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prospectacle writes:
"An important choice remains for this site. What kind of organisation will we be, practically, legally and financially?
A for-profit, shareholder corporation seems out of the question, by general consensus (correct me if I'm wrong), but other questions remain. The basic choice is this:
Will we be like a charity, a co-op, or a recreational club?
- (Like a) Charity:
Being like a charity means operating for the public benefit. What we produce is news and englightened commentary for the benefit of the world. All our finances and operations would be geared towards this aim. All excess revenue is reinvested into the site. - Co-op:
A co-op is for the mutual financial benefit of individual (possibly paid) members. Three main sub-options for this exist that might be appropriate for this site:
2a) A retailer's co-op. Members use a common organisation in order to make individual profits. For example if members used this site to display their stunning intelligence, and then put their resume or website links on their profile page so people could hire them. Maybe there are services built into the site to find someone to hire who fits your requirements.
2b) A worker's co-operative: Employees share any excess revenue. Some revenue would go to expenses, some would be reinvested, whatever remains is shared among employees.
2c) A buyer's co-op. We exist to get discounts, or to buy together what we can't afford separately. Maybe we're buying well-written news and analysis from professional authors. Or maybe we're bulk-buying electronics, etc, so the price-per individual can be lower. - A Recreational Club:
This takes membership fees to provide access to equipment, organize competitions, etc. Maybe paid members would get to use extra services, like an email account, or storage space, or their own discussion thread area, or software project hosting, or chat-rooms, etc. Non-members could still be permitted, with fewer privileges, and would have to pay-per-use for the extra services (or pay to become a member).
This is a gross simplification, but gives some idea of the options involved. Feel free to offer alternatives. So what should we be, what is our purpose, really? And what kind of a structure is required to make sure we serve that purpose, and that money doesn't end up in the wrong pockets?
Bonus question: which jurisdiction should we set ourselves up in to fulfil our mission most effectively?"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:15AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by prospectacle on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:42AM
I agree. We currently behave more like a club than anything else. Clubs gotta pay costs, so members who use their services pay dues. Simple, tried, true.
You could make it free to watch; pay to play.
Members could bring guests (within limits, of course. Perhaps for a limited time, and a limited number of guests each month).
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:23PM
I'd rather not be that restrictive: it's not like the site can't accommodate a large number of persons because of limited space/facilities (this is where the parallel with the real-world brick-and-mortar becomes wrong).
I would suggest a guest account may be obtained by anyone asking for it, with a certain restriction on the amount of activity per day or per story, but otherwise full access to posting/journaling/etc
Membership by invitation from another "sponsoring/vetting" member may be one way to increase the number of full members... May even work as a strategy to increase the club's appeal (remember the time when one could get a gmail account only if someone would invite her/him?)
Even so, an invite for a full membership should come with a cost for the member that vouch for the applicant - probably some karma.
Another way a "guest" can get to receive an "non-sponsored invitation" (i.e nobody vouching for her/him) to membership if accumulating a certain level of karma and paying for the privilege of being invited with that amount of karma points. Until than, a limited number of posts per day (or per story) may be a good incentive to make their posts count for someone willing to join the club.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrbluze on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:47PM
I strongly believe we should keep all the basic fictions of the site as free. Subscriptions and so on could buy benefits like access to downloads or something like that but the things that we do right now should remain free of charge. I personally favour the club model, and would suggest possible benefits of club membership be participation in the running of the site, access to peer support, employment listings, email, etc. At some point people who are paying for everything at the moment need to be recompensed and we need to think of turning a profit without becoming a user tracking and advertising service.
Do it yourself, 'cause no one else will do it yourself.
(Score: 2) by prospectacle on Wednesday March 12 2014, @09:54PM
You're right, MrBluze and c0lo. It's better not to shut down free services. Besides asking people to start paying for what was free, it would also be extra code-work to enforce that separation.
Maybe it should go along the lines of: current features stay free, future features (after some cut-off date) are for members only.
Perhaps members also get a vote on what the new features will be.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:09PM
Could be a much simpler business model for a club.
If you're a member your posts get a mandatory +1, and your posts list in public how many days of subscription you have left, and once a day you can give away a days subscription to any poster (aka you subscribe for 1 year but you actually get 1 year plus can give away up to 365 days, one per day)
A meta-meta-meta moderation, sorta.
Rather optimistically someone who makes "the best post of the day" will get a magic +1 for an entire day in the future as a subscriber, which seems entirely reasonable. Having to give away their extra day, once per day, will motivate subscribers to pay attention to find the best recipient. Being a subscriber or being awarded a subscription means a day of +1 which is worth something but probably not worth the attention of spammers (or if someone does start spamming, it'll cost the community a whopping 1 mod point to even it out, and if there's one thing the community is not short of, its mod points). If you want to be an anonymous subscriber, make out of band agreement for a non-anonymous subscriber to simply pay you their extra day, every day.
This could be implemented partially or in phases. I imagine it would be no heroic achievement to start with something like two lines of display code, where one adds a little icon to a poster in the "paid" category, and another automagically adds a +1 mod to subscriber posts. Smacking the database to see how many days left people have might be a bit harder, or would it? I suppose you can cache any result for about a day... This whole "gift economy" thing would take substantial additional coding.
Either that or "from each according to their ability, and to each according to their need" which I believe is in the United States Bill of Rights, correct? At least as practically implemented, if not in writing. Unfortunately not tongue in cheek.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @04:28PM
I thought you said simpler!
No, that's Marxist socialism. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_ to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by etherscythe on Wednesday March 12 2014, @05:17PM
I like where you're going with that, but I think it might exclude too many people up front.
I'd take it one step back: leave things essentially how they are as far as being open access for all, but those who are more "invested" in the site get privileges to direct the site's direction just a little bit more. Subscribers get metamod capability (and possibly more persistent modpoints that don't have to be spent right away), separate results in polls (maybe as simple as two colors of result), and maybe a "behind the scenes" newsletter. You might also give the option to burn say 10 karma for a week of "subscriber" status, as a means of promoting those who for whatever reason don't want to or can't pay actual money, to reflect their contributions as part of the community.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by terryk30 on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:31PM
(may now be redundant with etherscythe's "it might exclude too many people", but what the heck)
I may not have understood that properly, but just speaking generally, a process that asks people to be continuously involved in things like vetting new members may be too much of a commitment for most readers and contributors. Sure, I realize that (a) it would be in their interest to do so, and (b) it may be the true price of maintaining what's important; but...
Consider what I believe was the typical /. reader/contributor: someone who is busy and rations their time on the site, perhaps logging in (automatically from their main work or personal machine) once a day to check for anything of particular interest. Much of the content is quickly passed over as simply not personally relevant enough, mostly by story title, some by skimming the summary, some by seeing that the comments have added little value for them.
Only for a select few stories will they read through the comments and perhaps moderate or contribute. Then, it's back to More Important Things. Other than checking later to see how a discussion unfolded, there may be no continuity of commitment. When things get really busy, they may only be skimming summaries for weeks, if at all.
It would be sort of like having to use ALL your mod points to ever get more. In other words, contributions are of inconsistent intensity, and any continuous obligations will not be met by this group - but who, in total, add a lot of value.
(Score: 1) by bryan on Thursday March 13 2014, @12:49AM
Popular hardware review website techreport.com [techreport.com] just today announced their new plans [techreport.com] for subscriptions. Worth a look to see how they are handling it. Especially relevant is that they claim their traditional advertising model is no longer capable of generating enough income.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by mwvdlee on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:30PM
+1 for "recreational club".
The rest just feels like a lie.
Sure it may be legally okay to take on one of the other forms, but these forms really weren't intended to be used as such.
Do we want to be a community that is legally sound or morally sound?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:37PM
+1 for morally sound 3D surround.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by scruffybeard on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:52PM
I too enjoy the comments and lively discussion, but what would be the membership structure? I would rather not close the site to people not willing to pay a membership fee, otherwise the discussion will suffer. How much would the membership fee have to be to cover the costs of operating the site, and would we have enough paying members?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 12 2014, @01:14PM
Don't close it. Just limit the posts to a reasonable number per day (say 50)... What more? Then you surely enjoy your time here, you might as well help the guys that make it possible.
I don't know, because the costs of running the site are not known to me.
If a half of the current user accounts can afford to pay $15/year (where I leave, that's the price for 1 cup of coffee/day for 5 working-days. Or how much I smoke in 1 day), it would be 1500 x $15=$22,500. Is it enough? Probably it would pay the hosting and domain name, but surely not hiring staff.
Would I pay more than $15/year? I would certainly do, potentially sponsoring others living in countries where $15 may mean half a workday worth; but don't ask me how much more until you don't come with a brief of costing model: if there no transparency in the matter of... errr... things that matter, we aren't a community and the appeal of the site becomes lower to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Zanothis on Wednesday March 12 2014, @05:01PM
Obviously, even advertising has problems in the form of ad blockers, but at least it doesn't interfere with the ability of the community to interact with one another.
As an alternative, I think it was suggested at some point prior to the recent debacle that any money above the operational costs could be used as an endowment towards FOSS. I like the idea of the community being able to give back so that projects have a chance to make Cool Things TM that make it onto SN.
* I've already disabled ABP and Ghostery for the domain in preparation of this possibility.
** Some people have issues with restrictions imposed by their country of residence. Others can't afford it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:56PM
Quit smoking.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 12 2014, @09:56PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford