This is an RFC (request for comment) from the SoylentNews community as a whole.
At this point it is clear that we are spending more than we are taking in from subscriptions — by roughly 1/3rd (33% for the less-fractioned). And that's just running costs.
We are taking steps to minimize our costs but there is only so much to be cut when running a site like this. Our Treasurer sums up our next 6 months here: http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/Finances
What we have in progress is a revised Subscription functionality that allows for 1, 6, and 12 month subscriptions. That may not sound like a big deal, but the new functionality will allow you to pay what you think it's worth. i.e. we set a minimum, if you want to pay more, fill your boots [translation: "knock yourself out!"] Really, please do!
This RFC is about setting what those minimums should be.
To be clear, SN will never paywall people from content — you're basically getting a little happy star by your name (optional) if you subscribe; we're not offering "treats for bungs" ['goodies' in exchange for favors] or any other influence over what we publish.
What we are doing is trying to address previous comments that (1) subs were too cheap and that (2) people wanted to give more but couldn't; while still making our content open to all.
So 1, 6, and 12 month subscriptions — what should be the entry point and what are they worth to you?
(Score: 1) by j-stroy on Monday February 23 2015, @05:42PM
Openness being a core value, there should be a low grade star colour for donations below the minim; However I do not think there should be various star colours for larger donations to preserve an equality overall.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Monday February 23 2015, @05:50PM
How about instead of determining the color by donation, determining the alpha. And give the user the option of linking the alpha to either amount contributed (alpha = % of full subscription amount for a year) or linking the alpha to the number of days left in the user's subscription.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @06:00PM
I agree. Subscriptions are essentially donations. So instead of differentiating by length of subscription, differentiate by price of subscription. Sell different "levels" and make sure there is a crazy-ass expensive level for the independently wealthy and/or someone who just hit a windfall, like cashing in their facebook options.
But I disagree about the star colour thing. I personally am not about flaunting the money, but that is a motivation for some people. Let anyone who has paid choose to display any of the star colours up to the level of their donation (including no star at all as it is now).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday February 23 2015, @06:31PM
What I find weird about this discussion is I'm the only one with a star in the discussion and everyone else without one is trying to use chicken entrails, divining rods, and geomancy to figure out what I want, rather than just asking "Yo, star holders, what you want?"
Assuming that question was asked, unfortunately I had to ask it, the answer I'd give is "just a simple yellow star is just about right".
I don't think showing off how much I'd donate does much good. Most of you don't donate and in the rare event (very rare indeed) that I screw up, plenty of volunteers point that out quite quickly, regardless of my "star" status, or disagree with me, or whatever. Very few people indeed bow down to kiss my star (which sounds vaguely obscene and fun at the same time) and that's overall pretty much a good place to be. About the only effect I can think of that I'd want from my star is a microscopic quantity of peer pressure for others to donate?
So no I would not donate $666 to get a flashing red pentagram vs the average luser with his cheap yellow star.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @06:35PM
> What I find weird about this discussion is I'm the only one with a star in the discussion
Lol, did you see the part where I said I'm not about flaunting the money?
> I don't think showing off how much I'd donate does much good.
Good for you, but part of being an adult is realizing that different people have different motivations.
> I screw up, plenty of volunteers point that out quite quickly, regardless of my "star" status, or disagree with me,
You are welcome.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday February 23 2015, @06:42PM
Sneetch!
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Monday February 23 2015, @07:36PM
PLedge drives!
Soylent only posts pledge money posts for three days every two months.
the worst :)
seriously more payment options would get me to contribute.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by everdred on Tuesday February 24 2015, @05:37PM
Exactly. Was wondering if any of the above commenters have ever read that book.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @06:44PM
Actually CoolHand has a star and answered the question in the post ("what should be the entry point and what are they worth to you?")
Also I'm curious to know what everyone thinks, not just star-holders.
(Score: 5, Funny) by VLM on Monday February 23 2015, @07:05PM
Also I'm curious to know what everyone thinks, not just star-holders.
There is truth in what you write, AC, but you wanna catch more fish, best talk first with the guy who caught a fish, then later talk to the guys with no fish but plenty of theorizing about what fish want based on having watched "The Little Mermaid"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @07:15PM
I meant no offense, your comments are usually +5 awesome, but just wanted to point that out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @07:29PM
> wanna catch more fish, best talk first with the guy who caught a fish,
In your analogy you are the fish, not the fisherman.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Monday February 23 2015, @07:40PM
He's the fisherman, bringing fish to his family.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @08:10PM
How do you figure that?
The goal of these schemes is to entice payment, aka hook a fish. He's already been hooked. The status quo worked on him.
The problem is that the status quo isn't hooking enough fish. His opinion on why other people aren't signing up is actually less relevant than the opinions of people who have not yet been hooked.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 23 2015, @09:13PM
His opinion on why other people aren't signing up is actually less relevant than the opinions of people who have not yet been hooked.
Time for a SN fishing story:
AC: Hey VLM I see da fish are biting and one got caught
VLM: They're hungry for nightcrawlers, this long after a rain combined with the cotangent of the elevation of the sun and some Bayesian analysis of historical fishing expedition results ... also I'll be honest the good ole boys down at ye olde baite shoppe were all buying worms so I just copied them and bought some worms. They don't look skinny. The good ole boys I mean. The fat one was buying worms so I copied him. If it works don't fix it.
AC: Yeah yeah, well I see the only nightcrawler eatin fish in this lake got caught, so I'm gonna try an old leather shoe dipped in gasoline as my bait. Clearly what has caught fish will not catch fish in the future.
VLM: Um, OK good luck with that.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @09:24PM
The problem with bad analogies is that they lead you into the weeds when you start thinking the analogy defines reality.
Funny thing about your choice of analogy, it elevates your opinions to a position of higher importance. Some might say that's a coincidence. And yet at the same time you think a system that lets people brag about how important they are to the system would have no appeal. Some might say that's ironic.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 23 2015, @10:58PM
The problem with bad analogies
Yeah I was goofing around and having fun.
Observationally I've seen you can sell virtual trinkets in coop or competitive games, involving people IRL you know or care about, and play a game with. Think farmville or MMORPGs.
The problem is we're semi-anon here and nobody really cares if I have a yellow star, either here or IRL. I feel microscopically better about myself having donated but that doesn't really matter. That's what makes the concept of "now we're gonna sell (expensive) BLUE CUBES not just yellow stars" something I wouldn't predict much success with. If you haven't commercially gamified selling yellow stars, I suspect theres not a lot of demand in the marketplace for expensive blue cubes, or some super expensive green crosses or whatever.
An array of virtual trinkets is a successful business strategy... in other environments, just not this one.
It was fun making bad fishing analogies for awhile, however.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Gaaark on Monday February 23 2015, @10:55PM
Use hand grenades and catch 'all da fish!' :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @12:00AM
AC: Yeah yeah, well I see the only nightcrawler eatin fish in this lake got caught, so I'm gonna try an old leather shoe dipped in gasoline as my bait.
VLM: Um, OK good luck with that.
In your original post you were arguing that more of the same is a bad idea - more stars won't catch more fish.
But somehow that's turned into more of the same is a good idea and doing something different is the bad idead.
I'm finding it hard to see any sort of logical consistency to your arguments other than VLM is always right.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SecurityGuy on Tuesday February 24 2015, @03:32AM
The difference here being that you can actually ask all the uncaught fish what would get them caught. You don't have to guess whether an old leather shoe is the right thing.
BTW, I do think you deserve a pat on the back for stepping up. I haven't yet (obviously), but I appreciate those of you who have.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @06:52PM
I think people should wear their stars.
Some might not want to, maybe out of modesty, but with the site needing money to survive, its time to let-em-shine.
Also think the funding progress bar should be updated more often. I know its not done in real time,
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday February 23 2015, @06:56PM
We have not spent the dev-resources to make this happen automagically in real-time. I will try to update it more often.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 4, Touché) by janrinok on Monday February 23 2015, @08:14PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @08:31PM
LOL I've been Godwined!
I didn't pick the symbol! ;-)
I'd be happy with any random currency symbol. Or rotating currency symbol of the day.
Or maybe a tiny cash register,
Or Piggy Bank.
Just think the false-ish modesty is not helpful. Uncheck that box people.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @08:53PM
That was exactly what I thought upon reading the first sentence of that post.
spooky.
(Score: 4, Touché) by q.kontinuum on Monday February 23 2015, @08:59PM
We need a new rating: "+1 Tasteless" ;-)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday February 24 2015, @01:58PM
Nanowrimo uses a halo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @07:04PM
What I want is an alternative to bitcoin and paypal. After that I don't care what color/size/type of star they want to put anywhere.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Monday February 23 2015, @07:10PM
This plea has been heard. We are looking into stripe [stripe.com].
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Common Joe on Monday February 23 2015, @08:35PM
Grandparent AC hit my issue. I'd like to donate, but I'm not into Bitcoin (and don't want to be) and I do not trust Pay Pal. My wife and I used to use Pay Pal for her business, but when the stories popped up about locked accounts and money that could no longer be accessed, we cashed in and never looked back. That was years ago.
Whatever other options you use, don't forget about those of us living in Europe and the differences here. I haven't looked into what it takes to make the magic happen so I don't know how different countries affect the ability to donate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @09:53PM
Well, first, those horror stories only apply to receiving funds, not to paying via paypal.
When my day job signed up to receive funds via paypal I asked them explicitly about this issue.
And they told me that if you talk to them (PayPal) and tell them what you expect as normal income you will never have a problem. Even if your expected income jumps huge amounts, you just have to call them up and tell them what happened in your business and there will not be a problem.
In fact when our foreign income via payments started rising, I did call them and tell them that some of the incoming amounts would increase by a factor of 20 times or more because big companies were jumping on the band wagon, and paying much larger amounts (over the minimum U.S.Government reporting level of $10,000) via paypal to avoid wire transfer delays and fees and fuckups.
They said no problem. And that is exactly what I've had - Zero problems.
Even if your normal level of business with small invoices jumps because of seasonal demand, or just discovered syndrome, just call them up. Its never a problem.
Not all those horror story reporters had clean hands. There is a lot of shady dealers that were using paypal.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:05PM
Yes someone suggested we do this early on (could have been you).
So I called them.
They were quite surprised that we reached out to explain our business model and had everything setup correctly (tax id, business info, etc.). The rep told me we were all set. They even corrected an error (on their part) for me quite painlessly, and cleared us for business.
The "horror-stories" we've all read about paypal seemed to involve them holding funds from their customers, so we withdraw the money as often as possible = )
If we ever have a sharp increase in payments received, I'll have to remember to call them again.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:41AM
I did a bunch of research on this last year for an event (HS reunion). Stripe is okay, although they tend to be pretty opaque and unresponsive when they do things you're not going to like (extended cash reserves, account cancellations, etc.). They do have a nice API, however and may well be a draw here.
There are many places to get information about this sort of thing. One of the best I found was here [cardpaymentoptions.com].
I'm not sure it will make a difference, but there it is.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @06:30AM
Thanks, I'll pass it on.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 24 2015, @01:03PM
Why do we need a modern technologically-sophisticated solution to a problem that was solved decades ago.
Send me an IBAN number, and I will tell my bank to transfer money from my account to your account. That is electronic payment at its simplest and most fundamental level. Anything else is either an unnecessary middle-man, or unregulated and untrustworthy. Or both.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by bryan on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:27PM
Except that in the United States, where SN exists legally, our banks do not support IBAN [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 25 2015, @07:38PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:41PM
I would be happy with an address where I could send a check !!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday February 23 2015, @07:51PM
What I find weird about this discussion is I'm the only one with a star in the discussion and everyone else without one is trying to use chicken entrails, divining rods, and geomancy to figure out what I want, rather than just asking "Yo, star holders, what you want?"
They already got our money. I think the more useful question is "Yo, non-star holders, what would entice you to buy a star?"
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Monday February 23 2015, @10:12PM
I'm a subscriber but I don't make my star visible. I don't see how it makes a difference one way or another. Now, if there was a 'zombie head star' I would make that visible. In fact, if I could buy various zombie body parts via a subscription model I'd certainly contribute more. Zombies: never a bad investment.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:33AM
My guess is that a lot of us here are in a business.
Maybe clicking that star ( or user-uploadable .png ) will direct one to that person's business link.
I do not use BitCoin or PayPal. Mostly because its my own computer I do not trust. All it takes is just one script to make a real big expensive mess for me to clean up.
I pay cash when I can, and I only have four internet businesses with my credit card number.
I would love to use cash. Albeit cash is tricky because of difficulty in proving anything after the fact.
I know its a bad idea to put cash in the mail, but I have been known to do that for causes I am trying to support.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:02AM
I would like to help you with that but publishing contact info on a pubic site is not a great idea ;-)
You've got your star.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:05PM
No. Certainly not on a pubic site!
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday February 26 2015, @01:20AM
Yes, I see! Thanks! However I thank you more for making a contribution to Soylent. I saw the expense report these guys put up. No-one on this planet gives more bang-for-the-buck.
These guys pinch the nickel so hard the buffalo craps.
They spend money like I spend it.
I get my employment catch as catch can; I have to be very careful so I have enough to keep the rent collector and tax man at bay.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Thursday February 26 2015, @09:43PM
Glad I could help.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday February 24 2015, @12:41AM
To be honest, I have never noticed the stars even though I have one. i guess I was looking for an asterisk and didn't notice that anything was different on my messages.
Remember that prior to capping at 50, karma was a game on Slashdot. Taco said that a psychologist told him that because karma was a publicly visible score and it had a name, that made it a game for users. Maybe the subscription star needs a name. And it needs to get visibly bigger with cumulative lifetime subscriptions.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by juggs on Tuesday February 24 2015, @03:46AM
This is an interesting discussion - and one we have had ad infinitum on irc.
We really don't want to create tiers of membership (bronze / silver / gold / unobtanium star) - that really would not be healthy for the egalitarian discussions we seek to seed. Hence why you have the option to show your star or not. People should not feel discouraged from commenting because they have not paid a due - payment for speech to be heard, to my mind, is so far beyond wrong thinking as to be over the horizon. No-one should be cowed out of making a comment because they feel underpowered and likewise no-one should feel their comment carries more weight because they have a big star, or a flashing star, or a shade of star that denotes ~something~. Every voice should be equal.
This isn't a game. It's a news site. Subs are not for e-peen enlargement, this isn't soylent-v14gr4 - it's support for the platform on which to have egalitarian discussions without bias or overbearing moderation or steering.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:11AM
It's just a side show and I don't think speech is influenced regardless of the approach that's taken. It sounds like the only people taking this kind of thing seriosuly are people worried about it being taken too seriously.
My suggestion would be that you can't just buy the biggest star, but rather you get it by contributing over time. Make it comparable to uid on old Slashdot. No one actually paid any meaningful deference to low uid users on Slashdot, it was just a shared game among the users to act as if it was important. What's wrong with organizing shared games along beneficial lines?
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:12PM
I've certainly never noticed the stars before. They're not very noticeable, being almost exactly as bright as the grey background they're on. The bland yellow face beside the star is a lot more noticeable, having a black outline and black facial features.
Choose a different colour, or change the background for more contrast (but if you do this you'll have to change the font colours too to maintain readability)
(Score: 1) by islisis on Monday February 23 2015, @07:20PM
i don't see how stars help a discussion or awareness for lack of funding, but i appreciate the option to turn them off
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pnkwarhall on Monday February 23 2015, @05:59PM
And this is where the rubber meets the road for me. For the ad-free(er) Internet I desire, there **must** be alternate revenue channels. This is, by far, the smallest site I frequent, and a quick glance at the numbers reveals that even a small donation on my part makes a big difference in the bottom-line.
Look for a star, or for the end of my participation. And thank you, Soylent, for this opportunity to "put my money where my mouth is".
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @09:01PM
Look for a star, or for the end of my participation.
Oddly put.
You mad bro/broette?
Demand?
Plea?
Nobody want you go go away...
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:50AM
You mad bro?
No, but I'm often overly-dramatic.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:35AM
And sportin a star...
Nice.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:48AM
What!? No. You write comments. Lurkers (like me) should get a star or pack up and go.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by CoolHand on Monday February 23 2015, @06:02PM
maybe like 5/25/45 to start with as minimums? to be re-evaluated as necessary
(since we would then effectively be including donations, it's hard to know how much some donations may come in with)
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2, Insightful) by splodus on Tuesday February 24 2015, @10:45AM
I don't know how typical my thinking is, but that level would have prevented me from subscribing at all. As it was, 20/pa put me off for a long time.
The strange thing is, though, I'm pretty certain I've averaged about 50/pa for Wikipedia for as long as I can remember, and certainly don't visit there as often as I have here.
I think there's some psychology here (for me at least); it's a big hurdle to send real cash the first time. Subsequently it's a little easier. If you raise the bar for that first time, by making the amount itself a disincentive, then I'll probably never bother.
There are other factors for people as well - I'm not working at the moment, I can't justify to myself 5/pm or 45/pa. It's not that I can't afford it, it's that I'm being careful where the money goes. But when times are good I'll happily spend that on beer for a night, so 45/pa is very nearly nothing, and I'll likely send that two or three times a year (probably after spending that much on beer for a night, in fact).
Tl;dr I'd suggest 1/5/10. And I'd suggest there will be more than twice the number of subscriptions and more than twice the amount donated per subscription.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Tuesday February 24 2015, @03:11PM
I'd pay $5 per month if all the other subscribers were doing so too. My guess is that subscriber numbers at a price point of $1 per month would only be 50% higher than subscriber numbers at $5 per month, resulting in just 3/10 as much revenue.
But we're both guessing. I suppose one option now would be to gather data. The overlords could ask all the current subscribers whether they'd be okay with $5 per month. Perhaps a little sidebox, or a message [soylentnews.org] asking the question (or linking to a Survey Monkey survey [surveymonkey.com] or something).
Ideally it would be easy also to give one-off donations of the kind I think you're describing ($45, two or three times per year in your case).
And also it should also be easy to give regular (automatically collected) donations of less than $5 per month, which don't entitle the donor to the subscription benefits.
It's worth noting that there is at least one technical benefit in being a subscriber; the Slashcode restriction on user pages (including your own) that only lets you see the 24 most recent comments, does not apply.
N.B. I understand we can't do donations as such but I hope there would be lots of workarounds. This is being discussed at comment #148628 below (or here [soylentnews.org]).
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:16PM
Accepting donations would require us registering in all 50 US states, a long, complicated, and costly process that wouldn't be worth it in this stage. Until then we must actually sell something. However, feel free buy as many years (and soon months) subscription as you like. A few people are subscribed well into 2020 = )
Also for reference here are the subscriber benefits:
Also, I'm working on a "Why Subscribe?" link with a short FAQ that explains this.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 4, Funny) by tynin on Monday February 23 2015, @06:13PM
I've been meaning to subscribe for quite some time now. The problem is my wife has the Pay Pal account (I never bothered signing up with that devil) and I always forget to ask her. I'll subscribe after work... baring any future ongoing mental lapses.
::simpsons chalkboard::
It is not my wife's fault I'm forgetful.
It is not my wife's fault I'm forgetful.
It is not my wife's fault I'm forgetful.
::/simpsons chalkboard::
(Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Monday February 23 2015, @06:18PM
The subscription link could be more prominent at the bottom of the page. There I see
Home
About
FAQ
Journals
Topics
Authors
Search
Polls
Submit Story
Preferences
Log Out
Atom feed
RSS feed
but no "subscription", it is some layers deep in the users' pages. Maybe it could be hidden randomly so that it gets noticed when it does appear.
Also, IMHO a third payment option is needed, one that is not bitcoin or paypal. The former is too volatile and the latter too, well, paypal.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @06:42PM
THIS... More payment options.
Maybe Google Wallet? All you need is a Google Account owned by SoylentNews.
Maybe Apple too, but they probably take a huge bite.
Other Options: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-12-alternatives-paypal/ [searchenginejournal.com]
http://frugalentrepreneur.com/2012/05/20-paypal-alternatives-for-small-business-owners-online-sellers-the-self-employed/ [frugalentrepreneur.com]
Since I have two subscriptions already, I just decided to buy another one for gewg_ (he has a super secret userid, and it has a star, he just refuses to use it.) Sure, he posts AC (sort of) and his politics aren't my cup of tea, but buying (another) subscription in his name is just another way of modding him Valuable to SoylentNews.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @01:59AM
Since I have two subscriptions already, I just decided to buy another one for gewg_ (he has a super secret userid, and it has a star, he just refuses to use it.) Sure, he posts AC (sort of) and his politics aren't my cup of tea, but buying (another) subscription in his name is just another way of modding him Valuable to SoylentNews.
!!!
my head just exploded.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday February 23 2015, @06:46PM
Well, there's one simple way to do this, is set up a banner ad looking thing on each page that simply links to the subscribe page, unless you are a subscriber, in which case it (the banner) just simply isn't there. That's not too ridiculous.
I'm not sure if this would be comedy or not, but randomly select a top poster who isn't a subscriber and make the "banner ad" say something like "Everybody please remind cheap bastard of the day, XYZ (-1), to subscribe" and it instantly goes away the moment someone subs or gets a sub gift. That could be mildly comedic, or offensive. Or why not both?
Another amusing idea would be I pay for a sub and I get exactly one day's banner ad to point to a non-profit recipient of my choice that all non-subs have to see and subs don't have to see (but optionally can). You cheap bastards won't subscribe, well OK then, you get to look at a banner ad linking you to the freebsd foundation donation page for one day because I feel like that today, and tomorrow someone might link to the EFF or who knows. As if that population would be likely to donate when self select to be non-donors here... For extra Lulz the banner add should read something like "Todays banner ad linking you cheap bastards to the freebsd foundation paid for by VLM's subscription to SN" along the bottom. I have to admit I have an interesting sense of humor and I might torture you all by my day's link pointing to the bill gates charity fund just to piss people off. I suppose if you mandate 501(c)3 non-profit status you'll get NORML and who knows what else.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday February 23 2015, @08:00PM
I actually like all those ideas, although I'd be worried that the CBOTD idea might tick someone off (and have a negative effect) if they didn't have a decent since of humor..
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @08:55PM
Or discourage people from posting because we don't like to be singled out.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 23 2015, @09:01PM
Or discourage people from posting because we don't like to be singled out.
I think we can safely assume the admins are smart enough to exclude "Anonymous Coward" from being a top poster award winner. Although that would be pretty funny if someone bought AC a subscription as a gift...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @09:10PM
You really are a trees guy and not at all a forest guy.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday February 23 2015, @06:50PM
Go to the main page.
Look down the right hand pane and you will see the "Site News" box
Listed quite prominently is the current Funding Goal and the "Subscribe Here" link
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2, Informative) by canopic jug on Monday February 23 2015, @07:25PM
That all disappears if you log in, at least it does for me. Side panes tend to get tuned out because on other sites they are nearly always ads, so I get used to not looking at them. However, in this case they are really just not there.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @07:34PM
Side panes do tend to get tuned out.
But just a larger font, maybe colored, on the Subscribe link is all that is needed.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday February 23 2015, @07:52PM
Check in your preferences. Mine show when logged in.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @10:19PM
The subscription link could be more prominent
I agree! It should be right next to the 'Preview' and 'Submit' buttons when non-subscribers post. In fact, the 'Submit' button should be changed to the 'Post For Free You Cheap Bastard!' button.
(Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:54AM
Oh, god no, not this.
Yes, there needs to be a more obvious indication of how to subscribe, but cluttering the UI with pointless extra buttons like some shitty Play Store app isn't the way.
PLEASE!
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:19PM
How/where would you put it? We are working on this currently.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Wednesday February 25 2015, @05:02PM
Personally, I'm not sure how people don't see the big link in the "site news" sidebar, unless it's turned off, but they say they miss it, so someplace commonly looked at but not repeated for every comment. Near the karma counter, on the messages page, move the stretch goal bar and link to the top of the main page... they might be less desirable than having it where it is now, but personally, I'd be much less put off than I would having an extra button on every comment or posting form.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Wednesday February 25 2015, @10:17PM
I misunderstood and mistook your post for another suggestion (which I think makes sense), paraphrased:
Near the "logout" button in the box that already has info about your account in the upper right side of the main page (logged in users).
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Thursday February 26 2015, @12:24AM
Yeah, that was the general vicinity I had in mind with "near the karma counter." So I agree with whoever it was who said that first. ;)
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:18PM
Thanks for this, we will make it more obvious how (and why) one can subscribe.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 4, Informative) by NCommander on Monday February 23 2015, @06:40PM
For those who want to give us money, but don't want to buy swag, you always can buy another user a subscription. We're probably going to make a link much clearer to do so.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Monday February 23 2015, @07:39PM
I never quite understood the problem with having donations without anything in return. People made reference to a potential legal problem however I never saw anyone articulate exactly what it was, despite reading almost all of the previous discussion twice.
I still think that random donations of $5 or $10 with nothing in return could add up to a lot. Make another badge, a little moon, if you have to.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @08:38PM
See here: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6228&cid=148628 [soylentnews.org]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday February 23 2015, @09:31PM
No, I can't buy a subscription. I don't do paypal or bitcoin. Those were the only choices on the subscription page.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday February 23 2015, @09:53PM
We plan to have a CC payment system in place in the future. We are looking at stripe [stripe.com] for example.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:21PM
Also, depending on your locality, you should be able to simply use a credit card through paypal, though we understand if you don't wish to do so (hence looking into a CC payment service).
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by danmars on Monday February 23 2015, @06:46PM
What it was for me was a matter of timing. I've now subscribed, in the same way that I donated to Serial - you said something about it at a time where I happened to have money I could donate, and I realized it was important to me. Please don't assume that everyone will go out of their way to donate, because it really could come down to asking at the right time. For me, that best time is apparently on Mondays just after lunch.
I hope you get lots of donations. Here's what would work to get money from people like me:
Ask occasionally, just not too often. I forget things. Other people probably do, too.
Figure out the way you get the highest percentage of our money, and tell us how. I don't really care to give Paypal whatever their cut is, but I don't know how to get you the extra percentage through bitcoin. If you told me where and how to buy bitcoins safely from someone who takes a smaller cut than Paypal in order to give you that extra money, I would.
Think of it as crowdfunding instead of subscribing/membership:
The little ticker at the right side is too depressing after seeing a bunch of failed Kickstarter campaigns, and not a good motivator. I'm more likely to see a fund meter as a sign of impending failure than a goal. I would get rid of that completely (still being transparent about finances, just without the meter).
Structure your stuff more like Kickstarter's purchasing tiers. It sounds like you're already doing this, but think about how to make it really meaningful to the donor as well. Little stars and customization icons don't mean anything to me.
Consider selling out slightly like HumbleBundle does - by having a top donor list where donors can plug their twitter account or company name or whatever. There's no reason this has to be unethical or wrong - think about NPR and how they have their sponsors.
Go for "stretch goal" tiers. Mark funding targets and "reward" tiers for the site as a whole. People like to work together for tangible things they really want to have happen. Some people may think it's an annoying trend, but that carrot motivates me a lot more to donate (and, I suspect, I'm not the only one). It's better if your goals are meaningful, instead of just things you'll hold back unless you get an arbitrary amount of money.
I'm sure there are other things, and I'm glad you're thinking about how to improve your funding success, but I think you need to rethink it in a more fundamental sense than just what levels of subscription tiers you should have.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 23 2015, @06:58PM
Consider selling out slightly like HumbleBundle does - by having a top donor list where donors can plug their twitter account or company name or whatever. There's no reason this has to be unethical or wrong - think about NPR and how they have their sponsors.
Combining your idea with one of mine, how about subs get an extra sig line of their choice (including none at all) consisting of one donation link from a curated list of non-profits?
So I could click the checkbox such that all must suffer thru "Please click this link to donate to the freebsd foundation" after suffering thru reading one of my posts, whereas another subscriber could select a different recipient from the curated list, like the EFF or SPI aka Debian or ...
Of course who curates this list of allowable non-profits is an excellent question... and will non-techs be allowed, NORML, SJW orgs, who knows how crazy it could get.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @07:22PM
Wait, we are having problems funding THIS Site, lets not send donations to others, (regardless how deserving).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by juggs on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:36AM
Thank you danmars - both for the sub and the thoughtful reply.
We really don't want to be running around with the begging cup / collection plate the whole time, that's undignified and a sure sign we're on the wrong path if it persists. The community is growing organically and we will eventually hit critical mass whereby we can survive. We're just not quite there yet.
The goals / stretch goals is something I have brought up before in discussion - perhaps the meter needs: red (we need this to survive), amber (we go here we can start pushing out some original content), green (the after-burners kick in, we get paid staff, THE WORLD!). I think the new meter has gone most of the way to address this as it is what we need to not die a horrible death.
For the record, I personally am trying to avoid subscription "tiers". SN is about people and to my mind should maintain an egalitarian platform where all are free to comment without hindrance or overbearance from others, be that by posting amount or "reputation".
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @06:47PM
Shouldn't be too hard to fix! (especially now that you accept bitcoin)
(Score: 2, Disagree) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @07:01PM
Shouldn't be too hard to fix! (especially now that you accept bitcoin)
Do as some of the other ACs here to. Have a super double secret user account that you never use to log in, and donate that way.
(And maybe rethink this whole AC thing and take credit for your good suggestions?)
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @10:24PM
Not the same AC. I have an account (and a subscription) but rarely post using it. Having a name associated to my posts won't change their quality, and it won't make them more apt (or crap).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @12:44AM
PS: they are tracking you any way. They like blocking instead of actually living up to fundamentals. Key wording is "temporarily" , so far for more than month. Oh, well use another IPs I have.
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, anonymous comment posting has temporarily been disabled. You can still login to post. However, if bad posting continues from your IP or Subnet that privilege could be revoked as well. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner or login and improve your posting. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email admin@soylentnews.org with your MD5'd IPID and SubnetID, which are "xxxxxxxx" and "xxxxxxx".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:12AM
No one is tracking me because I'm behind seven proxies! Seven! That's even more than most humans have fingers on their hand.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:26PM
But *I* have a second hand! HAHAHA!
(Score: 5, Informative) by paulej72 on Monday February 23 2015, @07:07PM
It is not a donation and cannot be. We must sell a user something or we have to register for taking donations in every state in the US and possibly other places. As an anonymous user can't by a subscription for himself, this is the real issue. Now I could possibly make it so AC's could buy a gift sub for someone else, but his would be a lot of work.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @10:28PM
It's already possible to buy a subscription for another user (I've done it myself). Just set up an account named 'Anonymous Subscriber' and let ACs donate subscriptions to the Anonymous Subscriber user.
(Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:47AM
Is this just a US thing? If you have to "sell" something, why not sell something ephemeral like access to the website? Or the right to make daft posts?
"This subscription of twelvety dollars gets you access to the HTML pages published in the top level and all sub-domains of soylentnews.org with the added bonus of being a Good Chap. You are now legally entitled to publish your own comments after having maybe a couple too many glasses of whisky in the noble goal of attaining a +5 Troll".
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday March 04 2015, @05:15PM
The ‘easier to sell something than to take donations’ must be a US thing. I kind of wonder at it and haven't grasped why/how/etc. but as long as it's not me that has to figure out the SN tax report I'll happily ignore it.
I'm not a Bitcoin user so I finally got around to temporarily suspending my “dislike” of Paypal and bought a small yellow star (subscription indicator), and what you're talking about is sort of what I did since I couldn't post anything here if “here” didn't exist :)
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 24 2015, @01:16PM
Brainstorm - How about selling the right to use the SN logo on their webpage?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Tuesday February 24 2015, @03:46PM
I like it; well worth adding to the list of things that could be allowed instead of donations.
There was a bit of a discussion about this topic in response to comment 60426 [soylentnews.org].
- One post suggested virtual badges.
- My post suggested [soylentnews.org] a www.soylentnews.org/promoted-messages.html page, for people to pay for the display of commercial or philosophical messages.
N.B. Both my suggestion and yours have the following advantages:
- can allow for a wide range of 'donation' values. (You don't neccessarily need a linear relationship between the price and the duration of the service being paid for.)
- are suitable for ACs, because the product being purchased does not need to be associated with any SN account
- are suitable for regular automated donations, as well as one-offs.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday March 04 2015, @05:27PM
Maybe sell numbers and/or strings non-exclusively. No need to generate anything: just provide a html form text field for people to write in the alphanumeric they want to buy! :D The content is then used as the "item" just as the User IDentification is now.
Or one could gift subscriptions wildly, that's the simplest solution.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 04 2015, @11:11PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:32PM
Do you have to register everywhere to receive money? Or just to be able to issue donation tax receipts?
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:02PM
Interesting. I kind of doubt a state going after you could actually win: the reason Newegg et al. don't collect sales tax is because the states can't force them to do so. They hate that they can't force them to do so, but that's the law. I doubt a website just randomly serving content to the whole world, not targeting any state in particular, would be deemed to have minimum contacts in the state: "International Shoe, bitches!"
However, I can understand not wanting to be a test case.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday February 23 2015, @06:51PM
I am yet another person who hasn't got around to subscribing. None of the swag appeals, the subscription link is hard to find, PayPal is a pain, life is busy...
Make it easy for people to part with their money. I don't mean crass blinking adverts, but an easy-to-find link with plenty of payment options. I expect it really is that simple.
How much? Someone suggested $5/month, with a steep discount for longer subs - say $30/year. Sounds about right to me. Of course, allow people to pay more if they wish, but I think few will pay more than the amount you suggest.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @09:23PM
We are working on both of your suggestions = )
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1) by invis on Monday February 23 2015, @07:10PM
Give me a way to justify my subscription as a business expense (in the UK) and I'll be delighted to give you 20% more money.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday February 23 2015, @07:18PM
Write it off as essential to keeping informed on the pulse of the industry?
Sorry, I'll show myself out....
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @08:03PM
Give me a way to justify my subscription as a business expense (in the UK) and I'll be delighted to give you 20% more money.
This is a good idea! (Although, I just deduct it as a business expense similar to any other subscription I buy for my business. Nobody checks this too closely for the price range we are talking about.
In addition to the star, how about a newsletter, that can be written off as something you purchased for business purposes.
Newsletter: in the form a Message in your SoylentNews Message box, or an email. Emails raise costs (probably) but messages in your soylentnews messages queue probably don't.
The messages need not contain anything new, perhaps just links to high reply stories of the month/week. Maybe other content as Staff see fit.
This fits the bill of a valuable commodity*, by providing you with input from the entire soylentnews community "voting with their comments" on stories that keep you informed of current trends which would probably qualify as a business deduction. (Sometimes these comments accumulate long after the story has left the front page.)
Little to no work involved:
There are already facilities in the PREFERENCES / MESSAGES tab that can be used for this, such as the Daily Newsletter (which I don't think is being used. It would/could be changed to Weekly or Monthly. Alternatively the Journal Entry by Friend alert, could be used for this, and subscribers just get placed on a super secret "Friend of SoylentNews" list that nobody can join manually.
*-Footnote
SEE ALSO https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6228&cid=148628 [soylentnews.org] for why it has to be a donation, and must provide something of "value".
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday February 23 2015, @07:16PM
Will those of us who subscribed at $20 be able to up our donation to back fill to the new price?
For instance, if the sub goes to $45 annually, will I be able to add the extra $25 (as a donation or whatever) without changing my subscription date? That way you get my renewal in August as well as the added donation for the remaining time.
I'm probably not asking this well, but I think you probably get the point.
I'd do $5, $25.00, and $50 for 1, 6, and 12 months (save $5 for a 6 month sub, and $10 for an annual sub).
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @07:26PM
There is nothing preventing you from buying more than one subscription now.
Just go do it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday February 23 2015, @07:42PM
I think you are missing what I am asking, because I didn't explain it well.
Will we have the ability to back fill the $$, not how can I help inflate the number of subscribed users to the site.
In my eyes it makes a difference for the site to be able to say we have X number of registered users, Y number of subscribers, and here are the number of each that contribute actively. If we have 1000 subscribers, and only 500 contribute regularly, where are the others? WHY aren't they contributing? Oh, because 200 are 2nd subscribed accounts for the same people who log in once a year to re-up their subscription. Especially for a community this small, it skews the statistics for even a small number of us to do this.
In the end, I guess it really doesn't matter, but I'd really rather only maintain one account. Just my $0.02.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @08:19PM
I think you are missing what I am asking, because I didn't explain it well.
Will we have the ability to back fill the $$, not how can I help inflate the number of subscribed users to the site.
I think you are misunderstanding my suggestion, because I wasn't clear.
I'm not suggesting inflating the number of subscribed users by adding a new account.
I'm suggesting jumping over to the subscriptions screen and subscribing AGAIN under your existing account.
Just throw more money at them. I've already done that (subscribed same account twice), and nothing broke (that I know of).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday February 23 2015, @08:42PM
Every time you subscribe you are adding time. If you buy two years today, then another year tomorrow, you will be subscribed for 3 years.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday February 23 2015, @08:44PM
I see, said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.
I did misunderstand.
What is your subscription end date? 2015 or 2016?
What I don't want to do is pay for next year early if the cost is going to go up and I can better support a place that I really enjoy.
OW!! My wallet just bit me in the ass!
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @08:48PM
Duplicate subscription payments pushed my end date to 2016, but that won't stop me from subscribing again.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @07:37PM
If you want to give more, then try giving gift subscriptions to users that make good contributions. This would be a nice trend to start.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @09:47PM
Somebody did that to me. At least I think they did, one day my account had a star.
Creeped me the fuck out. It reminded me that my account isn't wholly "mine."
I don't log into that account any more.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tibman on Tuesday February 24 2015, @01:41AM
Hmm, funny you should mention that. I gifted a sub to a guy. I enjoyed his posts so much that i bought him a star. Not long after that he disappeared and made it impossible to find and read his posts again. Totally turned me off the "buy subs for cool people" thing.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Tuesday February 24 2015, @03:27AM
Hmm, that is exactly the opposite of reddit. People **appreciate** gifts on that site, whatever their other general qualities...
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:00AM
Creeped me the fuck out. It reminded me that my account isn't wholly "mine."
Life lesson - helping someone without getting their permission first will rarely be taken in the manner intended.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MrGuy on Monday February 23 2015, @07:17PM
While I get the desire to give a little reward like the highlight star, if there's a lot of effort spent managing this, is it maybe a sign we should consider something other than rolling our own solution to this problem?
A number of sites I frequent use Patreon for pretty much exactly this purpose. The nice thing is that people can pick how much they want to give, how long they want to give for, etc.
I recognize using a third party platform might come with some level of fees attached (and maybe that's enough to sink it?). But if you want to give people the ability to optimize their ability to donate to exactly the level they're comfortable at (so people aren't either priced out or feeling like they can't give more), maybe it's time to look at some alternatives to "what we can build internally"?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @07:30PM
While I get the desire to give a little reward like the highlight star, if there's a lot of effort spent managing this, is it maybe a sign we should consider something other than rolling our own solution to this problem?
See this post https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6228&cid=148628 [soylentnews.org]
They have to be SELLING something, in order to not (unintentionally) masquerade as a charity.
I suspect the star is a checkbox in the roster of users, so its no big deal to manage.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @08:14PM
There is also the problem with giving your information to Patreon. They are guaranteed to data-mine the shit out of it and pass it on to who knows how many other companies. The less middle-men the more privacy.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Tuesday February 24 2015, @03:28PM
Hmmm, I had assumed Patreon's system dealt with that concern. After all, I doubt many of the 'creators' on Patreon are registered charities. However, their FAQ [patreon.com] doesn't explicitly say anything to allay your concern.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by jhouserizer on Monday February 23 2015, @07:31PM
Just as a random data point:
Max I'd pay for a year's subscription is about $40.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bryan on Monday February 23 2015, @08:18PM
How about reducing the monthly hosting costs? With a limited amount of donated money and a text website, the hosting bill should not be the current $300+ per month. Pipedot [pipedot.org] is hosted in the same Linode facility and yet runs entirely on a 1GB node. In other words, about 3% of the costs of SN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @08:28PM
I think this is an important point to make. I for one love SN to bits but I have no money to donate, barely scraping by as it is...
(Score: 4, Informative) by paulej72 on Monday February 23 2015, @09:08PM
We are looking at ways to reduce our server costs, but we have been a bet short handed to make this happen. Some of the things we do run are:
2 DB server
2 front end servers
Dev server
staff slash server
Wiki,
Mail
IRC
Piwik
Tor exit node
VM download server
and a bundh of other stuff.
We originally had many of these things on separate boxes to reduce problem from downtime and to separate admin functions. Our plan is to move most of the non production services onto one 4G node and retire 3 2G nodes. We will keep a separate dev server just to keep from blowing up anything important during development. The 4 production servers allows for redundancy that affords us higher uptime. With our new code changes we have planned, this will make or front ends fully independent and not require gluster to share the slash file system.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @09:19PM
Do you have a cost breakdown?
I'm wondering how useful it would be to pursue architecture changes that reduce cpu and bandwidth consumption.
For example, separating post content from threshold filtering and layout. If the text of the posts can be cached so that a page reload only downloads new posts rather than all of them all over again that could substantially cut bandwidth and server CPU. But if those are not significant costs to begin with then it probably isn't worth pursuing.
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Monday February 23 2015, @10:18PM
Most of our issues are from running out of memory. Each front end server for production uses 1GB for cache (varnish and memcache). Plus you add on what all of the other services need and you find that a 2G Linode is real tight fit. It is the same on most of our other systems, we run out of ram before anything else. As of right now the cheapest way to add ram to a Linode is to upgrade to the next tier.
We also pay backup charges on some of the nodes. We just purchased a 1024 CVZ from Ramnode that has 200GB of storage. We will be configuring this to backup important things on each node like mysql dumps, /etc/ and parts of /var (for config files and system dbs), the slash service directories, and any other important directories that are not part of the default OS. I also plan on backing up a list of installed packages for each machine. By doing this we should be able to have disaster recovery style backups ready to go. This will save us over $20/month. Killing off excess Linodes will save another $40/month.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @10:31PM
> Most of our issues are from running out of memory. Each front end server for production uses 1GB for cache (varnish and memcache).
Does soylent benefit much from caching? Seems to me that every logged in user gets their own uniquely generated pages because most of them show the user's name and some other stats on the upper right corner, as well as pre-applying their own filter thresholds. Or does varnish hold pieces of pages and assemble them into a single html file when it serves them?
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Monday February 23 2015, @10:43PM
Yes varnish helps a lot. I am not a varnish expert, but it really does make the slash servers much faster when present. It would probably be even better if we could manage to give it more memory.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 4, Informative) by paulej72 on Monday February 23 2015, @10:39PM
Here is a cost breakdown:
Hydrogen: Production Frontend: $50 ($10 backup included)
Helium: Production DB, LDAP, Kerberos, DNS: $50 ($10 backup included)
Lithium: Dev slash server: $20
Beryllium: Mail, Wiki: $25 ($5 backup included)
Boron:LDAP slave, Kerberos slave, Icinga, Slash IPN (payment processor), DNS: $25 ($5 backup included)
Carbon: IRC services, Piwik: $20
Nitrogen: Staff Slash (QA server), Tor exit node: $25 ($5 backup included)
Oxygen: Backup server: $10
Fluorine: Production Fronend: $40
Neon: Production DB: $40
Node Balancer: $20
Total: $325
We can eliminate $35 by moving all backups to Oxygen and another $40 by retiring Beryllium, Carbon, and Nitrogen and moving the services to Boron (with a upgrade to a 4G node to get the needed memory). That should bring us down to $245/month.
We may also be able to move the production db servers to Linode 2G systems depending on the memory footprint they are using. This will be investigated as it will save another $40/month.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:04AM
Hmm...I guess the real question then comes with future scaling needs. What comes after you name a server "ununoctium?" Perhaps, the soylentels hold to the belief that the extended periodic table [wikipedia.org] will help them.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:10PM
Not sure why there is a backup server in addition to monthly backup costs?? but I know backups are heavily being looked at by the staff, so I'm pretty sure that whole situation is being analyzed and re-engineered..
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @07:37PM
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:32PM
The idea is actually that once we have the Ramnode backups setup, we will save some money by *not* paying linode for backups.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 23 2015, @10:03PM
So 5 servers now, or is that 6?
Your list is not broken down by box, so its hard to guess.
And weren't we promised that Piwik was a short term thing, and was going to be dropped and reverse sniffing was temporary?
How much money and/or bandwidthe charges do Tor and VM download account for?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:55PM
So 5 servers now, or is that 6?
The plan is to be down to 6 servers once done with our house cleaning.
Your list is not broken down by box
Yep, you beat us by a few minutes. This [soylentnews.org] was posted just after your comment.
And weren't we promised that Piwik was a short term thing, and was going to be dropped and reverse sniffing was temporary?
I think we've collected enough traffic info for now, we can probably disable it (though it isn't costing us extra to run and will be part of 'the great consolidation' underway).
How much money and/or bandwidthe charges do Tor and VM download account for?
We don't pay any bandwidth charges, it appears linode pools our bandwidth among the different servers and I've never seen our transfer "quota" go over 1%.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday February 23 2015, @08:18PM
Perhaps it would help to compare the cost of subscribing to other sources of information:
A 3-year Print+digital subscription to The Economist weekly magazine in France is EUR 590 for 3 years.
Averaged out, that's EUR 3.78 a week.
I don't think we can plausibly argue SoylentNews provides more value than The Economist magazine, so I would suggest that that is a top end cutoff for a reasonable subscription request.
A one-year international subscription to Popular Science magazine is USD 42. That averages out at USD 0.81 per week.
So I'll suggest that a subscription of USD 1.00 per week might be about the right level.
I also think that the idea of encouraging people to buy gift subscriptions as a reward for particularly useful/interesting/informative comment is a very good one, so gift subscriptions of shorter durations than annual should be available - depending on processing costs I would suggest 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 week gift subscriptions as well as the full year as personal and gift. Depending on where you live, buying someone a 5-week subscription is about the same as buying them a beverage or two (coffee-shop or beer). I'm generally happy to buy someone a beer or two for interesting conversation.
Of course, there has to be a strict legal understanding that subscriptions are non-refundable once bought, otherwise there could be some trouble refunding monies if SoylentNews were to fold before all subscriptions expire.
These are just some thoughts offered up as suggestions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @09:44PM
I don't think we can plausibly argue SoylentNews provides more value than The Economist magazine, so I would suggest that that is a top end cutoff for a reasonable subscription request.
The economist is general interest. Soylent is a lot more narrowly focused. The more niche the publication, the higher the price. For example, an online subscription to the Journal of Coordination Chemistry is $12,500/yr. [tandfonline.com]
(Score: 1) by mr_mischief on Monday February 23 2015, @09:54PM
That's also much deeper coverage. This may be focused on tech, but it's not 10,000 word articles on deep technical subjects. It's a news aggregator that links largely to other publications that have done the journalism.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @10:19PM
> It's a news aggregator that links largely to other publications that have done the journalism.
Uh yeah. I'm not saying soylent is worth $12K/yr per user. I'm just demonstrating that there is a spectrum and the economist is closer to one end of it than soylent is.
> It's a news aggregator that links largely to other publications that have done the journalism.
The role of an editor is a significantly valuable service. Don't sell it short. There are many orders of magnitude more stories out there than anyone can hope to read. Separating the wheat from the chaff in a topical way can be very valuable.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday February 24 2015, @12:03AM
Offer RSS or NNTP interface such that people can use the site with less server load. And offer nice features for paying members but always keep the channels open for people to read and comment as a baseline functionality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @10:39AM
How do you mod "Uninformed"?
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Wednesday February 25 2015, @10:21PM
@NCommander was working on this earlier, I'm pretty sure he actually set it up at some point.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by prospectacle on Tuesday February 24 2015, @12:10AM
And is there a way to increase that number without:
- Annoying people
- Stratifying the community
I think that rules out banners, pop-ups, large text, or flashing text (obviously), or big differences in privileges.
That still leaves a lot of options for a gentle but firm increase in awareness.
There are many things near the top of the main page that are more prominent and higher up than the "subscribe" link, and there's no "why subscribe" link.
My suggestion would be:
A "subscribe" and "Why subscribe" link wherever a "login" or "Create account" can be found.
On the top left box of links, a subscribe and why-subscribe link could be a different colour (but not bigger or animated or anything).
If you can make the option to subscribe and the reasons for doing so, a bit more prominent in peoples minds (especially if they visit often) without advertising as such, or annoying people (like those wikipedia banners) then I think it could make a big and positive difference.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 2) by dx3bydt3 on Tuesday February 24 2015, @01:03AM
I agree that making the subscribe link(s) prominent is a good idea. This article served as a reminder to finally get around to subscribing for me today, and I ended up doing a ctrl+f search on the page because I remembered seeing the link, but couldn't see it. Once found, I admit it isn't really hidden, but it it doesn't stand out. This isn't to say that subtle links are a barrier to someone who has decided to subscribe, but it doesn't keep it front of mind. I'd recommend something noticeable, but not intrusive like Wikipedia's massive banner when they are looking for donations. A "why subscribe" link is a great idea, perhaps with a rough breakdown of where the subscription money will go. The funding progress number as of the time of this comment stands at 39%. From figures mentioned on IRC, it seems that figure is up from 33% before this RFC went up, a little awareness goes a long way.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday February 24 2015, @01:52AM
I could live with a static Google style banner ad. It's in most cases a cost/benefit analyze.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 24 2015, @11:26PM
What % of Registered Users Subscribe?
There are just over 5,000 registered accounts. (Assuming the majority have more than one account) let's say there are 3,000 registered *users* (trying to be conservative). We have about 200 subscribed accounts. That's about 6%. If you want raw data it's 4% (~200 regd./5100 accnts). Let's compromise and call it 5% of users who register an account also subscribe.
If you can make the option to subscribe and the reasons for doing so, a bit more prominent...
I think this could help, we're on it.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aiwarrior on Tuesday February 24 2015, @12:53AM
I just came here to shout out that because of this article, I subscribed for the first time ever to a website. Soylent News is important. So important that the monthly alloted money I had for hookers(20 Euros gets you some fun) was spent in supporting this site. That is no small sacrifice.
VLM has a point. In this discussion only he had a subscription which is quite revealing of the problem we are debating. I was inspired to subscribe because of his remark.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:12AM
In which country does hookers go for 20 EUR ? ;-)
(unless they are seriously worn down)
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday February 24 2015, @05:12AM
He said you get some fun for €20, not that they go down on you.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Tuesday February 24 2015, @04:11PM
Thank you for supporting OUR site.. :)
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday February 24 2015, @05:48AM
Would it be feasible to provide some additional features to subscribers, and support a good cause at the same time? If soylentnews could set up a Diaspora [wikipedia.org] pod for subscribers, it could spread the popularity of Soylentnews AND Diaspora. Considering that a diaspora pod needs to provide a bit disk-space for its users to be able to upload some pictures etc., it would be entirely fair to provide this to subscribers only..
Another option might be to offer free mail-accounts. Stop, don't laugh! I know freemail is a dead business. But together with a "share" button, it would be neat to have a list of mail recipients tied to ma soylentnews-account and forward them links to discussions here with one click + seleccting target mail address, and all with my personal soylentnews address as sender address. This would increase the visibility of soylentnews as well, draw in more users and that way - hopefully - more subscribers at some point.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @10:25AM
Is there any reason to have a minimum donation (because, frankly, that's what a subscription is if there's no paywall)? Obviously you need at least, say, $1/transaction to make it worth processing. But what's wrong with me giving $1/year if that's what I want to do? I'll be honest, I'm a cheapskate. There's no way I'll pay $5/month to a site when I can use it for free. I might pay a little as a thank you donation, but $5/year is probably my limit.
By having a higher minimum, I'm just not going to pay anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:16PM
t-shirt
coffee mug
(Score: 2) by kaganar on Tuesday February 24 2015, @10:58PM