SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Staffing: We are fortunate at SoylentNews to have some extremely talented and hard-working people on our staff. It bears mentioning that all work done on the site is by volunteers — nobody has ever received any payment for any of the work done here. That includes maintaining the code, wrangling IRC (Internet Relay Chat), maintaining our e-mail servers, the databases, web servers, etc. It also covers editing community story submissions and posting them to the site as stories for the community to read and comment on.
So, it pains me to report that one of our staff has been having health issues and was in the hospital in February. The initial "event" has been handled, but one of the tests conducted there revealed another matter which is requiring some ongoing intervention. There's other IRL (In Real Life) stuff happening, as well. As he put it: "All in all 2019 is starting out as a major suck of a year."
I have instructed him to take whatever time he needs to take care of things — first things first.
I am sure this attention is somewhat embarrassing to him, but if I have learned anything at all from MDC's passing, is the wisdom behind this saying
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Please join me in wishing a full, and speedy, recovery to Fnord666.
Finances: As alluded to above, it does take real money to run this site (paying for servers, domain registration, and filing taxes are the major expenses). Having just finished the first quarter of the year, I'm pleased to announce that subscriptions to the site have so far been on a trajectory to meet our funding goal for the first half of the year. As of this writing, we have raised $1143 towards a goal of $2000. Most people make ad hoc, one-time contributions. The amounts presented for the different durations are suggested minimums. The majority of contributions received are at the minimum suggested amount, but so far this year we have some generous contributions above that. We had 2 people at $200 (each), one at $100, one at $80, and a couple more at $25. We accept both PayPal and Stripe for payment processing. We do provide an option, should you so wish, to contribute a gift subscription. By default, we use UID #6 as the recipient, though you are free to choose any user on the site. If you run into any problems or have any questions, please post a comment here, post something on IRC, or send an e-mail to admin (at) soylentnews.org and someone will get back to you presently.
What it gets you is a shiny star next to your name whenever you post a comment (which you can toggle on/off in your preferences), some relaxed restrictions on the site, and knowledge that you are helping us continue to provide a unique venue for discussion with a primary focus on science and technology. And, need I say it? Buck Feta! I find it hard to believe it has been over five years since this site forked off from Slashdot, and we have remained advertising-free the whole time!
Thanks: Many, many thanks to all who have subscribed!
If you would like to subscribe or to check your subscription status, please click to go to our subscription page.
Again, please accept my deep and genuine thanks to all who have contributed to this site in any way. Above all, please keep those story submissions coming, moderate comments, and (of course) post new comments, too!
--martyb
(Score: 5, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Monday April 01 2019, @08:07PM (3 children)
How about the ability to regularly charge a subscription fee? I subscribed once - but it expired after a year without me noticing.
Also, as far as cost: I'd be happy with a $1/month subscription rate - assuming you have more than 333 people who'd sign up for something like that, you'd be golden. That's about half of your current $12/6 month suggested rate - but price elasticity might get you enough additional subscriptions to make it worthwhile.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:21PM (1 child)
The problem with low-amount, frequent subscriptions is that transaction fees eat a huge chunk out of them and so the site would end up getting considerably less than with the larger annual suggested rates.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 05 2019, @11:43AM
It's not really much of an issue with Stripe. They charge 2.9% + $0.30 for folks with transactions under $1M/year. Monthly rates would need to be even lower than what we have now for $0.30 to make a significant dent. I'm not sure of PayPal's exact rates but they appear the same on a $20 transaction, $19.12 to us.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @12:19PM
Or perhaps have multi year subscriptions?