hutcheson - 4:05 am on Jul 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

>The name of the game is exposure, that it is free is just icing on the cake.

And this is a large part of the really bad feelings--both ways. Volunteers are likely to lean over backwards not to do things that feel like "being monetized for promotional purposes." They are playing The Other Game.

Now, there are single individuals who have performed numbers of pro-bono actions (like reviewing a website, or proofing a page) up in seven digits. Literally thousands of people have numbers up in five or six digits. Each of these people has donated thousands or tens of thousands of hours to this activity. (This is in ADDITION to, not in the course of, the usual workday, whatever it takes to earn a living.) Collectively, this group contributed the vast majority of the content on the ODP, PG, Wikipedia, CCEL, and other web landmarks -- as can be demonstrated by a bit of fairly trivial math.

Humans don't do such things to give free promotion to anyone, individual or corporate--only to give free expression to ideas and ideals.

Express (preferably by example) some kind of altruistic ideal, and these people will come running. But someone who hints (by word or action) that he sees nothing more in all this, than opportunities for self-promotion, has probably lost any chance of sympathy.