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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: 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?
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