I actually think setting a rate would be good for everyone including zikzak, gregorio, etc. The rate could be set at something reasonable for compensation, but not like full market rates, something like $30/hr or $35/hr and all work sunk in early when there’s not enough money to pay could be considered a loan to the site to be paid back if there are ever enough funds available. That would almost certainly be better for zikzak than his idea of valuing work based on revenue for only the month it comes in and also eliminate anyone’s ridiculous griping that someone who “owns” the site is angling to make millions of dollars or something.
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I don’t care about ads. I just care that we don’t use a shady adserver like 2+2 did that kept hijacking my fucking browser. That was so fucking obnoxious.
What do you think is a fair rate? Where will the money come from to pay this rate?
I think this would be pretty funny to do. We’d easily rack up thousands in billable hours that could never be paid, even at some laughably low rate.
But I again want to point out that any change in terms for any of this would be the community reneging on an preexisting agreement. I offered to help do X in return for Y. I did X. Now people are trying to workshop all the different ways I don’t get to do Y. That’s really not sitting right with me, at all.
How much do you want?
I want the terms of the agreement that got us here to be honored.
That’s really it, but it would also be kinda cool if some of ya’ll could stop acting like I’m trying to embezzle tens of thousands of dollars when it’s actually a couple hundred bucks a month that I want to share among a dozen different people.
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Here is the text from exiled on the link you posted above. It might be useful to put this in the OP of any discussion where it’s referenced.
The future of Unstuck Politics seems unlikely to develop into the community-driven collaborative project many hoped for due to low participation levels. However, there are still a few working to push things along and get us all into our new home. Would you support a small number of people taking full responsibility for this under roughly the following conditions?
This group will secure hosting services, install and administer forum software, and develop new features where appropriate
This group will solicit funding to pay for the above through donations, Patreon subscriptions, advertisements or similar
This group will have the community’s permission to distribute any net revenue to itself or otherwise disburse as it sees fit
This group will operate per community guidance in support of the community’s best interests
This group will operate as transparently as possible
This group will not “own” Unstuck Politics, and possibly may not take ownership of the domain either
This group will not be responsible for or involved with the community’s internal governance, although individual group members may still participate if they choose
This group will essentially function as a caretaker for the community and operate in roughly the same way ProBoards does for Exiled Politics, but with community members behind the scenes rather than nameless people we don’t know
The 3rd bullet point seems to be what you’re referencing. Is your plan to take $200 per month after operating expenses for those who are working? Or you’ll let us know?
All net revenue goes to the workers, whatever it is. We’re actually currently looking at about $160 gross/month, so maybe $140 split roughly in accordance with work performed.
You reckon that’s too high? What terms do you think I should work under? What terms would you do my job for?
What haven’t we been transparent about? Every single penny of income and expense has been accounted for.
It is reasonable to expect net revenue to increase over time. Is this policy open ended or will there be some $ amount where the workers are made whole and then capped? What is that number? (I wouldn’t claim to know what you or any of the others would find fair, so what I think (or virtually anyone of the other users) doesn’t seem at all relevant.) At what point can revenue be used toward other community interests? Is there some number?
I’m really not sure I understand what you’re asking. I hope we’re able to distribute net revenue to workers, or if some people don’t want to take their share, donate it to a good cause or something. I hope the community stays vibrant and grows. I hope I am able to implement my planned side project which will allow the community (or at least those who want it) to also have an outward directed voice and maybe share a few more nickles with a larger group of people.
I feel like I’ve been very open and very clear from the beginning about what I want and why I’m doing this. But it seems like there is some pervasive undercurrent of distrust that I’m going to do… I honestly have no fucking idea what. There’s a few hundred bucks in the kitty, that I don’t even have access to. The christ are people afraid is going to happen?
Dude, it’s less than $200/month and new signups have flatlined. We are several orders of magnitude away from generating enough income where this seems like a reasonable question.
OK, that’s probably a fair criticism. But it can be pretty tough when I’m told to fuck off because apparently I’m not allowed to crack jokes in the LC thread anymore.
Funny, but seems like win-win and if you ever do take payments that get into the high 3 figures or something in a couple years it’ll be after SpiderCrab’s reports have been showing the site owing you money all that time. And again, I don’t think this just assuages complaints, I think this is better and more fair to you than what you’ve thought of.
Dude, how much does the site need to generate before it’s reasonable to ask when “the workers” have been fairly compensated and the community can start spending revenue on other things of interest?
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Why not? It’s done that way a lot in the real world. My only problem with it was that I hate keeping track of hours like that, but zz had already talked about tracking hours.
Don’t give up on the anarcho-syndicalist utopia imo.
Could be it. It is alienating.
That is a good point and it should be kept in mind that it’s not just zikzak and not just you. A few other people have put in reasonable hours. I really have not put much time in, but also do not want to undermine zz by making him the only “worker”. The posters doing the twitter or whatever (see how involved I am?) stuff count too.
I have no idea because it’s a completely ridiculous question that doesn’t have a meaningful answer. There are already more hours worked than there are dollars available. Any significant increase in revenue will require a significant increase in traffic, which will require significantly more work.
It is extremely unlikely that this forum will ever be able to come even remotely close to paying any of the people who work on it anything close to a fair wage for their time. Ever. You need massive economies of scale for a forum to be generate real money. We have 300 registered users. We would need at least tens, maybe hundred of thousands.
I can’t answer your question because if that 0.02% chance event ever does happen, this will be a completely different place. There would be full time staff. Hosting costs alone would be thousands of dollars a month. You want me to predict how all that would play out? I can’t.
The potential money you seem to be imagining doesn’t exist. I’m not sure where you got the idea that co-admining a niche forum with a tiny userbase is lucrative, but I can assure you it isn’t. If you don’t believe me feel free to ask around. There are others here who can speak from experience.
It’s partly that along with other stuff. For one, I don’t like being given things or feeling like I’m a charity case. For another, I think the free rider problem with donations is significant.
I voted don’t mind ads at all / status quo. I will also donate eventually (someone please start a car thread again and help me sell my 2007 acura TL good? - very good? condition 146k miles). Seems to me the 50 to 2 vote was fair and binding, although it might be worth tweaking it (or not) and re-voting on it in this new place to form some kind of Unstuck Charter?
I can’t relate at all to finding it weird to take donated money for good honest work. If/when I do donate and you let my 50 dollars linger unused only to have a 1000 post disputation about how to spend it I will find it disagreeable in the extreme and the next 50 is going to Sean Carroll.