Some of the strongest communities on the Net, in fact, tout the opportunity to contribute significantly as a draw for their members. The Well, for example, was built on the backs of the hundreds of volunteers who host conference areas. "It was crucial to the Well," explains Williams. "Our model is, 'Everyone brings something to the picnic.' The opportunity to create something together with people you care about is not the bath water, it's the baby."

Likewise, nonprofit communities like SeniorNet couldn't possibly exist without their volunteer moderators. "Most nonprofits rely on volunteers. We're just grateful for whatever people can do," says Marcie Schwarz, director of education at SeniorNet. But, she adds, "It is a different situation when it's a public company. It's unusual for people to volunteer for a profit organization."

There are also companies, such as MiningCo.com, which have carefully avoided the volunteer system altogether. MiningCo.com has over 690 "guides" who run its specialty sites, bulletin boards and chat rooms, in return for 30 percent of revenues for their section; the top guides are making up to $11,000 a month, says CEO Scott Kurnit. As he puts it, "The best workers are entrepreneurs -- someone who really has a stake in the business and cares about what they are doing. The 10th best worker is a volunteer -- you can't make them do what you want to do, and they often tire of the task."

What does possess people to volunteer their time -- according to some AOL volunteers, up to 50 or 60 hours a week -- for a big, profitable and public company? In the early days of the community leader program, before AOL had a flat-rate pricing model, the answer was financial: A free account could be worth hundreds of dollars of connect-time charges a month. But the financial incentive flew out the window with the new $19.95-a-month pricing plan. Today, the answer most volunteers give is that they don't offer their time for AOL; they do it for their specific communities.

"I volunteer on AOL because of the people I've met along the way. When your offline life is difficult, and the people surrounding you don't seem to care, AOL is very appealing in the sense that most people feel the same way," explains one current volunteer who works in the Teen section, among others. "Once you become a community leader, you become attached to the people you work with, even if you don't care for the company itself."

Or, in the words of a former AOL volunteer: "We did it to reduce our bills, to give back to a community from which so many of us had gained so much, and because we simply loved what we did. There was a real team spirit and a feeling that one was truly appreciated and valued."

The volunteers may feel good about giving their time, but the for-profit online communities -- particularly the public companies like AOL, GeoCities or iVillage, which command high market valuations thanks at least in part to their devoted members -- are clearly profiting from those volunteers' services. The conundrum is that it would simply be too costly to try to pay dozens, hundreds or even thousands of volunteers for their time. Under traditional labor law standards, the issue of whether volunteers are performing vital company tasks becomes murky.

Not surprisingly, these community companies are touchy about the news of a potential Department of Labor investigation of AOL. The women's site iVillage, for example, which went public recently, has over 1,000 community volunteers. In a carefully worded statement, the company stated that "iVillage.com community leaders are true volunteers and not employees. Our community leaders typify the organic, member-driven nature that drives Internet community development in general ... Volunteerism is one of the central attributes of the Internet. Our hope is that the Internet's participatory nature is not what's at issue here."

Several of the community site leaders and law labor experts I spoke with wondered whether the unhappiness of the volunteers at AOL was even a Department of Labor problem. After all, several noted, volunteers always had the choice to quit volunteering if they were unhappy with the system. And it's also quite possible that the problem isn't volunteerism or community leaders in general, but specifically AOL's attitude toward community.

AOL's Brackbill says that AOL puts an emphasis on community, but most of the AOL habitués I spoke with disagreed. Many point to the flat-rate system as the downfall of community on AOL. Explains the former AOL employee: "AOL has done a turnaround on their attitude towards volunteers. At one point a volunteer was a person who kept people online talking -- and as long as they were online, all their friends were online too. When it was per-hour rates, people could spend $2,000 a month easily. When they turned it to an ad model, with flat-rate pricing, volunteers became a liability. Every person online is a modem someone can't use."

Others, like "Moozie," agree: "With a flat rate, AOL had so many more people coming online that they didn't have to woo people to stay there. People were replaceable. So what if someone's account got terminated or they weren't happy with the system? A newbie would sign on; there was always someone there to take their place."

The issue of how AOL treats its community and hosts is also affecting its new acquisition Netscape, where the community bulletin boards recently had their doors closed and their paid community hosts dismissed. Some of the hosts suspect that AOL will replace the boards with chat rooms and unpaid volunteers because they are cheaper to maintain.

What will happen next in the Department of Labor case? The labor law experts agree that it's impossible to say. As Jim Nelson, a labor lawyer in San Diego explains, "The time track is infinite here. They could start a formal investigation tomorrow; or they could decide it isn't worth pursuing, or there's not enough evidence, and it will just die and you'll never hear that there was even an investigation." But if AOL is ultimately found to be at fault, the company would not only be forced to pay compensatory wages to potentially thousands of volunteers but also back taxes on their wages to the IRS -- not a cheap endeavor.

A decision like that could have potentially huge ramifications on how AOL, and other Internet companies, deal with their communities and volunteers in the future. But the volunteers who are talking to the Department of Labor think it's worth it if it will improve the conditions at AOL. As another former community leader sighs, "A community driven by squeezing the most out of its volunteers in as short a time period, with quantity replacing quality screening and training, and with political persuasion more important than competence and caring, is not somewhere I wish to be."
salon.com | April 16, 1999

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