"NEW Forum Ambassador volunteers!" 6 February 2022 at 2:52AM edited 6 February 2022 at 2:58AM in Site feedback 7 replies 336 views

porkisnotmeat

Maybe you should pay people for their time instead of giving them nothing to help run your commercial entity for you?

Just a thought.

Would exploiting people like this get you in hot water with HMRC?  After all, you're essentially employing people for well below minimum wage, no money is below minimum wage the last I heard.

https://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/04/uo_lawsuit_sett.html


To be clear, Ultima Online had unpaid volunteers but they expected them to maintain a certain attendance and they were found to be considered employees because of it.  I appreciate this was a US case but do you really think your "volunteers" are not essentially employees if you're going to make them march to the beat of your drum?

Jenni_D

I'm wondering about the relevance of an EIGHTEEN years old blog?

MalMonroe

porkisnotmeat said:

Maybe you should pay people for their time instead of giving them nothing to help run your commercial entity for you?

Just a thought.

Would exploiting people like this get you in hot water with HMRC?  After all, you're essentially employing people for well below minimum wage, no money is below minimum wage the last I heard.

https://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/04/uo_lawsuit_sett.html


To be clear, Ultima Online had unpaid volunteers but they expected them to maintain a certain attendance and they were found to be considered employees because of it.  I appreciate this was a US case but do you really think your "volunteers" are not essentially employees if you're going to make them march to the beat of your drum?

You need to address your comments to :  [email protected]

Many places have volunteers. Sometimes it's a really good way to learn something new. There isn't any exploitation as people are free to apply or not. 

john539

You must be joking, after they casually hid/deleted Discussion Time & Moneysaving Arms forum boards with decades of threads & posts !!

Catsacor

If this is to be done fairly there should be volunteers from each age group/band or we're going to see an even more dividing bias on the forum, it's already here but unless this is addressed it's going to see those with more knowledge leaving.

sourcrates

RNLI are unpaid volunteers, same as board guides/ambassadors, roles are obviously different, but the ethos is the same, we all enjoy helping out, its not a paid position, but both get paid expenses, as with most voluntary roles.

We are already a very diverse group of individuals, I`m sure MSE will be looking to build on that framework.

Pollycat

porkisnotmeat said:

Maybe you should pay people for their time instead of giving them nothing to help run your commercial entity for you?

Just a thought.

Would exploiting people like this get you in hot water with HMRC?  After all, you're essentially employing people for well below minimum wage, no money is below minimum wage the last I heard.

https://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/04/uo_lawsuit_sett.html


To be clear, Ultima Online had unpaid volunteers but they expected them to maintain a certain attendance and they were found to be considered employees because of it.  I appreciate this was a US case but do you really think your "volunteers" are not essentially employees if you're going to make them march to the beat of your drum?

How can there be exploitation when MSE asked for volunteers?
As pointed out upthread this is no different to RNLI, charity shops, National Trust/English Heritage etc.

And lots of forums are run on the same basis. MSE had 'board guides' before 'ambassadors'.

Quoting a US case is pointless, especially a blog dating back 18 years. And a blog with pretty limited actual information.
It even starts with "it looks like..." and continues with "while I can't track down any official information...".

john539 said:

You must be joking, after they casually hid/deleted Discussion Time & Moneysaving Arms forum boards with decades of threads & posts !!

I don't think they 'hid' The Arms and DT.
They closed it after the beginning of the pandemic (I think June 2020) as the forum was so busy and threads in DT had always taken up a lot of their time.
This was stated on the forum at the time.

sourcrates

[DELETED BY FORUM TEAM]

This poster has a chip on their shoulder and was most likely active on the forum previously under another name, said some things they shouldn`t have, maybe had a run in with a board guide or two (hence the hostility to me in other posts) and got themselves banned.