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SoylentNews is people

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the ontology dept.

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?

  1. (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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?"

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by quadrox on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:17AM

    by quadrox (315) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:17AM (#15175)

    Charity: I do not see this site/community as such. The word charity implies that any contribution (financially or otherwise) is done without expectation of something in return - but what I want (the community) to have in return is control of the site. Therefore I see this as a bad choice.

    Co-op: I am leaning towards this option, probably 2c because this makes it more explicit that the site is by the community for the community. Community remains in control, everything is good.

    Recreational club: Community is in control, which is great. But I feel that the spirit of this site is more of a co-op than a club. But I'm ok with this choice if need be.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:55AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:55AM (#15200)

    When I read "community control", all sorts of adages spring to mind, including "too many cooks in the kitchen" and "designing a horse by committee".

    The truth is that an organization, even a non-profit, needs a strong leader. Decisions by committee often fail [mindyourdecisions.com] and ultimately, you want a leader who can be changed if they are not going in a direction that you like.

    • (Score: 2) by quadrox on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:10PM

      by quadrox (315) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:10PM (#15206)

      You make a good point, even though it was never my intention to let the community vote on every single decision. The daily operation is of course left to staff and management.

      But the community should decide the direction and be able to veto major unwanted changes (or initiate desired changes).

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Peristaltic on Wednesday March 12 2014, @02:36PM

        by Peristaltic (3122) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @02:36PM (#15282)

        But the community should decide the direction and be able to veto major unwanted changes (or initiate desired changes).

        And there you go. Yes.

        Run it using the non-profit model and create some kind of "power user" perk for which members may pay something like $15 / year. The perk doesn't have to be over the top, just something to create a notion of extra value for members that care about the site.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @02:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @02:10PM (#15267)

    No, no, that's not what "charity" means in this context. In this context it basically means "not-for-profit" from a US legal perspective, THAT'S ALL. It can be classified as, for example, an educational foundation. Plenty of "charitable" organizations even perform services for hire.

    This is CLEARLY the right choice out of the three -- there's no reason any few should profit greatly from a supposed community site. You have reasonably paid staff and a paid/volunteer board of directors. That's it.

    This is NOT reinventing the wheel -- just look at any number of not-for-profits, from JREF to Red Cross to the Salvation Army. In the tech world there's FSF, Debian, Apache, Mozilla...

    Not a lawyer, but I think this place needs one soon.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @03:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @03:58PM (#15338)

      The Red Cross compensates its president/CEO north of half a million dollars a year [snopes.com]. JREF's president is compensated to the tune of $200,000 [wikipedia.org] a year. Are you comfortable paying someone a triple-digit salary for running this website? Are you comfortable paying ten people who run the website this salary? Your "there's no reason any few should profit greatly from a supposed community site" indicates that you are not.

      I'm guessing your solution involves by arbitrarily deciding what's a "fair" wage for someone else. But if the workers are based in the mid-west, $100,000 a year would be a very good compensation. If they're in San Francisco (proper), they're making minimum wage when you factor in the housing. And if you hired one person from each city to do the same job (let's say being an editor), would you pay them differently? Or would you only hire people from places that have low incomes to keep the cost down? In that case, why not get the maximum savings by outsourcing everything to India? What exactly is your plan here?

  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 12 2014, @03:00PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @03:00PM (#15305) Journal

    I think I like 2(b) the best. I'm not involved with this site in any manner beyond user, but, I think that 2(b) would encourage those who are doing the heavy lifting of making it available, to do the best work they can because of the opportunity for distributed personal profit amongst the workers. This is also increases the incentive for the site workers to prevent any single person from wresting control of the site, and secondly, it doesn't create a situation where some corporate overlord torpedos everything for extreme concentrated personal profit at the expense of users and site workers.

    I feel I would benefit because the site workers would feel greater motivation to keep the site going, rather than experience charity burnout or any of the stuff surrounding that ("it was fun but I need to earn a living" -- "it was fun but I have a real job and a family and need the time back" -- "it isn't fun and I'm not getting paid so fuck it").