Activity Levels, if you don't use it, you lose it.

[Slothy]

To start, painting the words "efficiency" and "bottom-line" to be dangerous, bad, scary words is just plain incorrect. It's silly fear-mongering, "Don't listen, he doesn't believe in fun."

I disagree. Perhaps he's having a bit of fun with his analogy, but he's making the point that happy people are more efficient people. A reality I've encountered many a time. He's against the idea of being too focused on efficiency and forgetting this place is supposed to be fun. On a side note, aside from the prospect of staff members disappearing I'm not sure why there's a lot of talk of efficiency going on at all. Certainly we want the front site and news articles running in a somewhat efficient and timely manner, but as far as the forums this isn't a business and we aren't producing a product. Where is the downside to inactive staff aside from it being kind of confusing?

And to mention the proposal of automatically unstaffing inactive staff with the option to regain their title upon request, even near the layoff of paid employees who worked for their livelihood at their jobs is just plain disrespectful to people who have been in that situation.

Strange. I don't think I felt disrespected by his analogy. My emotion chip must be malfunctioning. I honestly think you're taking his analogy a bit too seriously. He's not actually saying that unstaffing someone here is comparable to firing people who need their job to live. He's just saying that a happy staff working in a relatively stress free environment are a more productive staff.

Feel free to correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth Bleys.

I'm going to agree with Quin and say that you're looking at this as too much of a business model, which it is not. It's a community. Everyone is part of it. Staff is a part of it, and they happen to have their own sub-community. It's not a business, there's no direct chain of command here. Staff is staff collectively - everyone's opinions get to be heard and listened to with respect.

Indeed. If anything we're more of a hippie commune with a somewhat formalized committee of people who maintain the community infrastructure and deal with ne'er do wells. It's like a socialist paradise here.