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?
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?
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.
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.
the way i see it, the market price for running a website is $0. the last place provided all the same features we have here as far as how i interact with the community. a couple things are tweaked but it’s not much different than a toyota is from a ford. the last place cost $0/month and almost no admin labor. the admin was grinding wsop and the site did great. it was a great summer.
locking exiledpolitics and telling everyone to come here was zikzak’s crossing the rubicon moment. that’s when he became a tyrant. and the power went to his head and his eyes got big at the prospect of making bags of money off of our posts. the reason he isn’t taking a salary from donations (the intention of the donations) is because he wants to make big bucks like mason malmuth and sit back and golf all day and cash checks because of this great business idea he had.
gregorio is only a stalinist in that he’s like those people who were fooled by stalin. he’s a great guy and he doesn’t appear to be angling for this to be his break break, so idk if he just knows zz irl and wants to help build his small business for him for no compensation, i hope he sees why zikzak has been doing all this. but greg is also very smart so he could definitely hide it if he were a bad guy. just the fact that he hasn’t resigned yet, it’s troubling, troubling is probably the best word lol now i know how republicans feel.
Repeating myself, but your opinion is in the minority. Most people like this software a bunch better and most people don’t mind ads, at least not much. It can’t really be a tyranny if most people are ok with it and the oppression here is that you see ads only if you don’t have an adblocker.
i heard you the first 2 times. how about i follow you around with a disclaimer saying #actually that’s just your opinion and many disagree. i know it’s my opinion, i’m not claiming i’m reading it in the new york times