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I have a couple things to bring to the attention of the community concerning site funding and comment moderations. As always, if you are not interested in these matters, feel free to skip past this one; another story will be along shortly. Otherwise read beyond the fold for an update.
Finances:
A recent comment to a journal article about SoylentNews now having a privacy policy prompted me to pursue something that had been nagging at me for a long while.
In short, I have learned it costs more to run this site than I had estimated. We have actually been operating at a loss for the past couple years. I have, therefore, provided a revised fundraising goal of $3500.00 for the first half of this calendar year in the "Site News" slashbox (that appears on the right-hand-side of the main page).
I have been advised our current funds on hand can support the site for just six months.
For those who have been around for a while, it will come as no surprise to learn that I try to keep a handle on subscription income for this site. Further, I have been maintaining what we affectionately refer to here as the "Beg-O-Meter' that appears in the "Site News" slashbox. It provides a running tally of our financial goal for the period and how far along we are towards attaining that goal. Lastly, I have posted stories in the past apprising the community as to our progress towards those goals.
We are an entirely volunteer organization (no staff member has ever been paid anything for their work on SoylentNews). All funding for the site comes entirely from the community (we have never run advertisements and are strongly resistant to any suggestion to do so). The vast majority of our funding comes from subscriptions.
My prior estimates of $4000.00 per year were based on the only information I had available at that time. Our monthly web hosting costs ($260/month), the fact that we needed to file and pay taxes, and that we paid an accountant to prepare them. Twelve months at $260/month works out to $2160 per year. I reasoned a goal of $3000 for the year would give us about $840 for those other expenses... that should do it, right?
Apparently not.
Thanks to the above-referenced comment, I reached out to a member of our board of directors and inquired as to our financial status. In very short order I received a pile of PDF files. A separate file for each fiscal year's Profit and Loss Statement and a separate file for each year's Balance Sheet. It took a surprising amount of effort, but thanks to the concerted effort of a few staff members, these have been uploaded to our Wiki and can now be accessed through the SoylentNews Finance page.
A couple things bear explanation. You may notice that there are expenses associated with subscriptions. The amount of a subscription made to SoylentNews is a gross amount. From that, Stripe or PayPal charge a processing fee for each subscription. These fees do add up and amount to the aforementioned expense.
Also, why is a Delaware company paying Massachusetts state taxes? I reached out for an answer from a board member, and here is his reply:
We pay Massachusetts income tax (since we are not profitable, we pay the minimum amount of $456 each year, but if we ever become profitable, we will have to pay more) because we are physically located in MA (through me). A physical address was required to open our checking account with BoA[*], and for various other things. For example, we need a physical address to sign the engagement letter with our accountant every year. Note that we are not required to pay Delaware income tax because we are not physically located in DE. The tax that we pay to Delaware each year is technically a franchise tax that we pay for the privilege of being incorporated in Delaware (allowing us to be a Public Benefit Corporation, among other benefits).
[*] BoA - Bank of America.
I will keep the community appraised should I learn anything more.
Moderations:
We had had a discussion on the site a few months ago about moderation on the site. I have been pursuing a possible implementation of one of the suggestions raised there: adding a "-1 Ad Hominem" moderation. Discussion among staff has suggested we would need a counter moderation should a "-1 Ad Hominem" be perceived to have been in error. That wold mean the addition of a "+1 Not Ad Hominem" moderation, too. (In proper geek fashion, they nicely abbreviate to: "-1 AH" and "+1 NAH"!) There is more to its implementation than just adding these options to the moderation table; coding changes would also be needed. This, in turn, would require the modifications be submitted through GitHub as a pull request, then testing, and finally a rollout to the community. It is important to note that this would be on a trial basis! If it proves to NOT be workable, we need to be able to roll that back. This is easier said than done! The previous moderations will need to remain in the system (what's done is done) but future moderations must be able to be blocked... and the code is not designed for this at all.
It bears mentioning that our goal is to provide a forum for the community to comment on stories and to moderate those comments. We strive to be as hands-off about these matters as we reasonably can.
In short, this is mostly an announcement that AH moderations have not been forgotten, design work is in progress, and that when time and developer availability permits, we hope to be rolling this out for a test run. I would not expect anything to happen in the next month, but wanted to provide as much advance notice as to the intention as possible so as to encourage any feedback, discussion, etc. that could help inform our implementation.
<Note class="TMB">
s/next month/next few months/
Contractor woes (just because I technically can do everything doesn't mean it's always the wisest idea) wound up pushing move-in date on the church I've been remodeling back a couple months (end of April is what we're currently shooting for as a best case scenario) and I don't want anything hitting production servers that hasn't had at least two weeks worth of testing on our dev server after me calling it done, because I'm quite often wrong about that. The end of May is the soonest anything is likely to hit production servers, with some time in June being far more likely.
</Note>
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday March 06 2020, @01:39PM (39 children)
I'm gonna go as far as to say it's fucking stupid idea.
There's legitimate reasons to call a fucking idiot a fucking idiot when they're being a fucking idiot.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @02:06PM (29 children)
well you would know.
testing testing "-1 Ad Hominem"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday March 06 2020, @02:17PM (28 children)
The fact that you think describing a scenario where it's warranted and calling an idea stupid is an ad hominem is precisely why it's a bad idea as a mod.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Friday March 06 2020, @02:33PM (27 children)
refers to a person.
would refer to an idea. You were attacking the person, therefore it is an ad hominem attack.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 06 2020, @02:48PM (18 children)
"being a fucking idiot" is a verb clause though, so it's really attacking the action and not ad hom.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @03:57PM (14 children)
The "-1 Ad Hominem" mod is a democrat thing. Please don't do it. They are only looking for a way to mete out greater punishment, like in that experiment where they press a button, believing they are electroshocking their antagonist. They use moderation as a weapon. Other than that the system works great.
I still wish you would make the down modders write a lengthy essay on why they are down modding, we need a defense mechanism.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @04:26PM (13 children)
This is a stupid comment by a stupid person. This FACT is evident from the use of "democrat" with derogatory intent. It is also evident in that the Anonymous Coward cannot be bothered to actually remember the name of the Milgram Experiment. Further, the AC is a paranoid nutcase, as it believes that when others notice his partisan idiocy, and down mod its comment accordingly, he takes that as assualt, and says modders are "weaponizing". Moron. Idiot. Would not read again. -Framebait - Trollop
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 06 2020, @04:35PM
It read as largely tongue-in-cheek to me, so you really just proved him right on some semi-serious ribbing by getting cranky about it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @04:35PM (6 children)
Welp, if you were the one who down modded that, you have just made my case. This is so far the only problem with the system
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 06 2020, @04:57PM (5 children)
On second glance, that may have been some some quality shitposting rather than a serious response. This is where not being AC would help to tell the difference.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday March 06 2020, @05:13PM (1 child)
Not very subtle for a Master Troll, are you, TMB? But I, for one, vote against any moderation based on logical fallacies, whether formal or informal, simply because so many soylentils have such a week grasp of them. Not understanding what an argumentum ad hominem is, is a case in point. If we added the strawman and "No True Scotsman", the "Texas Marksman", or ignorantio elenchi, all hell would break lose.
I still do not understand the umbrage taken at down mods. Usually it is not too bright right-wing nut-jobs, without much actual education, that get upset that someone has downmodded them, bruising an extremely fragile ego. But that comes from the holes in the Dunning-Kroeger effect, where they are vaguely aware that they might be a full-of-excrement racist idiot. Of course, this means the more they deny it, the more true it is. They should take down-mods as therapy, or a lesson to be learned, or possibly a badge of honor.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 07 2020, @12:15AM
Dude, have I ever appeared to be even as subtle as putting a half brick in a sock and swinging it rather than just throwing it? Seriously though, it's not easy to tell on a good one without having some context. That's what makes it good.
Yeah, I don't get it either. Getting downmodded for making people think things they didn't want to think is praise for a job well done not an insult.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @05:15PM (2 children)
Sorry, it is because of these arbitrary down modders that I post AC. I'm not sticking my karma out for them. Knowing the identity of a poster can be helpful in some instances. This isn't one of them. And after all, moderation is done anonymously. Why don't we ID them too? Don't we have the right to face our "accusers"?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 07 2020, @12:02AM (1 child)
I wouldn't sweat it. If EF can keep his between 45 and 50 when he half tries, anyone can.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @06:59PM
He is a good man. The facade can't hide that.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @05:23PM
Leave it to a Democrat to assume that their own name is a derogatory insult.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 06 2020, @06:08PM (1 child)
And then to imply his ideas were wrong because of it!
Boy, maybe we need some kind of moderation option for crap like that!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @07:01PM
:-) On the contrary, lack of that option will do more to compel a written response, which is far better, so we don't have idiots just "pushing a button" *BZZZZT!*
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday March 06 2020, @06:53PM (1 child)
Derogatory intent is not required for an ad hominem
A. You're a well paid, well respected lawyer
B. You're arguing that poor people are suffering
C. You couldn't possibly know that because of A
That's an ad hominem argument. It's fallacious because it circumvents the content of the argument to focus on the person saying it. It doesn't really matter if it's derogatory or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @12:09PM
A. You are fucking stupid idiot
B. You're arguing that poor people are suffering
C. You couldn't possibly know that because of A
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Friday March 06 2020, @03:57PM (2 children)
There really cannot be a more classic example of ad hominem than "being a fucking idiot".
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday March 06 2020, @04:12PM (1 child)
See all the other posts that explain exactly why that thought is incredibly stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @05:17PM
Not just incredibly stupid, but whoever wrote it is a fucking idiot!! Which is NOT an ad hominem.
(Score: 5, Touché) by ikanreed on Friday March 06 2020, @02:51PM (7 children)
And here, dear class, we have an example of a mind that is incapable of abstract reasoning. It's an interesting case, because while they can recognize words and their literal meaning, they're utterly incapable of using the sentence's structure to determine that the application was hypothetical in nature and not a literal usage.
This kind of extremely befuddled reasoning is quite normal among those who like to cite fallacies in discussions as "I win" buttons. It doesn't matter to them, if when the fallacy is applied it deconstructs flawed reasoning(as fallacies should) or is merely possessed of an entirely superficial similarity. This kind of mind isn't capable of applying concepts meaningfully.
The distinction, in this explicit fallacy, the ad hominem, between "This person is of dubious moral character therefor what they say should be disregarded" an invalid piece of reasoning, and "This person puts forth morally repugnant ideas, thus is of low moral character" a potentially valid deduction would be utterly lost on them. Don't even try to explain it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 06 2020, @08:34PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday March 06 2020, @09:51PM (3 children)
People can pick on me all they like, I just don't like bad ideas that enable stupid reasoning.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @10:30PM (1 child)
but you keep coming back to SN ;)?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @12:36AM
We are the Soylent Amigos! Wherever there is stupidity and bad reasoning, we'll be there! Wherever there is ignorance and bias, we'll be there! Wherever there is injustice and unsocial behavior, we'll be there!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 07 2020, @02:30AM
I don't either. That's why I point out these bald fallacies where they occur. I'm not going to bother to pretend that someone's fallacy-ridden argument is rational or sound.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday March 06 2020, @09:20PM (1 child)
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens. We have been over the ad hominem thing before. Behold!
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=16556&cid=428738#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @03:25AM
But see, in your case...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 06 2020, @02:45PM (2 children)
I tend to agree. I very much prefer the "comment rather than moderate" approach to things. The former creates discussion while the other inhibits it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 06 2020, @07:10PM (1 child)
I was about to say the same thing, but you beat me to it. My take on moderation is conservative in the sense that I only do it rarely if somebody has really succinctly stated something, contributed useful additional information or insight, or has come out with a bon mot that could brighten everyone's day.
Agreement or disagreement is better expressed through a reply, because conversation is what this site is all about. It's the secret sauce.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 07 2020, @03:41AM
So, we need a sauce chef? As opposed to a sous chef? But, where can we get a chef with secret clearance to keep the secret sauce secret?
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 06 2020, @03:27PM (5 children)
That's not even technically an ad hominem! That's just namecalling.
'Your argument is wrong because you're an idiot' would be an ad hominem.
But people are mostly going to use it for the first example, aka incorrectly, when flamebait or troll would actually be more accurate.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 06 2020, @04:39PM (4 children)
You forgot Informative. They may not think they're an idiot while actually being one and in need of that information.
Go ahead, I know you want to. I'll probably even laugh.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 06 2020, @07:14PM (2 children)
We're all selectively idiots. I've seen everybody on here say dumb things sometimes, on certain topics. We each know what we know, and paper over the rest with supposition and personal perspective/prejudice. If moderation is doing its job it places those in proper relief, right?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 06 2020, @11:59PM (1 child)
I serve up a slow pitch like that and you take it seriously? Come on, man!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @01:42AM
It is the Catch-22 of being an idiot. When you're serious people think you're trolling, when you're trolling people take you seriously. Time to see a neuropathologist.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday March 06 2020, @09:23PM
As someone I used to know liked to say, "People get mad when you call them an asshole, because they don't realize you're trying to get them to stop being stupid. They think you're just being mean."
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr