Donations are bringing in much more than ads and we’ve discouraged some donors because they offered more than we wanted at times.
But, since we allow adblockers (on 2p2 you can’t even say those words, right?), what’s the big diff? We’re trying to reach acceptance among as many people as possible, all with different opinions.
I lost a post somehow but the above is enough for me and should be enough for others.
I have this site whitelisted on ad block and will not opt out of ads.
The ad issue is a different, but related problem, and the community making a decision about ad policy actually does something to reduce the potential for the kinds of problems that you (SA and KingOfNy) are addressing. The only thing that prevents someone, zz or anyone else down the line, from become Mason Malmouth here is a sense of community ownership and participation. If things aren’t going right, we’ll just start another forum. As Ten Bears would say, there is iron in my words of death and so there is iron in my words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from people.
Based on how things went on exiled we don’t need large groups of people debating nonsense endlessly to achieve simple actions.
I think we have ample evidence that if we were still following that we would still be on agenda item one discussing rules of protocol.
I think micro, zik and ggoreo all said anyone who wants to help can step up and Contribute. Decisions need to be made and someone needs to make them.
People treat this as an adpocalypse instead of a minor reality of what the internet is and how it works. A completely open opt in opt out group has been proposed and some are still bitching about it. That is u reasonable.
This is the only site I have white listed in my Adblock. I want to help in any way I can and long term having ad revenue will likely make a difference in terms of what this site can be. I say that from a ridiculous amount of experience.
But nothing is final and things can always be changed. Can we introduce a completely opt in / opt out group to see ads? That makes by far the most sense and puts us in the top fraction of a percentile of sites on the internet.
Things like what kinds of ads we get can be tweaked over time. We actually need someone to do that work though. Not sure why anyone would want to deprive me of seeing ads here if I choose to do so.
I think we have a solution for dealing with ads now and should move forward to it. The problem is even if people are outvoted by 95% of everyone else they want to come back and re litigate every decision with no new information of take. I think that absolutely has to stop as it is actively prohibiting any and all progress.
So we have the ability to create an opt in ad block group that any registered member can join or leave as they wish. I see no reason why this should not be implemented.
Still thinking I’ll do a very simple poll on ad policy today. Despite the distance between some positions here, I think something pretty simple can be worked out regarding the other issues raised, but that would be more likely with a little more distance from the heat, and maybe even after a few more community based decisions are made for other smaller things. We have some stuff on blogging coming up.
Or start a massive donation drive to make sure that nut is met every week. (Going back to “free” pro board is not a good alternative for a myriad of reasons).
I just assume most of the concerns about run away ad revenue come from people who don’t really understand the reality of what it takes to maintain a website versus what kind of revenue is possible.
If this site grows, the financial dynamics change drastically. The motivation for the initial 300 to donate is much higher than it will be for anyone else ever. Just because there is an operating surplus now doesn’t mean it will always be that way. We are just getting started. People worried that Zik is going to one day wake up to a windfall are simply mistaken how any of this works.
I actually like that he wants to keep the donations for the direct payment for the server and related systems. Even if I didn’t I still would want ads with opt out.
Some think we need to decide how we will spend every cent in advance of acquiring it and that is neither practical nor beneficial.
Right now let’s finish how ads will be displayed and then move on to the next thing. We don’t need to comingle ten things into an intellectual quagmire.
I think a vote asking the community if they are ok with ads displaying along with a free and open opt out option to any registered user. I don’t think the poll needs multiple options, just support the proposal or don’t.
While Adsense does offer advertisers to do cpm (impression based) campaigns they are extremely rare and often only going to high quality sites with attractive demographics (which I think this site might actually be able to achieve). Otherwise the ads are cpc (cost per click).
He was literally asked.
It’s hard to make an offer when there is nothing that resembles an answer
Yeah google has very advanced fraud detection algorithms but they are not perfect. I once had a site removed from Adsense for fraudulent clicks which did not happen. People should treat the ads here like any other site.
What answer wouldn’t be met with a knee jerk “what” response. Some ranges of actual value were discussed in this thread previously but I will throw out one.
For zik 600 dollars a week. $40 an hour for 15 hours a week. This is still under paying by both metrics but let’s start there.
Now let’s get the donations to cover it. We have to cover ggoreo and micro/spider contributions as well. Some may not want compensation but that may not always be true. Let’s get the moderators in there too.
Let’s just ballpark it at 4K a month for now. Seems low but we got to start somewhere. I think we will have to switch from a donation model to a pay to use model though because with 300 users we need everyone to donate $13 a month forever. So we can not have ads, pay below market rates for those doing the work and make it a $20 a month subscription service.
I started a poll on ad policy, hopefully it’ll be about ad policy only.
This seems like a fair place to start.
But ad revenue is smaller and adblocker is a thing that most people have. Allowing opt-out is just appeasing people like SA, but there’s virtually no cost to doing that.
Many people are willing to see ads. People have whitelisted this site so that they can see ads and make that contribution. What we’re accomplishing is having people who are willing to contribute in that way contribute in that way while having people who are not willing to contribute in that way not contribute in that way. We’re making it as easy as possible for people who may not want to or know how to install software. We’re accommodating people who have different feelings on the issue than the majority. IE, we’re trying to have an anarcho-communist utopia.
Imo there’s a bit of trolling going back and forth on the issue of money. Pretty much no one thinks it’s very likely that there will be the kind of money that is being talked about, but it’s a small possibility. It’s kind of like people are just trying to force zikzak to admit that it has at least occurred to him that he could make a living doing this or something. Towards what end? Everyone knows it’s unlikely and everyone knows that “ownership” of the site or any real income would be precarious as heck.
But anyway, as I’ve said, I think these things can be worked out, but not with a hammer and not just at any point. Everyone here can take balls and go home at any point. Anyone can start new factions and go to war with each other with no real world ramifications. Anyone can start a new site. Anyone can go back to 2p2. This is a difficult political process and it’s going to take more than just assuming people aren’t trying to fuck each other over.
By deciding the ad policy in a way that leaves everyone feeling ok, then maybe deciding the blog policy, maybe having some PMs or little discussions about what is possibly acceptable and trying again later.
If you make this website a subscription service you will kill it within 3 months, guaranteed. That is a terrible idea.
+1 to all of this. Well said.
The thing I don’t understand is why zz both insists on ads AND thinks signups are and will remain stagnant. $20 a week split 5+ ways is bullshit. We all know this. I and many others want zz, greg, and others to get paid. It just seems so ridiculous to subject hundreds of people to thousands of ads for mail-order brides and Tulsi Gabbard propaganda for literally dozens of dollars a month.
I’d appreciate some honesty about either: 1. expectations or hopes that ad revenue will greatly increase in the future or 2. why patreon funding is so frowned upon. I think we could easily raise between several and many hundreds of dollars a month through donations.