I’m fine with the status quo and would only want to change if it produced demonstrably more revenue with limited hassle and minimal distraction. Current ads are not invasive or distracting and are sometimes amusing.
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Sorry, I missed this discussion before. My preference/view:
You guys were ok with me being treasurer, which means handling money. So far, that’s meant me having access to the Unstuck Patreon account, where I don’t think I have any personal information but I assume I can transfer funds out of. I also have Unstuck funds in my personal paypal account (originally transferred from microbet when I became treasurer), all of which I’m tracking on a spreadsheet and can share if people would like. I do not have access to the AdSense account for some reason, though, even though I do have control over the Unstuck gmail account that I think is attached to AdSense.
I did not want to be modded as part of the treasurer thing, because I don’t think that was part of the original community vote. (Plus I don’t have any interest in being a mod.) I also didn’t want to be responsible for making advertising decisions, largely for the same 2 reasons - it wasn’t part of the original vote, and I don’t have much interest in doing it.
This is a bit of a digression from the current thread about ads, but if we do get to a point where we see a lot of ad income, I’d be happy to open a separate business/non-profit bank account and maintain funds in that account. But right now, the dollar amounts are so small that doing so seems more trouble than it’s worth.
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NItty semantic clarification: Admin, not mod. The admins don’t moderate the forum or set posting standards.
From ggorero’s post in the stats thread we’re not really drawing any new blood in. The ads were turned off for a while and there’s no spike in people joining or anything so I don’t think the ads are at fault.
zikzak laid out the reasoning in his first post ITT, I think it’s more than fair that we run some dumb ads to bring in a few cheeseburgers to repay the people who actually put in hours of work to get this place humming along, especially since unlike certain other forums no one has a problem with people choosing to use adblockers.
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I’m absolutely fine with unintrusive ads being used as an income source and all the proceeds going to the people who actually do the work to use as they see fit.
As an adult human who’s used the internet for a couple of decades, I’m quite capable of ignoring / avoiding ads that might otherwise annoy me and I assume most here are the same. However there are a lot of people out there who will be turned off by tacky, intrusive ads and it’s important to present a good user experience for newcomers. So in summary, just keep it discreet and don’t ram pop-up ads for donkey porn down our throats and you can pretty much just have at it as far as I care.
I miss the ads for hot Latinas that we used to get.
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I actually saw a little ad urging me to “meet hot asian girls” the other evening when browsing from my phone. Annoyed that I neither screenshotted it nor clicked it.
phrasing
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It feels like zikzak is grifting us. 200 people have to look at dumb advertisements several times a day just so one guy can buy an extra coffee once a month.
If you guys offered me $5 a month for everyone in the community to look at dumb ads all day I wouldn’t even consider taking the money fwiw
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If I get 10 people to pledge $5 a month on patreon can we turn off ads?
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Divided fairly among the people who do the work, that would equal a wage of about $0.50/hr, and that’s not counting the hundreds of hours already sunk getting this place up and running. It also ignores the real world personal liability a couple of us have taken on by having hosting and financial accounts in our names. It takes a lot more time and commitment to keep this place going than many seem to realize.
I am quite aware that nobody likes ads. I believe I was actually the first person to suggest an ad-free forum. However, the way things worked out is that we ended up with a forum with well over a thousand users per month being managed by just a few people in their spare time. And so far none of us has been paid a single cent for all that work.
In addition to generating less revenue, the charity-only model has a huge free rider problem. Currently only 5% of registered users have donated anything. If you can find 10 more, we’re still under 10%, and it’d be less than 1% of all users.
Personally, I think people who donate should get to see the site without ads, but others feel this creates different classes of users and nobody has ever put in the effort to find consensus on the issue. Somewhat contradictory, I would also personally prefer this site not accept any donations at all. The current situation is building to a likely future problem where donated funds are going to far exceed hosting costs but nobody knows what to do with the money because nobody wants to take it.
zz clearly saw this community as a personal profit opportunity all the way back when he was sabotaging the community governance forum on exiled, maneuvering them into gridlock so that he could ride in and “save” us by handing him unlimited authority. he expected hundreds of posters paying him thousands of dollars a month, and he didn’t get it, so now he’s taking $5 out of spite. bad admin!
Why is that a problem if @nobody knows what to do with the money, and wants to take it? Maybe nobody has good ideas, let nobody have it I say.
Im good on the money give it to a charity or something.
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This conversation should include actual dollar figures. Perhaps they’ve already been posted and I missed it.
There’s a weird dynamic because we left 22 over some issues, and have migrated to a new site. People want to know who and what they are supporting when they post here. But we are all clearly grateful for the work it takes to support the forum.
How much ad revenue does 200 users generate?
What are the costs?
What’s fair compensation for running the site?
Who is the ultimate owner of this site?