Compensation for Guild Efforts

Because I have mentioned this in a couple of other threads, I thought would spawn it as its own discussion, as it sounds like a new sim purchase could be sooner than later.

I would like the city to put together a budget for the compensation of Artisanal Collective (AC) members who perform regular and special tasks for the city. As we begin to grow, our public-land overhead in adjacent sims will drop, creating a larger surplus which can be used to support creative governmental works. I'd like a percentage of this monthly surplus set aside to pay for past and current efforts.

Instead of regular stipends, we should give payments based on RA-sanctioned measurable events, such as:

1. Entering N'burg info into history.secondserver.net.
   
2. Holding regular Thinker's meetings and instructional courses.
   
3. Rebuilding the Rathaus and Museum.
   
4. Proctoring the elections.
   
5. Upgrading the website.

When I first started my career in SL, I was able to earn my land-use fees by selling items that I had made myself. As my productivity turned from creating my own wares to creating N'burg infrastructure my income has declined to essentially zero. I would like for there to be a way for productive members of the City (soon to be Union) to be paid for their work.

I'd also like to see past work paid as well. As Eugene can attest, I spent a couple of weeks working until 04:00 putting together the initial sim, laying out a map, making homes, making address signs, making street signs, etc. Kendra also did a large amount of work for Christmas (this year's and last year's). I'm sure there's much more.

What do you think about this? How much of the surplus should be diverted to payments versus savings? What past events are significant enough for compensation? How will future efforts be proposed by the Guild?

~Ulrika~

I'm a big proponent of paid work, and I think that civic works in Neualtenburg should be compensated *provided that the compensation is negotiated for and agreed upon in advance*.

I see several problems in giving compensation for past work. As I understand it, many civic projects in Nburg were done in the spirit of volunteerism, and neither the city nor the person working on the project expected payment. It is unclear to me that the city would have approved of many of the projects had the matter of compensation been brought up at the beginning.

Also, because a lot of these works are volunteer efforts, there seems to have been no bid process. Thus we don't know if any of these works could have been done more cheaply.

Giving compensation for work already done could also make it difficult for financial planning. That is, we could be opening the gates to people who might do things we think are voluntary, then turn around and bill the city for services rendered.

Finally, while the city is making money now, I fear the coffers would be emptied, and then some, if we were to justly compensate everyone for all the good works they have done in Neualtenburg.

I'm sure every citizen is grateful for all the time and effort that people have put in into civic works at Neualtenburg. Perhaps a good way to express this gratitude is to build a monument to the tireless efforts of Neualtenburg's volunteers. (ask the sculptor how much he expects to be paid).

Going forward, I think it would be prudent policy for Neualtenburg to state that it will only pay for civic works if the payment has been negotiated and agreed upon before embarking on the project.

I agree.

You are mistaken.

At the time there were basically four active members left in the city (Ulrika, Gwyn, Sudane, Eugene). By that time Sudane had already put forward the notion that there would be an end to volunteer work. Since then, the issue of compensation has been around since the completion of this work and has been put off until we were profitable.

If you'd like, I could take the website offline, delete all structures I own in the city center (85% of the city) and I could then set them all up again from scratch, if that would make you feel better.

I am also amenable to being paid for whatever price the Guild Master negotiates for me in credit for land-use fees. My initial bond payment will be gone soon and I have no RL money to support SL anymore (new baby plus nanny). Thus I must become an income-earning member of the city to sustain myself.

~Ulrika~

I really find this puzzling. Personally, if I expected to be paid for my work, I'd have negotiated the price before I did any of the work.

Please do, if it is of no inherent value to you. Don't even bother resetting them up, if you don't want to.

No, really. I understand a great many things have been left as informal arrangements and understandings. I understand the idea that the people who did work for the city may very well have done it with the understanding that they were to get paid, and I believe arrangements should be made. But I agree with FR - the time to make concrete agreements was beforehand.

That said, what's done is done.

Agreed. I was a naive to expect that my initial work setting up the sim and starting the nonprofit would be compensated as planned by those who came later. I think the only thing to do at this point is to dismantle the infrastructure in the city I never planned to donate and then participate in a bidding process with others to have it rebuilt. When I return from vacation I'll remove the:

1. Marktplatz
   
2. The city store and the Kaufhaus on the Marktplatz.
   
3. All Fachwerks that are still owned by me.
   
4. All streets.
   
5. All street signs.
   
6. All address plaques.
   
7. All business signs.
   
8. The suspension bridge.
   
9. All trees.

I'll donate the city walls, since those were Kendra's and they are a beast to set up.

To give you an idea of the market rate for a professional looking structure in the city, I paid Kendra L$30,000 for Schloss Neualtenburg. I look forward to the bidding process, so we can do this right.

For the website, I'll keep up the basic informational pages but dismantle features such as user login, bank features, wiki access, the voting system, etc. and will sell them to the city against competing alternatives. One of the reasons that we created an Artisanal branch in the city is to protect artisans against exploitation. It'll be interesting to see how the AC and RA work as a team to negotiate the preservation of the existing infrastructure or alternative to see how they support the compensated reconstruction of the city.

~Ulrika~

(getting a large popcorn and settling in to watch this negotiation)

I volunteer my free services to help in the rebuilding. I'll do anything for people who trust me.

I see what you are doing. It is very obvious. I can’t imagine that no one else is catching on to you. In your greed for attention you have suck low enough to blackmail the city. That is all you are doing, and frankly I am tired of it. This idea that you had was a great one, and N-burg could have been the future of SL if it were not for one thing. That one thing is you need for attention. You LOVE to stir the pot. You love to see people riled up over your posts. You love the name recognition that you get by doing it. I am tired of it. You are keeping Nburg from becoming everything it could be. I am done, as of today my land is for sale and I am not paying another dime to this project unless there are some changes made.

PS I know of people that will bid 0 to rebuild Nburg, so either meet it, or take your stuff and leave like you said you where going to do last year.

I discarded my angrier post, since others are providing the anger.

However: Ulrika, you're the one that keeps bringing up the section on ultimatiums in the constitution. If you want payment, draw up suggested charges and payment schedules and we can proceed from there. If you're trying to hold your collective work "hostage", save us all some time and shoot the damned hostage already.

I trust you.. Couldn't get me something to eat cud ya?!

Sorry just trying to lighten the mood is all!

Ulrika, you retain IP rights to all that work, do you not? You could treat the Neualt work as prototyping, and start selling commercial versions of it at market prices, advertised in the classifieds. Your entire voting system would be a terrific product. SL has 'voting machines' -- they're like toys. A secret ballot voting system is essential for some organizations, and just more appropriate for many decisionmaking situations in SL. One example is when a group must choose between the work of person A and person B, and nobody wants to offend their friends.

I recommend not offering to tear down your builds. You'd be surprised at how easily people will jump at the chance to get rid of good builds just so they can build their own stuff. For example, Lordfly Digeridoo once built a very attractive public library in SL -- one of the best buildings I've seen, with an enclosed walkway spanning a narrow channel between two islands. If you look for it now all you'll see is the usual patchwork of lots with builds that could be seen anywhere on the main grid.

In my professional life, I have always found out that things unwritten carry little weight. I've learned my lesson the hard way.

For the past months (since around summer 2004), the City and the Guild have a working arrangement on the building of civic infrastructures and public places. This agreement wasn't either easy or peaceful — it actually was quite hard to hammer out between many meetings of the Guild and the RA, and definitely involved how past work should be considered, while continue to work towards future projects. The principle that all work would thenceforward be paid — even if it means the City entering into debt with the Guild — was established at that time. Slowly, over time, the City has been paying for everything that was comissioned (and some uncomissioned works were, indeed, abandoned — like the MoCA — or even demolished).

Towards the end of the year, we managed to find a small surplus as the City grew. Not unsurprisingly, this meant that comissioned work was paid for, and the debt of the City towards the Guild dimished. Still, the past RA terms have failed to propose a budget for the future — mostly because the amount of available cash was enough for sporadic decisions (ie. sponsoring a fountain, creating the new Rathaus), but not medium-term planning (ie. setting aside a budget for events and activities inside the City, on-going marketing/advertising efforts, other projects requiring funding like the MoCA or the University, and so on).

Also, the current agreement covered civic infrastructures, but not necessarily all the other many aspects of the Guild work. It's fair to say that this will come in the future. It's still viewed by most that the principle of all work towards the City has to be paid for somehow (at least, until the RA reverts its former decision ). So far, however, things like events or Civic Classes or promotion were done on a volunteer base, discussed in the RA meetings or on the forum, and viewed by the volunteers as volunteer work — tey hardly expect compensation for those. They waived the right of getting compensation on their work by volunteering and not expecting anything in return.

While it's fair to demand retribution/compensation for past efforts before the agreement between City & Guild was established, this is actually the opposite that was agreed upon by both Guild and RA. The current agreement is not retroactive (of course, both the Guild or the RA may revert their positions on that).

Ulrika, I took your first post in this thread as a request, both towards the Guild of which you're a member, as to the RA, to meet and discuss the issue of extending the current agreement retroactively. In this respect, while I don't speak for the other members of the RA, I think it would help the decision process if you managed to set a price tag for your efforts, that can be used as a discussion and negotiation base. This was the same approach used for setting up the agreement during the last summer in the first place. Then it'll be up to the RA to agree or not upon that extension.

Your third post, however, is not a "request" any more. It's bordering on an ultimatum: either the RA & Guild enter an agreement now, or you will remove your content immediately. Well, you wrote the articles about citizens setting ultimatums to the city, so you know the consequences of those as well as anybody else.

If I were in your shoes, I would certainly reconsider your position. Yes, the Marktplatz and the Fachwerks need to be redecorated/changed anyway, so we'd probably even welcome your deleting them. However, remember that if there is a "bidding contract" on redoing them, your action of unilaterally removing content without wishing to enter a fair negotiation will be taken in consideration when appreciating your bid. Mind you, the last urban requalification projects did not have bids at all — the City also has an understanding with the Guild, set up on the very same agreement, that all civic infrastructure is requested from the Guild first, and that only when the Guild can't accept more contracts, the City will outsource it from somewhere else (that way, by waiving compensation on past work, the Guild ensured that the RA would always outsource all future work from the Guild). The way the Guild deals with the contracts is up to their internal procedures.

I also fail to understand your sentence that starts with:

since in all this process it was the Guild that was involved from beginning to end and negotiated in the best possible way to protect its members' interests, while not compromising the future relationship. Your words seem to imply that you'd like a special negotiation outside the Guild for your personal case. I hardly understand how you can expect the Guild to protect yourself against what you see as exploitation, since your "demands" are being done outside Guild channels.

So, I would say that you should present the Guild the suggestion to approach the RA with your costs and demand, in orderly fashion, that the current agreement is extended retroactively. Mind you, the current understanding of the agreement is that the time for these demands have long since elapsed, that past time developing the city were taken into account in the current agreement, and that, instead of retributions of past work, the Guild has negotiated a different deal — one that looks towards the future of Neualtenburg, and not the past.

Personally, I'm both shocked and surprised that you're now advocating an unilateral breach of the Guild's agreement with the RA, instead of working with the Guild and having them discussing the issue over with the RA, as has been traditionally the case.

Just as a reference and because I think it's relevant, this is from the NBurg TOS.

I quoted the entire section, (which as I pointed out earlier has what appears to be some fairly contradictory statements in it), but I highlighted the part that I think is relevant part to this discussion.


If "the service" is Nburg, (and I always thought this is what it refers to), then this whole section and especially the highlighted part seems to imply that anything one makes for Nburg is able to be used and reproduced by Nburg for it's own purposes.

In fact the entire purpose of this section seems to be to cover off exactly the situation envisioned here.

If stuff is made for Nburg by a resident that is in the interests of Nburg to reuse of promote or copy, then they can. the implication is that some things are inextricably a part of the projeckt despite the separate IP rights.

I could see how it could be argued that the Fatchwerks in particular, as big a part of the Nburg "look" as they are, despite any copyrights Ulrika has, something that Nburg can legally copy and use regardless of whether she leaves or not.

At least that's the way I read it.

Wow! After 24 hours of nonstop travel we finally made it to Istanbul. The baby was a dream only crying a few times along the entire trip. We are exhausted (but I always have a little more energy to hit the forums). What I've seen so far of the city (the ride from the airport to Taksim is amazing. It's unlike any other European city I've seen. Expect it to shape ideas for future sims coming to a project near you. (Yes, I'll take digital photos for city textures. )

After a lot of thinking, I've come to realize that I will never see a return on the massive initial investment I put into the sim, as I failed to get the negotiation in writing (with myself humorously enough) and thus it should be dismantled. It's the only way I'll be able to proceed in this project without continuing to feel the growing animosity towards latecomers whom I feel take for granted the massive amount of my personal work and risk that went into this project at the beginning and refuse to compensate me for it. The problem is solved this way.

Descend not into rage though, as this decision coincides with a bold proposal by Sudane, behind which I'm throwing my full support (see the appropriate thread shortly for details). We'll take lessons learned and redesign the center of the sim to be more conducive to commerce, to prepare for expansion, and to improve the marketability of hard-to-sell lots. In the end it should be a win for everyone.

~Ulrika~

I was primarily thinking of the period shortly before the opening of the new "private sim" N-burg, when it was not "you making an agreement with yourself", since that was the time it was first agreed the volunteer work must stop, am I correct?

If asking you obey your own damn rules causes such animosity...

Actually, the teen grid dropoff point is a re-engineering of the original building, turned into a coffee shop.

The ORIGINAL building also didn't span the island -- Jade Lily made extensive addititions to the library. My half was the one closest to Seacliff.

I advocated this position from when I first joined (Dec 2004), and continued to do so, since I felt there were contortions in the vision, the ideals, caused by people donating their time and effort, and expecting an emotional return for it... contorting the political process. It was never "agreed the volunteer work must stop..." until the rather weak resolution that Gwyn refers to... weak, but better than nothing. In reality, there was no money. And also, as a truth, people will acknowledge that we can agree on the value that work must be compensated, but, on the ground, the energy of the vision caused all of us to carry on our contributions, without a contract, without even trying to define a compensation, because we were motivated to make something work. Simple human enthusiasm. I myself planted most of the trees outside the walls, and drew the original plot lines.... built the roads outside the walls. It was natural. It was in violation of my own principle. But, I was caught up in the spirit of that time. There was no expectation of personal benefit, except to see a vision (the vision of the home page of the website) succeed.


Sudane

This is incorrect. The project dwindled down to about four people and three of us agreed to try and save it by making the leap to a captive audience in a private sim. At that point the project became a business for me, having invested US$300 (or so) of my own money and 80 hours (or so) in teraforming, structure building, and city layout. I was virtually alone in this massive initial investment, although as we progressed, Sudane pitched in with outside lots, and Eugene moved property like a snake-oil salesman.

It has always been my position that this massive amount of work (two weeks of nights awake until 4 am), without which the project would not have gone forward, would be reimbursed -- just like the US$300 investment. I have never held the position that the initial investments, either work or monetary, should be donations.

I'll put a value of US$1000 on the work, although at my going RL rate it would be closer to US$12,000 (). Since I am in Turkey and am abiding to their customs, this price should be considered a starting point for bartering. Once agreed upon, this number will be used as a budgetary benchmark for the cost of laying out future sims and divided among those who construct the sim.


However, I'm still leaning heavily towards deconstructing, rebidding, and rebuilding these contested structures, due to the fact that this critical piece of work, without which we wouldn't be here discussing this, is discounted and taken for granted by a populace that wants to share in the benefits and not the burdens. That's not something an ethical collective engages in and is beneath the standards of Neualtenburg. We need to start over on this and do it right.

~Ulrika~

Would you be interested in setting up this build in N'burg as a permanent structure when we expand sims? After seeing Cory Edo's brilliant work, it reminded me that we should tap the skills of external professional SL builders.

~Ulrika~

Thank you for making a concrete statement.



Ulrika, I joined Neualtenburg in June. Since that time, I have paid US$111.36 in intial land cost, plus US$148.98 (18.10 x 7, plus 22.28 for the month of January) in monthly land fees. In addition, I have run multiple civics classes, offered minor scripting and building advice in the way I'm inclined to do, and generally quietly boost, support, and encourage the growth of Neualtenburg as is within my meager ability. I was one of the first (and, I think, possibly the first) beyond you four to "take a chance" on the reborn city.

I ain't trying to compare work. It's a small thing compared to starting the ball rolling, the extensive building of the city itself, and so on and so on. What building I have done in Neualtenburg has been for myself, in the form of the Tower and my small event area... but no one, not you, not anyone, is going to sit and imply I'm a freeloader without a rebuttal on my end. I've done all that's been asked of me.

You've named a price, the city can haggle, and I hope all concerned will walk out smiling, or at least grimacing a bit less. I ask only that you watch the direction of your insults while doing so.

It was unnecessary (and unproductive) to derive personal insult from that post.

I have also put in a large amount of work since this initial investment (we all have), including paying L$30k for the construction of the Schloss, a privatized build which is a landmark to the city, and the construction of N'burg's first illegal build -- the SL-famous Secret Undergound Tiny's City.

~Ulrika~

I... guess? My copy of the original structure is plywood texture.

Pardon my ignorance, but N-burg is all traditional/european architecture, or a fair bit of it. The library looks nothing like anything in N-burg now. Won't it look out of place?

niiiiiiiice.

Perhaps you should.

Note: A reply to post #23

The town and southeastern valley are zoned Medieval Bavarian, but other areas outside the walls are modern or mixed style. Ulrika said in her post "when Neualtenburg expands". Although no formal plans exist for expansion, there is quite a bit of thought that a second sim, if/when it comes, will have a different style and/or be zoned less restrictively than the current one.