I think the Gawker authors just get money based on the traffic to their articles rather than having any direct relation to the advertising done in them. At least that's what the implication seems to have been every time I saw people discussing this stuff.

Perhaps the thieves were from a James Bond movies and thought that taking the monitors was all there was to stealing a computer. You know, like how shooting the monitors is all it takes to destroy a computer.

I guess I should also go over your three points...

You realize your argument is basically that people shouldn't be allowed to work for someone else's profit for free right?

That's incredibly arbitrary. Who cares if they are providing content for a game in development versus a game in release? It makes no difference to the following:

The point of that comment was simply to explain that not everyone who is a volunteer is gaining valuable experience and/or contacts. Sometimes people spend their time in ways that helps people other than themselves without getting anything for it and there is nothing wrong with that.

You are looking at payment solely in terms of money. Does a person getting to eat without their expense not qualify as a sort of profit on their part? Sure, it's a much more basic need than enterprise, but it's still a selfless expense of energy and time that could have been spent elevating your own position in life…

Someone being unwilling to do something for free doesn't at all imply that someone will pay them for doing that work. That work is valueless until someone else places a value on it. On the other hand, everyone being unwilling to do something for free implies that if someone wants that done they will have to pay for it…

Soliciting? They aren't calling people up and asking them to contribute like telemarketers. They aren't asking specific people for specific things. They are just allowing people to send them stuff with the intention of letting them use it.

You just keep confusing the issue. It was never about general superficiality in terms of cosmetics. It was about the changes being immaterial to the topic of discussion. Holy shit, what is so hard to understand about that?

You've misunderstood the context.

Accepting people's contributions while intending to profit off of them doesn't make you a crook. I don't give a damn about the exposure angle. If you willingly give something away without expecting compensation, then you shouldn't expect to be compensated for it. That's just Indian giving.

You are entirely focused on appearance, but the word superficial isn't only concerned with appearance, it's also concerned with the immaterial.

It's superficial with regard to the topic of the discussion. If the stuff you are describing isn't of consequence to deciding whether or not something marks a generational shift, then it has no bearing.

Mods are a major motivational for some people to buy games in the first place.

Also, no one complains when a game is built on the back of crowd sourced content like levels (LBP) or character designs (Spore), but for some reason when it's music people get passionate about it? What a load of bullshit.

Unless you know... maybe your motivation for doing something isn't compensatory.

"So if you expect to make money in part as a result of my work, you had better be prepared to send some of it my way."

And what does someone who volunteers to work at a soup kitchen for a weekend get exactly?

The same argument could be used to say that people shouldn't volunteer to build homes for the homeless since that reduces the incentive for the city to hire contractors to make housing projects.