jalt

jalt noun: a feeling of resentment felt by volunteers towards individuals who profit from doing such work.

Noun

jalt (uncountable)

(neologism) A feeling of resentment felt by volunteers towards individuals who profit from doing such work.
- Another form of appropriation that could affect valuation of participation is simple commercialization for private gain. The primary concern is that commercialization by some participants or even by nonparticipants will create a sucker's reward aspect to participation. This is the effect I...2002 December, Yochai Benkler, “Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm”, in Yale Law Journal, volume 112, number 3, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 440
- The role of this new built-up paid executive staff itself is of concern. This is something identified in open source projects as jalt—the jealousy altruism factor, of whether people get paid differently for participating.2009, Andrew Lih, The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia, New York, N.Y.: Hyperion, →ISBN, page 226

This is the effect I introduced into the abstract statement of diverse motivations as the jalt factor—the effect of monetary rewards for others on the perceived value of participation.2002 December, Yochai Benkler, “Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm”, in Yale Law Journal, volume 112, number 3, →ISSN...
Though it is seldom discussed in that context, jalt has become one of the most powerful factors shaping the behavior of a number of the most active participants on Wikipedia.2019 July 2, Robert Fernandez, “The Limits of Volunteerism and the Gatekeepers of Team Encarta”, in Wikipedia @ 20, archived from the...

Coined by Israeli-American author Yochai Benkler in 2002 (see first quotation), from a shortening of jealousy + altruism.

What does jalt mean?: Jalt means a feeling of resentment felt by volunteers towards individuals who profit from doing such work.
How do you use jalt in a sentence?: This is the effect I introduced into the abstract statement of diverse motivations as the jalt factor—the effect of monetary rewards for others on the perceived value of participation.
What part of speech is jalt?: Jalt is a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: jalt (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “jalt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jalt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.