i sent goofy thousands of dollars and he honored our agreement very professionally and quickly by sending me several “tubby cats” which plummeted in value almost immediately. so i’d vouch that he’s honorable, but warn you against accepting tubby cats as the payment.
Lucky you didn’t make any typos in your agreements! You might not even have gotten the cats.
Well like you’ve said we have different experiences so I don’t really have a comment on the rest of your post. But I will offer some advice for how to invest the $90.
Buy office supplies and beautify your workspace. Spend some of the $90 on a recreational item that loosens your mind and gets you thinking creatively. Design a comfortable workspace because you’re gonna want to be spending several hours a day posting content on unstuck with the goal of getting likes. Grind out those likes. Figure out what the community wants to like and give it to them.
THEN when the web3 revolution comes, you cash out your unstuck airdrop and sell right at the top when everyone is buying it up to the moon. Now you’re a millionaire. And do I get a “thank you beetlejuice” thread for giving you the entire idea in the first place? Of course I do, because all the “nutsuckers” as you call them will like the post and pad your wallet even more, and you KNOW that. You have the knowledge. You have the roadmap to success. It’s up to you to follow through.
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you just stole 5 minutes from everyone who hs to follow whatever is going on in this threD
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i promise never to talk ill about you, if you are gone for good , counting gimmicks
Ok, I’ve just sent $90 to Victor, which should put an end to all of this.
Going forward, I’m not going to be involved in this kind of arrangement again. I agree that it seems like the easiest way out of a sticky situation, but it still feels gross.
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I think this sort of thing is pretty unfair to our admins for two reasons:
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Admins have a hard enough job dealing with the various income sources, tracking balances, forecasting site load, forecasting future expenses (btw DigitalOcean just enacted a ~20% price increase for the most common droplet types, effective 7/1), etc. Turning donations into a two-way door and foisting unplanned expenses (donation refunds) on them is pretty unfair.
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Involving them in mod/ban drama; the admin vs mod separation here is something that actually seems to be working well enough, so muddying this up seems bad.
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I agree with all of this. Sorry I brought you into it, but with the request being made I thought it was the easiest way to close the loop. Thanks again for helping in this situation!
A long overdue update on donations/expenses/financial status of the site:
- Inflows: Again Patreon donations dipped a bit: the most recent two months are at a net of $41.57 per month. We did have a one-time donation of $50 through Paypal since the last update.
- Outflows: Digital Ocean raised hosting prices in July of 2022, and are now running at $67.73 per month.
- Combined, we’re obviously running at a deficit each month. But that doesn’t mean the site is in imminent danger of shutting down, because up until about mid 2022, donations were greater than expenditures. So we built up a cushion.
Currently, that cushion (i.e., cumulative inflows minus cumulative outflows) is $2,547.16. So how long does that support this site? It depends what assumptions you make:
- An optimistic view is that current monthly donations stay the same and current hosting fees stay the same. The current deficit of $26.16/month is covered for 8 years, which I think would take us into AOC’s second term as POTUS.
- A more pessimistic view is that monthly donations drop off and hosting fees stay the same. If I had to cover monthly hosting fees strictly from the cushion (with no ongoing donations but also no increase in hosting fees), we’re still good for 3 years.
So there appears to be plenty of runway in front of us. I should also note that when I casually say in posts that I pay the bills for this place, that’s only true in the technical sense that my credit card is being charged. But in substance, the users who have donated over the last several years are the ones paying the bills. I’ve donated a little, but I’m only a small part of that. So thanks to everyone for keeping this place running.
Now, there has been one major change since the last update, and it’s one that I alluded to in the post that I’m replying to:
In June 2022, I withdrew the entire balance from the UP Patreon account to my Paypal account ($3,362.10, after a 0.25 processing fee). The short story is that I had run up almost $700 in credit card payments for hosting fees that I hadn’t been reimbursed for yet. And, as noted above, Patreon did not allow partial withdrawals.
So even though it felt somewhat icky, I withdrew that full amount. As a result, rather than UP owing me money, I now owe UP money. Here’s what the current situation looks like:
Total UP balance: $2,547.16
Current Patreon balance: $338.29
Amount that I owe to UP: $2,208.87
Over time, the amount that I owe to UP will naturally decrease as I continue to pay the hosting fees each month. And the balance in the Patreon account will continue to increase with any ongoing donations. If this doesn’t feel right to anyone, I’m happy to turn over the Patreon account and transfer that $2,208.87 to a new treasurer who will then be responsible for the hosting fees.
Looking forward, the hosting fees are just on autopay on my credit card, and I’m obviously committed to continue making those payments because I’ve already been reimbursed for them in advance. So if there’s anyone that had a question about this site staying alive for the near future, I hope this puts any concern to rest.
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Sounds like you learned governance and accounting from SBF.
All seems fine to me except that ridiculous processing fee.
Also in the event that donations drop off completely we can probably downgrade the DO account somewhat to stretch the cushion a bit. I seem to recall we bumped up to a higher level of hosting in anticipation of the 2020 election season and the spike in traffic that caused (it’s probably even stated somewhere in this thread) and that level is probably overkill for regular day-to-day traffic.
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I’d be happy to take on the duties of treasurer for a small processing fee of $2,500.
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25% of $4,482 does seems a little steep tbh
Thank you spider. That’s great news!
In all seriousness, thanks to the folks that help make this place happen. I need to restart a way to support this place.
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Restarted a small patreon contribution.
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Is there a way I could donate but earmark it so none of my money is spent on hosting the about moderation thread?
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This is a pretty poor choice of thread for trolling. Let me know when you donate and I’ll cover the two or three percent or whatever for AM.