---
title: "Do community efforts work?"
date: 2010-12-14
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2010/12/14/do-community-efforts-work/
---
# Do community efforts work?
Despite some contributions, the majority of volunteers are hindered by too many obstacles -- access to information, time, standards, and more -- to contribute much. As such, I've begun to change my expectations from content creation to content review and feedback.

### Access to Information

The community volunteer, as an outsider, faces difficulties accessing the right people and information. As a volunteer, you may not know the project manager, the quality assurance lead, the developers, and other contacts that have information you need. Without access to the right information sources, documentation efforts are vain.

If you do have contact information, you may be contributing only in your spare time, outside of regular working hours. So you'll be left with email and voicemail exchanges, if you're bold enough to even make contact. If you've ever tried to get information when no one is in the office, you know how frustrating that can be.

Trust also becomes an issue, because many times project information is sensitive or still in deliberation. Project managers may be hesitant to disclose the full facts to an outsider they don't know, whom they've never met or worked with.

### Time and Sequentiality

Another problem is time. Many volunteers have full-time jobs, families, and little time. The idea with volunteer work is to harness the long tail: if 100 volunteers each contribute two hours in a day, that's more than a month of labor of one full-time employee. The problem is, tasks often cannot be chunked into two hour increments that can be done independent of a specific sequence.

Think about designing and creating a quick reference guide, or configuring an online help. The tasks can't be broken down into two-hour chunks that can be created by different people at different times. Many times tasks are sequential -- they build on one another. You must first gather the information, then organize it, then illustrate it, then lay it out, then review it, then test it, then publish it, and and so on. The whole work may take 200 hours to complete, but each phase builds on the previous one, more or less, so distributing the entire work to the community would require that you spread out the work in phases. This kind of coordination is tough and complicates volunteer efforts.

### Style and Standards

Another problem with community contributions deals with style and standards. I'm a picky writer, and anything the community produces will be perceived as coming from my group, or me. If a deliverable doesn't match my standards, style, or preference, I'm less inclined to support it. When a volunteer submits what I feel are sub- or non-standard deliverables or content, I face an uncomfortable situation that I'm not sure how to handle tactically -- offend the volunteer by refusing the work, accept the work and lower confidence in my team, or spend time reworking the deliverable to my satisfaction, which may require more work than creating it from scratch.

It's impractical to expect volunteers to be familiar with the intricacies of our department's style, to know my own preferences for formats, etc. I might as well expect a writer from another company to magically match the style and approach of our own.