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the_logos · 07-19-2014, 05:58 PM

I come from a somewhat different place than you, but one thing I'll mention is that volunteer is a pretty broad term. For instance, we have volunteers that give up their mortal characters to become behind the scene admins, we have volunteers whose jobs it is to help newbies, and we have volunteers who do building tasks that don't require they have behind the scenes access (and thus must give up their mortal characters.)

With that in mind, my main comment is around the idea of bringing 10 volunteers up and having one left at the end of a month. Be choosier! Our MUDs are well-populated for modern day MUDs, but there is absolutely no way we could find 10 qualified volunteers in a month. On Achaea, for instance, we put put a call for Celani (step one in becoming a behind-the-scenes admin) at most every 4-6 months. The last two times we've accepted either 1 or 2 volunteers, rejecting a lot more than that. Even then, we lose volunteers, but our rate of loss is far far less than 90 percent in a month.

It's the nature of many players to want to help build the world they love, whether via RP events, building, helping with customer service, running contests, coding, etc, but the fact is that being an admin volunteer is completely different from being a player, and so we carefully interview candidates to see who we think can add value long-term and who will actually stay motivated long-term.

I heartily recommend putting quality over quantity with volunteers. Bad volunteers are much worse than no volunteers.

07-19-2014, 05:58 PM	#2
the_logos Legend Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Mill Valley, California Posts: 2,305	Re: When considering paying for coders I come from a somewhat different place than you, but one thing I'll mention is that volunteer is a pretty broad term. For instance, we have volunteers that give up their mortal characters to become behind the scene admins, we have volunteers whose jobs it is to help newbies, and we have volunteers who do building tasks that don't require they have behind the scenes access (and thus must give up their mortal characters.) With that in mind, my main comment is around the idea of bringing 10 volunteers up and having one left at the end of a month. Be choosier! Our MUDs are well-populated for modern day MUDs, but there is absolutely no way we could find 10 qualified volunteers in a month. On Achaea, for instance, we put put a call for Celani (step one in becoming a behind-the-scenes admin) at most every 4-6 months. The last two times we've accepted either 1 or 2 volunteers, rejecting a lot more than that. Even then, we lose volunteers, but our rate of loss is far far less than 90 percent in a month. It's the nature of many players to want to help build the world they love, whether via RP events, building, helping with customer service, running contests, coding, etc, but the fact is that being an admin volunteer is completely different from being a player, and so we carefully interview candidates to see who we think can add value long-term and who will actually stay motivated long-term. I heartily recommend putting quality over quantity with volunteers. Bad volunteers are much worse than no volunteers.