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SoylentNews
So with no further fanfare, let's get to it.Basically, there are four tiers of subscription, as outlined below: Prices below listed in United States Dollars (USD)
Lite - special (see below)
- Granted by staff or gold subscriber to anyone
- Possibly also granted for high-karma
- No ads
- Preview of new features before public access (edge access)
- Bypass formkeys (no limiting at all)
Bronze - $5 dollars a month
- Subscriber badge
- Shell account
- Small amount of disk space
- Image hosting (transfer limit to be determined)
- Access to hosted services (i.e., USENET feeds)
- Full range of various clients (i.e., alpine, tin, etc. Will install anything on request as long as the overhead is low)
Silver - $10 dollars a month
- All benefits of bronze plus
- Additional storage (250 MiB) (higher transfer limit but still TBD)
- mySQL/pgSQL database (250 MiB)
- hosted mail accounts
-
- soylentnews.org, or allow hosting of custom domains
- procmail server-side support
- IMAP4/POP3, what else we can support reasonably
- Hosted domains (vhosts)
- Scripting language support
- UUCP mail support
Gold - $20 dollars a month
- All benefits of silver
- Can grant Lite status to 3 number of users
- Can host services/servers (required staff signoff beforehand)
- Increased storage
- Early access to articles (1 hour)
The intent here is to make becoming a subscriber worthwhile. I'm aware that you can get things like VPSes or shell accounts (i.e. SDF) for less than we are offering, but consider this as a throwin for helping support the site. Image hosting will be useful for instance for user-created content in journals (which is slated site upgrade).
This brings us to a point I don't really want to bring up (but is necessary). Obviously, we're going to need to accept payment in some method. We're already planning to accept PayPal since that support is already baked into slashcode, and most people are at least familiar with it. However, I do know our community is almost certainly going to have issues if PayPal is the only accepted merchant. As such, I'm willing to look at basically any company recommend by the community to process payments (as well as some of the larger "generic" ones like Google Wallet). With luck, we will be able to accept payment from 3-4 various payment processors so the community has their pick of who they are willing to use.
Unfortunately, at this time, we are not accepting cryptocurrencies such as BitCoin. This isn't because of technical reasons; we could likely hook into Coinbase or other services relatively easy. The problem is BitCoin, as defined by the IRS, is not currency; it is considered property and investments, and thus is subject to capital gains taxes. It is not clear if we would be liable for it, or if it would be handled via the processor. This is a question we need to forward to a CPA, but I do not expect an answer quickly, as ink on the regulations is still wet. We hope to be able to accept cryptocurrencies in the near future, although we may have to charge a premium to offset any additional tax burdens this places on us. We will be investigating as one of our first priorities when dealing with setting up the finances side of SoylentNews.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Horse With Stripes on Tuesday June 17 2014, @02:21PM
But I don't want any badges or email or other stuff. Can't I just make a donation?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday June 17 2014, @02:31PM
I agree with this, I'd much rather just setup paypal to make a monthly $15 contribution, I don't need any perks. I'm a little offended at the prospect of someone paying $20 getting priority access to stories. Basically you're saying their comments are more relevant than anyone else because they pay, which is wrong, and you'll end up with all the asshats, of which there are few, paying so they can get their bigoted/racists/sexist/political non-sense at the top of every comment section. If I start seeing that, I'm out of her.
I'm willing to contribute, but not to read the same tired crap from the same people before I actually get to the meat of the comments.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Tuesday June 17 2014, @02:39PM
Whew. I'm one of the funny asshats trying to get my non-sense at the top of every comment section. Looks like membership does have its privileges. ;-)
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Tuesday June 17 2014, @03:12PM
What about if any comments made on early story access start out at 0 (no user bonus, no karma bonus)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 17 2014, @03:14PM
I wouldn't pay $20 to post my comments first just so they could be easily ignored.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday June 17 2014, @03:23PM
I'm not sure what the point would be. I surf at -1, especially when I have mod points, because there are a lot of good comments that get modded down and a lot of crap that gets modded up. So I'm still stuck reading through comments from "people with money" before I get to comments from people that just want to support the site and be part of a conversation.
Just wait until the MS shills get wind they can pay $20 and get their drivel posted at the top of every comment section. Shills being people who are paid to say they like MS products, not people who actually just like MS products. It would be a taxable business expense to shills.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 3, Funny) by captain normal on Tuesday June 17 2014, @04:58PM
Agree, this is an astroturfer's dream.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday June 17 2014, @04:02PM
As a White liberal living an upper-middle class lifestyle in a Silicon Valley gated suburb, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
One time I had to cover my kid's eyes because he accidentally saw an illegal Speedy Gonzalez cartoon -- on a children's TV network! I promptly wrote a letter to my congressmen and contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center for guidance, but the damage was done -- my kid won't stop calling our family cat Snowball "Gringo pussycat". Please forgive the heinous G-word slur, but I felt that you all had to feel its impact to truly understand.
I'm actually posting this comment with my iPhone as I'm driving my kid though heavy traffic in my Mercedes, on the way to his corrective electro-convulsive therapy and cultural reeducation classes. Hillary 2016!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NCommander on Tuesday June 17 2014, @07:25PM
The "early access" was actually a perk that is already implemented in the code (Slashdot has that with the Mysterious Future, and I retained it on the draft ideas). The rationale is that you could access sites before they got /.-ed, but we (to my knowledge) haven't killed a site yet, and the slashdot effect isn't what it once what. In hindsight, perhaps dropping this is best; subscribership is to grant perks, not create two classes of users.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by justthinkit on Wednesday June 18 2014, @01:36PM
I think it is obvious that "early access" is a good perk for those who subscribe. Harmless, and with a perceived benefit.
I personally like the idea of subscribers being able to load an entire comment thread on a single page. Limit it to 500 comments if you have to. I just can't stand how /. breaks when comments on a thread exceed 100.