paid thats why its called volunteering. I’m gonna be speaking on behalf of abused and neglected children in court, but not be paid one cent.
Do i mind that, no. Now, it does suck that ISD and a regular “toon” cannot be logged in together, but when you are a volunteer, sacrifices have to be made.
Not a GAL in my state, they are strictly Attorney’s. My official title is CASA (court appointed special advocate) Wednesday starts my 2nd day of training.
Under the FLSA, it’s illegal to use volunteers as a "for-profit"company. Seeing as though it’s an Icelandic company, naturally they fall out of the bounds of the FLSA
Most for-profit organizations cannot accept volunteer, unpaid labor without running afoul of the FLSA. For example:
Employers cannot knowingly allow (or ask) employees to work off the clock.
Even interns must be paid in most circumstances—if they’re performing tasks that benefit the employer (as opposed to just learning and observing), they’re completing work that is entitled to pay. This is true even if the intern offers his or her services for free just to get started with the organization.
Any time an employer requests or requires (or allows) an employee to perform a task— even if it’s something unrelated to his or her regular duties, such as helping run the employer’s booth at an industry event— that employee should be paid for the time. Salaried employees, of course, are already paid for the job, so in those scenarios it just needs to be clear that the additional tasks are a requirement for the job; for hourly employees, they should be paid for all of the hours involved in such activities, even if the person offers to complete the task voluntarily.
Employees who voluntarily work through their lunch or other breaks must be paid for that time, even if they had clocked out.
Over the years, CCP staff have pretty much abandoned any in-game presence; in several hundred hours spent in the help channel, I’ve only seen GMs and CCP devs a grand total of three times. Hell, you can’t even communicate indirectly through support tickets without first leaving the game to go to the support website. (Which, by the way, is so understaffed that low-priority tickets like questions can literally take months (yes, plural!) to get answered)
ISDs have long outgrown their role of merely supplementing CCP staff, to outright replacing them, even if this wasn’t something intentionally planned. They deserve better tools and treatment than being made to effectively pay (in opportunity costs of missed income) out of pocket to help the game’s community.
