[ripe-list] Follow up on the Dubai AGM - RIPE WG Chair meeting vouchers

On Thu, 18 Jan 2018 20:00:35 +0000
Job Snijders <job at instituut.net> wrote:

> Isn't everyone in RIPE a volunteer? It isn't just the chairs that do
> 'work' in a working group. Without working group participants, there
> is no working group. Every participant volunteers to contribute in
> some way or form, so I'd be careful to segregate chairs from the rest
> of the community.

Job makes an excellent point here. For the past decade I've been
participating in events hosted by CCC in Germany where we had similar
discussions every few years. As the event (34c3 last month) has grown
to 15.000 participants by now we can look back and declare the model a
success insofar as there wouldn't have been hundreds of volunteers
this year, had we introduced any special treatment for any of the
participating teams.

From what I understand other organizations like IETF also follow this
model of participation even though on a smaller scale.

While it might look like a good idea to compensate the work of people
who contribute considerable amounts of time and effort one would enter
a very tricky territory rather soon. It starts with questions as
easy and obvious as "Who should be compensated, who shouldn't?" or "How
much compensation is fair?" and leads amongst many other things to
the creation of unhealthy incentives for people who might become
financially dependent on the "job" they are fulfilling in the
community. While these are just a few examples, it is easy to
extrapolate how the small inconvenience of having no compensation is
dwarfed by the Pandora's box of trouble that the introduction of
preferential treatment would open.

To me working in such a framework always helped to maintain a feeling of
mutual respect between all contributing people because every single
action performed by those peers is rather based on the spirit of
contribution than on fulfilling a paid job. Working in such an
environment is an excellent balance to our daily work lives. Creating
artificial trenches between individuals and groups by offering
compensation or incentives in the end always drives communities apart.

Just my 0.02 CHF,
-mh