This, and problems similar to this, are indeed a pretty major issue I foresee Project Hufflepuff needing to resolve. I’d read the Mops/Fanatics/Sociopaths essay but hadn’t thought about this particular issue from this angle before, thanks.
(That said, I’m also trying to be more careful about how I think about armchair-theorizing-sociology pieces, so I’m not sure if I’m fully endorsing your particular take on things yet)
(I’m not sure which part of this is “armchair-theorizing-sociology piece”, so let me share impressions:
The 3 specific examples are all observations: 2 on a CFAR event, 1 on a bay-lesswrong event
The “people putting other’s needs ahead of their own” comes from 2 persons who both bounced from the Bay for this reason
The “attempting value-pumping” / lack-of-dealcraft is ubiquitous everywhere where people are Getting Stuff Done; the only novel thing in the Bay is high turnaround / people onboarding allows this to be done systematically
The “let’s make stuff suck less” → “let’s all of you do my stuff” headfake is a non-profit-special; 2 attempts so far on me
The part where instead of attempting to “forbid parasiting”, I turn it around and ask “how can we make these parasites profitable?” is a special of mine, and has so far been very profitable, in a number of contexts.
I agree that this is an important issue we may have to deal with. I think it will be important to separate doing things for the community from doing things for individual members of the community. For example, encouraging people to bring food to a pot luck or volunteer at solstice is different from setting expectations that you help someone with their webpage for work or help out members of the community who facing financial difficulties. I’ve been surprised by how many times I’ve had to explain that expecting the community to financially support people is terrible on every level and should be actively discouraged as a community activity. This is not an organized enough community with high enough bars to membership to do things like collections. I do worry that people will hear a vague ‘Huffelpuff!’ call to arms and assume this means doing stuff for everyone else whenever you feasilbly can—It shouldn’t. It should be a message for what you do in the context of the public community space. What you choose to do for individuals is your own affair.
This, and problems similar to this, are indeed a pretty major issue I foresee Project Hufflepuff needing to resolve. I’d read the Mops/Fanatics/Sociopaths essay but hadn’t thought about this particular issue from this angle before, thanks.
(That said, I’m also trying to be more careful about how I think about armchair-theorizing-sociology pieces, so I’m not sure if I’m fully endorsing your particular take on things yet)
(I’m not sure which part of this is “armchair-theorizing-sociology piece”, so let me share impressions:
The 3 specific examples are all observations: 2 on a CFAR event, 1 on a bay-lesswrong event
The “people putting other’s needs ahead of their own” comes from 2 persons who both bounced from the Bay for this reason
The “attempting value-pumping” / lack-of-dealcraft is ubiquitous everywhere where people are Getting Stuff Done; the only novel thing in the Bay is high turnaround / people onboarding allows this to be done systematically
The “let’s make stuff suck less” → “let’s all of you do my stuff” headfake is a non-profit-special; 2 attempts so far on me
The part where instead of attempting to “forbid parasiting”, I turn it around and ask “how can we make these parasites profitable?” is a special of mine, and has so far been very profitable, in a number of contexts.
If you see none of these, I am happy for you. )
I agree that this is an important issue we may have to deal with. I think it will be important to separate doing things for the community from doing things for individual members of the community. For example, encouraging people to bring food to a pot luck or volunteer at solstice is different from setting expectations that you help someone with their webpage for work or help out members of the community who facing financial difficulties. I’ve been surprised by how many times I’ve had to explain that expecting the community to financially support people is terrible on every level and should be actively discouraged as a community activity. This is not an organized enough community with high enough bars to membership to do things like collections. I do worry that people will hear a vague ‘Huffelpuff!’ call to arms and assume this means doing stuff for everyone else whenever you feasilbly can—It shouldn’t. It should be a message for what you do in the context of the public community space. What you choose to do for individuals is your own affair.
Oh, that was directed at the original Mop/Fanatic/Sociopath post, and I didn’t mean “I don’t buy this”, just, “I want to think about this more.”