So, in the background, the owners of the PBC have been working with staff to get the site moved over to a new legal entity and continue operations. This process is moving slowly, but it is moving, with the expectation that we should be able to fully hand off SN in the next month or so. However, the PBC has burned through its cash reserves, and we have an overdue Linode bill as is for $268 USD. I could write more, but the tl;dr, without money, SN will disappear off the Internet.
Most of the subscriptions understandably stopped due to the uncertainty with site ownership and management. However, we're not able to pay the bills with the trickle coming in. At this point, everyone involved has agreed with and are working towards a solution to move SN to a not-for-profit and 501(c)3, but we do need the communities financial support to get there. If we can raise $500 USD via subscriptions, direct donations, or other means, that would keep the site up past May. As such, if you have let your subscription lapse, or otherwise are able to support SN, please do so now.
Any funds raises will be donated to the *new* NFP as soon as it is able to accept funds. We'll run an update if/when we reach our funding goal.
- NCommander
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Tuesday March 05 2024, @11:31PM (8 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Insightful) by martyb on Tuesday March 05 2024, @11:41PM (4 children)
I, too "love the peeps here"!
There used to be on the RHS of the main page, something like:
Goal: $xxx
So far: $yyy
To go: $zzz
Where did it go?
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:52AM
Indeed, do keep us posted about this.
Back in the day, I had some money and subscribed for myself and some of the peeps I loved. Today, I am all spent, so only can offer thoughts and prayers. And I lost a tooth (cap) this morning, so the dentist will get my next paycheck. Sorry.
Still, if the need is critical and unmet, there are other means I might pursue - say selling some toys. So keep us posted, and I will do what I can when I am able.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2024, @05:47AM (2 children)
After the whole kerfuffle, the staff repeatedly told people to stop donating to the site. Subsequent to that, someone set that part the template displayblock;dynamicblocks;default to have the style "display:none" added to it. I would hope your servers have the necessary auditing to determine who made that change.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @06:19AM (1 child)
Several people complained that their attempts to subscribe where either being rejected (I don't know why) or, when successful, we were not being told that the subscriptions had been received. Without the information coming in the template is meaningless. It did not reflect the actual state of our finances, nor were people being credited with having subscribed. As far as we could see the account was not being credited with their subscriptions - but we had no idea where that money was going.
I, and many other people, get a daily statistics report showing the number of subscription made in the reporting period. It did not reflect the subscriptions that our members were making (and for which they provided proof that the payment had been accepted).
Expecting people to continue to contribute when the money they were giving could not be traced, nor was being reflected as had happened for the previous 9 years, seemed a risky thing to do.
I have commented elsewhere that the community must be able to see where their donations are going.
The site is NOT functioning as it did for 9 years or so. "We'll run an update if/when we reach our funding goal." is not how it should be working. What is the funding goal, what subscriptions have been received so far? I don't know where the breakdown has occurred and I am not apportioning blame to anyone. But our accounts are not as transparent as they have been in the past. This causes me great concern.
I have reached out to our accountant by email several times. Those emails have gone unanswered. I know that the current board is as keen to hand over the site as we are to receive it, but at the moment there is no visibility of our accounts that I am aware of. That might be that I am not looking in the right places. I was hoping that our accountant could tell me where I should be looking.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2024, @08:18AM
I, too, am having great concern. Remember when SN was going to be the next Apple, or Fakebook? Ah, the good old days.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2024, @12:59AM
Likewise, happy to help. Happened to have a small PayPal balance, just sitting there, so sent it to SN.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday March 06 2024, @01:26AM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @05:47AM
You didn't - I don't know why somebody made that moderation.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 06 2024, @12:30AM (3 children)
I, for one, read a post some time back, that subscriptions wouldn't process, then that they would process, but it might be wiser to wait until transfer of the site was complete. The posts were slightly confusing, so I've not updated my prescription, or anyone else's.
Gimme a valid place to send money, and I'll send some immediately. Some now, probably some more in a couple weeks.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 06 2024, @01:11AM (1 child)
To answer my own question:
Requerdanos on IRC suggested "subscribe". I clicked the subscribe button, was taken to the PayPal page, and I chose the number of subscriptions I wanted to "purchase". That beats subscribing 2 or 20 times, and probably saves SN a dollar or two in processing fees. If you're going to donate $100, don't click the donate button 5 times, LOL!!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Informative) by martyb on Wednesday March 06 2024, @02:01AM
Click Subscribe [soylentnews.org]
In the next screen, you should see:
For example, say you want to select the LAST choice, for a one-year (365 day) subscription; the DEFAULT price is $20.00. If you want to CHANGE the subscription price (say to $50.00) then just change the [20.00] to [50.00]. As long as the payment is at least $20.00, you can change it to ANY amount. $30.00, $40.00, $100.00, whatever!
Easy peasy!
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 2) by sfm on Wednesday March 06 2024, @05:14PM
I'll second Runaway's comment....
Where can one send a check ?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Ken_g6 on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:02AM (6 children)
Not being in the best financial shape myself, that's my best suggestion. And I know you've thought about it because it's in the FAQ of subscription benefits.
(Score: 5, Informative) by turgid on Wednesday March 06 2024, @07:46AM (3 children)
God no. Let's keep it ad free.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2024, @09:41AM
Except mcgrew because I enjoy reading about his different books and short stories.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @10:47AM (1 child)
I agree - I do not wish to have a site that displays ads. If one does that then the people paying for the ads start to want to dictate how frequently the ads are shown and whereabouts on the page they are positioned, they want to collect clicks or do tracking, and it also places another burden upon a volunteer member of staff who has to manage the ads with their associated payments etc.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:33PM
I, for one, would not mind "well behaved" ads on the site. Ads that subscribers have the option to 100% banish, ads that even non-subscribers can contain in a small (less than 20% of the screen width) column on the right, ads which are 100% text - no graphics or sound. Ads that do not track the users in any way beyond the fact they have loaded a SN page. If anybody pays for such advertising content these days, I would consider that unobtrusive and perhaps occasionally interesting / helpful.
The question then becomes: is the advertising revenue so derived worth the staff's time to pursue, or is keeping operations lean and efficient and handling user subscription donations a better approach?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday March 06 2024, @09:52PM (1 child)
Nope... even if ads are shown I will block them. Too much risk of malware to allow that.
I will go subscribe now!
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday March 06 2024, @09:54PM
And done... been waiting on this for a while now. This is one of the very few sites I am willing to subscribe, and would like to keep it going!
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 5, Informative) by krishnoid on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:20AM
When SoylentNews gets its 501c3 designation, it would be very easy to charitably donate stock to someone's "donor-advised fund" [morningstar.com] with the (unenforceable) request that it be sent onward to SoylentNews. If you don't trust that they'll forward it on, you can donate a share of a cheap stock and make sure the donor-advised fund holder donates it appropriately.
ETrade at least has a dedicated page to make it easy to let me donate a share of stock to a 501c3 charity, and I think they also make it easy to donate to a donor-advised fund as well, which will then sell the share and transfer the cash to the destination charity.
It was so easy to donate a share that I picked a share amount, and on the next page a charity from a pulldown, then clicked "Next". I expected it to show me a confirmation click through, but the next page pretty much just said "Done". I was just trying to check out the charitable transfer mechanism, but it was so frictionless that I had to call their customer support and have it reversed.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Skwearl on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:32AM
I rarely post, and even rarer give money. You can have a subscription, I've seen your hard work, and you can have an hour's of mine.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @04:27AM
I am more than happy to contribute, but payments that have been made in the last few months have not be reflected in the payments information received on the site.
Can the Accountant please update that page so that people can have their subscription records updated too?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by julian on Wednesday March 06 2024, @04:51AM
I'd hate to see this place go. Hope we make it
(Score: 2) by fleg on Wednesday March 06 2024, @05:22AM
keep up the good work!
(Score: 2) by deimios on Wednesday March 06 2024, @06:05AM (8 children)
My subscription just expired and I didn't even notice, renewed it today and enabled the email notifications. Were those always there and I disabled them like an idiot or is it a newer functionality?
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @06:22AM (7 children)
Email notifications are controlled by each account owner.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @06:34AM (6 children)
Some email providers are making arbitrary rules as to which sites they will accept emails from. I understand that this is for security reasons, but changing policy while not informing everyone is not a good move. Some of the bigger names are following this pattern and we have had several reports from users that they are also unable to send emails because of these changes, despite their own configuration complying fully with the relevant RFCs.
SoylentNews has had problems with sending some (but not all!) emails via these bigger names.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:36PM (3 children)
>Some email providers are making arbitrary rules as to which sites they will accept emails from.
This has been my experience for the past 20+ years, and so, approximately 19 years ago, I switched from using my own domain e-mail address and playing whack-a-mole whitelist chasing games to just "resigning to the beast" and using a @gmail.com address as my primary point of contact.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:58PM (2 children)
I know NCommander considered whether we should just farm our email handling to an external site before the decision was made to close down SN last May. The issue is if we pay someone else to do it then that means our monthly running costs will increase, and our begging for more subscriptions will also increase :) . I have no idea how much it would cost to do so, and I don't know how we would handle the various group addresses that we have e.g editors, admins, etc. and which we use internally quite a lot.
I really don't know which way the community would like this to go. At the end of the day it is their pockets that would have to support it. If you, or anyone else has any views, then please raise them. Now might be the time to sort this out.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 06 2024, @06:18PM (1 child)
Yeah, I sympathize with the general Google hate out there, but for my personal (home/family) business, @gmail is free (well, advertising supported) and it does what we need.
I worked at a company ~10 years back that used Google services to run everything... not sure what that looks like these days - it wasn't free, but it was pretty cheap back then and I think there might be a free tier that might accommodate the needs of something SN sized...
The thing to consider with "roll your own FOSS" solutions is the time/maintenance work involved in keeping it all going. If you've got the skillz up-to-date then it's probably trivial, but if your life is focused in other areas the investment can be considerable.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2024, @02:26AM
The problem with email is that it is based on standard practices, reputation, and patterns in mail. Hosting your own mail vs. using an email host have their own pros and cons. And each makes some aspect easier to control but others more difficult. And which host you use can also make a big difference on the above as well as cost. Either way, it is up to the admins to have a proper setup and to keep up with the sender requirements because hosts, even paid ones, don't guarantee mail delivery if you don't. Email isn't that hard to do or keep on top of when set up with a system in place with a reputable host of any kind. But the real work is getting it to that point.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Wednesday March 06 2024, @07:31PM (1 child)
It would be helpful to know just who those "big names" are, so we'd know the unreliable ones. (I don't have a local mail server, so my incoming emails go through a redirect to a non-Google free service, my outgoing goes from that service, but with the "from" and "reply-to" set to my domain.)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @07:58PM
The biggest problem appears to be GMail, but there are others.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jon3k on Wednesday March 06 2024, @07:04AM (1 child)
How do I just donate money? Just send me a link I'll cover it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jon3k on Wednesday March 06 2024, @07:07AM
nevermind - I see it. money sent, you should be ok for a while.
(Score: 2, Informative) by turgid on Wednesday March 06 2024, @07:50AM (1 child)
I just let the moths out of the sporran. They fell out. They were dead.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Funny) by turgid on Wednesday March 06 2024, @05:31PM
I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday March 06 2024, @08:36AM (3 children)
Is paypal working yet?
I have tried paying in the past but you are not getting the money.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @08:50AM
It works inasmuch that it will accept (most) payments. We still have no visibility of it arriving in our account. Matt Angel may have that visibility but I cannot find where on the site we can access the subscription data.
Please see https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=60100&commentsort=0&mode=threadtng&threshold=-1&page=1&cid=1347555#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday March 06 2024, @10:56AM (1 child)
I used PayPal today, and my subscription appears to have worked. Does that mean the money was received?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @11:33AM
Maybe.... Hopefully I will see something of a clue when today's stats are released tomorrow. With luck both my payment and yours will be confirmed.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snospar on Wednesday March 06 2024, @08:55AM (5 children)
I renewed my subscription on the 21st February but just checked my profile and it still says that my subscription has expired. Happy to pay to keep the lights on but not so happy if it is unclear what happened to the funds I sent.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @09:00AM
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=60100&commentsort=0&mode=threadtng&threshold=-1&page=1&cid=1347555#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
I agree.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by carguy on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:18PM (2 children)
My SN sub had expired, based on suggestions from a few months(?) ago to wait for the reorganization.
Yesterday I subscribed again and now my expiration date showed March 2025 -- so the new sub seems to have been logged "somewhere".
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:31PM
It had probably been received by the accountant but usually someone uses the data to update the front page. There has been a breakdown somewhere in the system but the staff have not been getting the same information.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:36PM
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by Snospar on Thursday March 07 2024, @07:45AM
Replying to my post to report that happily my subscription has now renewed - and this was via Paypal. Thanks to those who sorted this out!
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tadslosh on Wednesday March 06 2024, @10:04AM
Have been meaning to subscribe for years.
I visit most days and I'd like to see the site continue.
Thanks to the team for your efforts.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @10:35AM (1 child)
NCommander
I have lost significant money on Paypal in the past, and currently I have no visibility that the donation that I have made via Stripe is arriving in the SN account.
Can you please provide the necessary details for someone to make a direct bank transfer? It is a common way of making payments in Europe using a smartphone, and it happens within minutes with confirmation that the money was paid into the appropriate account.
I am not going to risk losing any more money to Paypal or Stripe when I get no confirmation that the transfer has been made, merely that it has been taken out of my account.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jman on Wednesday March 06 2024, @12:22PM
https://support.stripe.com/charge-lookup/ [stripe.com]
Lookup of my last donation resulted in some outfit named "SoylentNews PBC" being the recipient.
Hope they treat the $'s kindly! ;)
(Score: 2) by jman on Wednesday March 06 2024, @12:07PM
My current subscription wasn't up until July, but happy to pitch in again. The inter-tubes would not be the same without this place.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @12:18PM (2 children)
If NCommander has ben funding SoylentNews for some time, then I say "Thank you!", and earnestly hope you will be repaid with (commercially fair) rates of interest.
I also earnestly hope that the restructuring/rebuilding of SoylentNews will be successful. If not (and we need to plan for the possibility), I hope it will be archived in an accessible fashion for use by future historians, and in a form where it can be browsed, and people can download their articles, and maybe entire discussions. I don't know if this is something archive.org could help with, or other organisations.
A lot of people feel uncomfortable with 'casting money into the void' and would like some way of auditing that their contributions are being sent to the right place. Linux Mint has blog posts that detail contributions (which can be anonymous, or pseudonymous as the donor wishes) - this month's entries shows the kind of thing I am talking about: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4650 [linuxmint.com] - Perhaps something similar could be cooked up, or some other (suitably anonymised) way of showing income - like the classic 'thermometer on a church wall' keeping track of the roof-repair* fund.
For reasons that would take to long to explain, and which I don't want to make public, I'm not in a position to contribute now. I might be in the near-ish future. If it all goes to pot, I'm sorry, but thank all who contributed to making this place an interesting place to be for so long.
*Or, perhaps I should say, the fund for providing a cheap source of lead to criminals. Stripping the lead from newly repaired church rooves** is a thing, apparently.
**One hoof, several hooves. One roof, several rooves [wiktionary.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:42PM (1 child)
There is no obligation for you to subscribe at all. We recognise that people have different circumstances and whether you subscribe or not has no bearing on how you are viewed on this site. Your contribution to discussions has been considerable and that is all that we hope to see from many in our community. Nevertheless, for those whose circumstances are different we appreciate any help they may be able to give to keep the lights on and the stories flowing.
There is never a need to apologise for not being able to subscribe.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @04:41PM
Thank you for your kind words, janrinok.
(Score: 1) by VeasMKII on Wednesday March 06 2024, @02:32PM
I'm in ;)
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday March 06 2024, @02:37PM (3 children)
The process worked fine for me. I think its a relevant contribution as people tend to only report failures leading to a false sense of non-operation.
A minute or so after I subscribed, my "preferences" "subscription" tab reports "Thank you for supporting SoylentNews! We appreciate your contribution very much."
A couple minutes later I got the Paypal email "Receipt for Your Payment to SoylentNews PBC"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 06 2024, @02:44PM (1 child)
Another success report, I immediately (within minutes?) get to wear the cute yellow star next to my name on posts.
WRT wearing yellow stars, well, the jokes pretty much write themselves about that. Of all the people unlikely to be happy to wear a yellow star, well, here I am, happy as can be!
(Score: 1) by crotherm on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:46PM
The process seemed to work for me using stripe. My credit union has the charge titled, "SUBSCRIPTION PAY", as pending. Also no email conformation as of yet.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:00PM (1 child)
Note that you can buy gift subscriptions.
I bought our dear departed buddy MDC one month in his honor aka MichaelDavidCrawford (2339)
I think MDC would have liked that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by martyb on Wednesday March 06 2024, @06:29PM
Thank for the *very* welcome reminder.
He was a gentle, friendly, and active member of our community... I miss him, too.
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 2, Informative) by kernel bleep on Wednesday March 06 2024, @04:30PM
Just chipped in. Glad to.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jelizondo on Wednesday March 06 2024, @04:41PM
Renewed subscription. If more funding becomes necessary, please do let us know.
Keep up the good work, we appreciate your efforts.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday March 06 2024, @11:03PM (7 children)
Done.
QQ: What does the site cost to run? I've never implemented non-trivial hosting outside of enterprise environments so I'm ignorant. (In enterprises everything costs an arm and a leg.)
Thanks!
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Thursday March 07 2024, @02:17AM (3 children)
That's a good question. What does it cost, on a yearly basis? Ballpark range?
I just renewed my subscription, because I hadn't realized it ran out. But damn. $268 USD overdue? Is that.. a month? three months? a year? over a three month period that's... pocket change, for someone in my position. I could help, probably.
- D
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday March 07 2024, @03:50AM (1 child)
I enjoy the community here and it's worth something to me. I should have subscribed long ago. That was an oversight. :(
Anyone know how endowments work? I'm completely ignorant on this topic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2024, @01:33PM
It's time for a new congressional oversight committee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2024, @06:08AM
Linode charges at the end of the month if you have a good payment history. SN has a past-due bill but let's assume it is their first one. That would mean that the latest bill arrived on March 1st and the maximum bill limit is $50 now. This means Linode will send you a bill whenever charges are $50 or at the end of the month, whichever happens first. We know that $500 lasts until May. Subtract $268 past due for months before March. That leaves $232 for future invoices. Since the bill limit is now $50, Linode will take the infrastructure offline 2 weeks after the unpaid bill is invoiced. $232 divided by 3 months (March, April, and May, with the first half of June coming later) is equal to $77.33, approximately. If you remove taxes and fees around 7.5%, that leaves around $72 a month. Which makes sense because the shared CPU plans are in multiples of $12. So their most-likely server setup at this point is probably 2 4GB boxes ($24 each) and 2 2GB boxes ($12 each). They could probably get it down to less, however, with some creativity, minor code tweaks, or exchanging redundancy for replication (or nothing at all).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2024, @09:00PM (2 children)
The site never needed $6k+ per year that is for sure!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday March 09 2024, @09:17AM (1 child)
Actually it probably did, but it does not need it at present. When NCommander did the update in late 2022/ early 2023 he reduced the number of servers that we had, I think by 3. He did this by restructuring where the various software packages were installed. We had separate server backups, 2 separate servers for the database so that a single server loss did not take the site down and for load sharing, Varnish, IRC, email, various management software, a development environment etc so it is not just the 1 database and a bit of Perl that we have to manage.
The server holdings were calculated based on the community size that we had several years previously. The reduction in the amount of hardware that we had with Linode made a significant cost saving. It might be possible to reduce it still further but you have to remember that simply going for a cheaper option might not be the wisest move. You often only get what you pay for. Having a share of a couple of VPS will simply not cut it, nor might the reliability be what is wanted. Certainly the bandwidth is greater than most VPS are offering at a comparable price. The majority do not log in to read the site.
Your implied mismanagement of funds (which has been repeated, perhaps by others, several times elsewhere) is not based on any factual evidence that you can point to, simply an ignorance of how the site was structured. it might have been overkill but the structure was chosen intentionally to achieve a specific aim.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.