I'd just like to point out that travelling doesn't change your citizenship. I'm still a Swedish citizen even I spent 6 months in the US, setting foot on foreign soil doesn't change that. Keith isn't swapping out his passport for a French one when he's in Paris, he's still a US citizen paying US tax and using and American passport.

I find this digression in this thread really bizarre. It's pretty cut-and-dry why non-US volunteers can't be hired because of the aforementioned tax reasons. Bringing up where is at the moment just comes off as sour grapes.

Back on topic:

• MMs don't get paid in GAs?
• I definitely support more forum moderation.

We do get gold status ^_^ So technically we are paid 5$ a month

I live in the US and have no interest in volunteering, so this isn't even a thing for me, really. I just don't understand not taking the help that's being offered. Do volunteers from out of the US mean tax stuff, too? What if they have no interest in being promoted to a paid position?

Because there are already people not from the USA in paid positions. And, I don't talk about Keith.

I really feel like this should be judged on competences and feel like the politic might be archaic.

Yes, the politics make accounting easier for staff. But, I don't want Subeta to pass on people with more competences because it's easier for the accounting.

Being a citizen of X country is irrelevant for the most part. It is where you are doing work and/or/if you fall under specific expat/foreign status categorizations, etc. Eg, Non US citizens working in the US pay US taxes. US expats overseas pay US and native country's tax. Of course, there are always exceptions.

All of these things make it seem obvious to me that there are some very great options for eager and competent volunteers not located in the US.

Just a note but gold accounts do count as money and as far as I understand it they also need to be counted for tax purpose as well.

That said, mini-mods have always had the potential to be promoted to UA status as that was the purpose of the system originally. I went from mini-mod/UA/minimod of the same forum that I originally was a mini-mod for. My co mini-mod at that time was Angelina who was promoted to UA roughly around the same time I was.

As for US citizenship, unless one formally gives up their US citizenship they are a US citizen regardless of where they live. You need to formally file paperwork and go before the US embassy and give up your citizenship to no longer be considered a US citizen. So, regardless of whether or not Keith is currently living in a different country, he is still a US citizen.

State clearly upon hiring that there is no possibility for UA promotion. That's it.

Besides, it's not like anyone was promoted to UA since the turn of the decade. Promotion doesn't happen enough to justify keeping a rule that's preventing Subeta to get the best candidate possible.

As far as I know the only staff member currently and I could be wrong with non-US citizenship is Rah and she's been around for a while. I also don't know all her tax information obviously nor do I think it's my business to ask how that works tax information wise.

That said, in regards to whether or not staff should hire non-US or not my stance on that is that it's pretty much up to Keith and staff overall on what the policy is.

I'm not sure if she's still living there, but I'm pretty sure Cranberry's from Canada. (from giant tater island, if my memory is good)

I realize the thread has gone in a different direction since this has been mentioned (does it warrant it's own feedback/suggestion forum or is it too similar to this?) but I want to mention my support of this- the sticky topics really need cleaning up. Many have very outdated links that either link to the www site or redirect to the forum main page, or to threads that seem to be half gone and missing? Plenty have very old content too.

Anyway, really glad to see that more Minimods are gonna be selected soon. Can't wait to see the forums tidied up a bit. :D

The thing is, there are plenty of competent people from the US. Being a minimod is not a complicated job, it's not like the site needs to outsource to find somebody capable of moving forums, and warning users. I'm sure Subeta has a crap ton of users to choose from.

There are many more legalities to hiring volunteers to moderate than one may think, and being from another country may also add to the complexity of the situation.

I believe that Subeta can also get away with programmers/artists being hired from out of country as they can pay them more as a contractor rather than a staff member. Which doesn't necessarily apply to ColdDragon or Rah... but you know.

Mini mods aren't actually in charge of warning users, as far as I'm aware they can only lock topics, move topics, and file tickets (which normal users can do too) so it's even less complicated than that.

If the competition can hire worldwide, why is it too complicated to do it here?

The US-only politic is also a massive stopper on hiring paid staff, such as artists and programmers. (As it was indeed enforced in the last hiring messages)

Most of my post is going to be assumptions, but...

Because the competition often doesn't look at the legalities of it all. Often, sites don't pay their artists or even their art admins for hours; rather, they are paid per item/pet/etc. They technically aren't staff with benefits, taxes, etc. I'm assuming that most staff on Subeta are hired as actual staff. If some of these sites were challenged they would probably have to change certain policies and how they pay their staff (for example paying someone $5 for an item that takes an hour is probably not good practice). I'm also going to assume that if I was a UA for Subeta that it would be required to pay me the minimum wage in my province, which is going to be more than if I were an American (also they'd have to look into the labour laws of my province or country).

There's a lengthy argument here about having to pay moderators. It's a bit of a messy argument and I don't think it ever came to a conclusion as the law around volunteer moderators is complicated.

http://www.virtualpetlist.com/threads/flsa-us-laws-volunteer-staff.27857/

Again, I don't think Subeta is suffering by only hiring Americans. Most smaller companies hire within their own country, unless they expand and are looking for cheap labour elsewhere. It's not as if the US is that small and there aren't amazing artists and programmers available. Yes, there are amazing artists from around the world, but if it complicates things in the slightest why not just stick with Americans?

Doesn't do something with accounting for the site? Perhaps she can shed some light on the legalities of it all?

Salary was fixed when I was on staff, I was paid X per month. I could tell you privately how it worked, but I was way better paid at the other job I held at the time.

Working for Subeta, when I did so, was fun. But, I couldn't rely on that for a living because it was way below minimum wage in my province.

WELL THEN... I don't know haha.

I do agree it sucks for the users who want to be a part of the site, and are blocked by a mostly unexplained rule. Back in the day I wanted to apply, and was told after the application that they couldn't hire me. International users would be good to cover the "off hours" where most Americans are asleep.

I guess all I can do right now is speculate.

I noticed that the forms are REALLY slow not much activity. I mean for the HA forms one is perfect to watch it

Just wondering if there have been any updates in this issue. Is staff any closer to hiring?