This resonates, and "missing banister" seems like a key factor that I hadn't thought about before. Volunteers, and volunteer-run organizations, are all over the map in terms of how well they do what they set out to do, but knowing you're part of a supportive group versus fearing that it's all on you to sink or swim is a huge psychological factor that has to affect both the work and the people around you.
Third -- subtlest but actually most important -- it reduces the capacity of the active members. Folks running volunteer orgs tend to think of each person as having a set amount they can do, but that's over-simplified. If the environment is isolating and combative, the emotional labor needed to get anything done increases, and that person just can't accomplish as much as they would in a more-supportive environment.
Yee yes yes. And the flip-side: in a supportive environment, people can often do more than they thought they could in a "normal" one, let alone where there's a missing banister. I see this on Codidact; we're a tiny team with way more that we want to do than we have cycles to do, but we all believe in what we're doing and the result is that people try harder to pitch in. I did not expect to be writing code on this project -- not much of a developer any more, didn't know Ruby at all, didn't have dev tools... -- but I care, we're understaffed, I can at least fix small UI bugs right?, and now I'm doing more, because the people who already know how to do those things are there to help me. I'm learning a ton, I think I've gotten to the point of being a net contributor rather than when I was more of a time-sink for others, I know I'll have more questions and need more help, and I know that's ok. Without that visible support in place, I never would have started down the path to server code because it would have been too frustrating, even for a baseline volunteer team and not even considering the obstacles of a more problematic culture.
This is a long-winded way of saying that a missing banister doesn't just reduce capacity, but also throttles and prevents more and better capacity from those same people in the future (assuming they stick around at all).
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This resonates, and "missing banister" seems like a key factor that I hadn't thought about before. Volunteers, and volunteer-run organizations, are all over the map in terms of how well they do what they set out to do, but knowing you're part of a supportive group versus fearing that it's all on you to sink or swim is a huge psychological factor that has to affect both the work and the people around you.
Yee yes yes. And the flip-side: in a supportive environment, people can often do more than they thought they could in a "normal" one, let alone where there's a missing banister. I see this on Codidact; we're a tiny team with way more that we want to do than we have cycles to do, but we all believe in what we're doing and the result is that people try harder to pitch in. I did not expect to be writing code on this project -- not much of a developer any more, didn't know Ruby at all, didn't have dev tools... -- but I care, we're understaffed, I can at least fix small UI bugs right?, and now I'm doing more, because the people who already know how to do those things are there to help me. I'm learning a ton, I think I've gotten to the point of being a net contributor rather than when I was more of a time-sink for others, I know I'll have more questions and need more help, and I know that's ok. Without that visible support in place, I never would have started down the path to server code because it would have been too frustrating, even for a baseline volunteer team and not even considering the obstacles of a more problematic culture.
This is a long-winded way of saying that a missing banister doesn't just reduce capacity, but also throttles and prevents more and better capacity from those same people in the future (assuming they stick around at all).