hello folks!
with our backlog cleared and many new people around, now’s a good time to do our first-ever Beehaw Community Survey–the first of what will likely be(e) many to come. this survey should take no more than 5 or 10 minutes to fill out, so we strongly encourage you to do so when you are able to. you can find it at the following link:
Beehaw Community Survey
the survey is comprised of seven optional demographic questions to help us assess the overall identity of our community and three questions relating to Beehaw and the Fediverse. it also asks you about 17 possible communities we are considering and whether you would actively participate in them if made.
the survey will be open for approximately a week. we’ll definitely close it before July 1, so please get your responses in before that date. it’ll also be locally pinned for at least the next three days or so, so please mind that. thanks!
results will also be aggregated and posted on here in a summary sometime thereafter. no ETA on that though.
The miscommunication there is in the definition of ‘work’.
They don’t want to abolish employment, labour, or community contribution. They want to abolish work - the idea of a labour system that is tantamount to indentured servitude, labour as an obligation, labour for labour’s sake, labour at the expense of one’s wellbeing and QoL.
Labour you enjoy or find meaningful isn’t ‘work’ under that interpretation, and arguing for reforming ‘work’ like that is a soft-serve that ultimately ensures those kinds of labour continue to exist.
I agree the name itself is provocative, because the meaning of the word ‘work’ has come to refer to all labour as a whole. (Mostly because almost all labour these days is work, now.)
But their intent is not to abolish productivity, or that those who are productive and enjoy their labour are somehow wrong. It’s about pushing for everybody to be able to choose labour that is meaningful to them, so they can have that too.
So while a given individual within the movement may have joined because they interpreted it that way, they are minorities, and not the movement’s intended goal upon its founding.
I support language that is less likely to be misinterpreted by extremists, but that may not be feasible, and the movement itself is not against Beehaw’s values of community health. The majority of those in the movement are heavily interested in the wellbeing of our labouring communities.
Maybe something like c/HealthyLabour, c/LabourRights, or c/LabourEthics?
Seems confusing to substitute a non-standard definition of “work” into that movement. The standard definitions of “work” in any dictionary don’t seem to carry an implicit meaning of indentured obligation, at least how I read them.
If anything, the word “labor” often carries those negative connotations as much, if not more, than the word “work.” For example, someone who says “I labored for 3 years at that company” versus “I worked for 3 years at that company” seems to be giving additional, negative value judgment about that job and what it was like.
And I recognize that the movement itself has tried to narrow its focus on this particular definition of work versus labor, but I don’t think it accurately describes the broader societal understanding of either term.