Yellow Sign
Explorer
jasper said:
I would really be sad to see a automatic deletion of posts and or limiting of avatars, signatures, and pictures.
My 2 cents.
Last edited:
Saving EnWorld Brainstorm (long-term less-technical discussion)
- Thread starter Graf
- Start date
I would really be sad to see a automatic deletion of posts and or limiting of avatars, signatures, and pictures.
My 2 cents.
jgbrowning
Hero
Sialia said:
I don't know about the rest of your post but this part I can answer. Yes, it's strictly legal. We're going to try to find some strictly legal ways of reducing the amount of taxes that has to get paid, but it will most definitely be legal.
Right now were discussing how to do this and exploring our options. Some processing fees will always be there, like merchant acount fees and transaction fees (unless you can convince the credit card companies to give you a break because you're a charity-i don't think they'd ever do that for something as small as EN World) so those will pretty much be fixed expenses.
Some company that does more traffic then we do however, could have lower %'s then we do. We don't do much in the way of on-line sales compared with the larger companies, but that can't be helped right now.
Regardless, the intent of everyone involved is to try and ensure that as much of the donated money as possible ends up in Morrus's hands. That was the point of the whole thing and we're going to do our best.
joe b.
Henry
Autoexreginated
Yellow Sign said:
Well, this is a personal observation, and not an official one, but with both this unprecedented fund-raising effort, and with Cyberstreet Walter's generous offer to upgrade our server at cost, I would hope all of the above could be avoided.
(All except deletion of extremely old posts, that is; unless someone pruned it recently, our server has posts dating back to early 2002 on it, and I'm not talking about the archive forum, either!!!!)
BSF
Explorer
Admittedly, a lot of this is _really_ up to Morrus and whomever he chooses to include in decisions. But, I want to throw out ideas and see if we can help put together a plan that Morrus can use as a starting point. The community feel here is great and it just grew immensely for me. I would like to be the crotchety old DM that a few years from now is relating stories to a new batch of players.
"Yeah, I remember back in '03 when we almost lost EN World. Was scary, but all of us gamers got together and helped make sure our favorite online hangout was still there the next day. So, you young'uns had better get in there and throw your donation in!"
Anyway, on to my point...
Would a bi-annual donation drive seem reasonable? Not so often that it gets old and intrusive, but enough to plan a few times a year for.
And you know what? I am not sure I like calling it a donation. It is more like an investment. I invest in my game books. I expect to read through them and use them more than once. EN World is like that. It is an investment in my hobby. So, it isn't a fund raiser, it is an investment drive.
I believe we should set concrete goals. We want to pay for x months of hosting. We want to upgrade the server in x way. We want to host the ENnies at Gen Con and we will use some of the funds for the awards. That type of thing.
I think we should keep the donation time fun, not a chore. Maybe plan specific group events around the same time? Something that reminds us why we are a community and give us a chance to 'meet' the new people.
I think we should work to have a community 'Thank You' that everyone who contributes can have. As I noted in an earlier post, I think a simple PDF loaded with gaming goodness would be great! Most of us have NPC's, magic items, adventure locations and all sorts of idea seeds lying around. If only a handful of us volunteered to flesh one or more of these out to contribute to the community gift, we would have a nice little resource. Anyone that invests would be able to download the PDF. It would then be our way, as a community, of saying 'Thank You' to the people investing in that community. I have mentioned this twice and I would be happy to participate! It would be my way of saying 'Thanks' to all the great people here and it might be enough to provide a little more incentive to somebody that might be sitting on the fence on whether they want to invest in the community.
I think we should also encourage anyone that wants to offer giveaways to do so as well. The above idea would be our way of making sure everyone gets something, even if they are already a Community Supporter. The giveaways would be the way that various writers, artists and publishers could give back as well as drum up a little publicity and participate in the overall fun. That being said, we should make the dates known well in advance. Some of the publishers might want to adjust product release dates if it looks like it will coincide with an EN World investment drive. I wouldn't really want any publisher to suffer in their first week of sales just because of the coincidence.
All that being said, we need some sort of organization applied to all of our ideas. Maybe some of them sound good, but are difficult to implement. Maybe some are just bad ideas in general. As has been mentioned, a business plan would be a good idea. If somebody with more experience can help out here, and everything looks good to Morrus, I would like to do whatever I can to help out the community. After yesterday, it really became clear to me how much this place, and these people, mean to me.
"Yeah, I remember back in '03 when we almost lost EN World. Was scary, but all of us gamers got together and helped make sure our favorite online hangout was still there the next day. So, you young'uns had better get in there and throw your donation in!"
Anyway, on to my point...
Would a bi-annual donation drive seem reasonable? Not so often that it gets old and intrusive, but enough to plan a few times a year for.
And you know what? I am not sure I like calling it a donation. It is more like an investment. I invest in my game books. I expect to read through them and use them more than once. EN World is like that. It is an investment in my hobby. So, it isn't a fund raiser, it is an investment drive.
I believe we should set concrete goals. We want to pay for x months of hosting. We want to upgrade the server in x way. We want to host the ENnies at Gen Con and we will use some of the funds for the awards. That type of thing.
I think we should keep the donation time fun, not a chore. Maybe plan specific group events around the same time? Something that reminds us why we are a community and give us a chance to 'meet' the new people.
I think we should work to have a community 'Thank You' that everyone who contributes can have. As I noted in an earlier post, I think a simple PDF loaded with gaming goodness would be great! Most of us have NPC's, magic items, adventure locations and all sorts of idea seeds lying around. If only a handful of us volunteered to flesh one or more of these out to contribute to the community gift, we would have a nice little resource. Anyone that invests would be able to download the PDF. It would then be our way, as a community, of saying 'Thank You' to the people investing in that community. I have mentioned this twice and I would be happy to participate! It would be my way of saying 'Thanks' to all the great people here and it might be enough to provide a little more incentive to somebody that might be sitting on the fence on whether they want to invest in the community.
I think we should also encourage anyone that wants to offer giveaways to do so as well. The above idea would be our way of making sure everyone gets something, even if they are already a Community Supporter. The giveaways would be the way that various writers, artists and publishers could give back as well as drum up a little publicity and participate in the overall fun. That being said, we should make the dates known well in advance. Some of the publishers might want to adjust product release dates if it looks like it will coincide with an EN World investment drive. I wouldn't really want any publisher to suffer in their first week of sales just because of the coincidence.
All that being said, we need some sort of organization applied to all of our ideas. Maybe some of them sound good, but are difficult to implement. Maybe some are just bad ideas in general. As has been mentioned, a business plan would be a good idea. If somebody with more experience can help out here, and everything looks good to Morrus, I would like to do whatever I can to help out the community. After yesterday, it really became clear to me how much this place, and these people, mean to me.
Utrecht
First Post
I am in full support of annual/semi annual pledge drives - I think that we as a community owe it to the site.
That all being said (and this is going to sound harsher than it is) , I beleive that the site owes us information on it as well - i.e. a full accounting of the finances.
I am sure that Morrus is a great guy - and has never demonstrated anything but the highest of ethics so this is by no means casting stones at the man. But, If I am going to donate to something, I like to know that my money is in effect going to support what I beleive it is......
That all being said (and this is going to sound harsher than it is) , I beleive that the site owes us information on it as well - i.e. a full accounting of the finances.
I am sure that Morrus is a great guy - and has never demonstrated anything but the highest of ethics so this is by no means casting stones at the man. But, If I am going to donate to something, I like to know that my money is in effect going to support what I beleive it is......
Duncan Haldane
Explorer
You know, I visit enworld almost every day. Yesterday I didn't, and I missed the whole furore.
Now, I am subscribed to a number of threads at any time, and I get emails from "morrus" about them having been updated. Morrus, I think it would have been a good idea, if possible, to send a message about the situation to all registered users via their email addresses.
They myself and many others wouldn't've almost missed it.
Secondly, I would really like to see a count of community supporters, and new victims - eg, on the front page a box that say "Enworld currently has xxx community supports, xx joined in the last day". That way it might give us an idea of how many there are, and how that is fluctuating.
Oh, and as for making messageboard payment compulsory - well, $10/yr may not seem like much to most Americans, but for a lot of people around the world it is a lot - and some of those people do read these boards. A couple of years ago the RPGA stopped charging for membership, and since then they have tripled the number of members - mostly from poorer countries where people play from the SRD.
That's about it from me,
Duncan
Now, I am subscribed to a number of threads at any time, and I get emails from "morrus" about them having been updated. Morrus, I think it would have been a good idea, if possible, to send a message about the situation to all registered users via their email addresses.
They myself and many others wouldn't've almost missed it.
Secondly, I would really like to see a count of community supporters, and new victims - eg, on the front page a box that say "Enworld currently has xxx community supports, xx joined in the last day". That way it might give us an idea of how many there are, and how that is fluctuating.
Oh, and as for making messageboard payment compulsory - well, $10/yr may not seem like much to most Americans, but for a lot of people around the world it is a lot - and some of those people do read these boards. A couple of years ago the RPGA stopped charging for membership, and since then they have tripled the number of members - mostly from poorer countries where people play from the SRD.
That's about it from me,
Duncan
BSF
Explorer
OK, reading through another thread, I realized I have used a term that is generally used in one sense, though others are applicable. The term is: invest.
Oftentimes, we hear invest used in reference to investing in a company. Purchasing a share in the company so that you can receive financial benefit from it. Usually, shareholders have some measure of control over how the company is then run.
When I say that I feel like this is an investment, this is not what I mean.
What I mean is that I spend a fair amount of time here, I suck up my share of bandwidth. And I have been doing that on the generosity of others. On one level, I have always been conscious of that. And it is easy to keep saying, “I’ll be a Community Supporter next month.” It took the unfortunate occurrence of getting it right down to the line before the site is shut down for me to get off my butt and do it.
It is surprising how little time it took me to make that decision. I saw Morrus’ announcement, noticed that it has single digit views, opened it up, did some work, read it and just sat there for a few seconds thinking “But, I was going to become a supporter, what happened?” It took me a few moments to realize that I cared enough to stop sitting on the bench. By the time I returned to the main thread, there was already a thread posted asking how we could help. The rest just keeps getting better. But, back to my point.
I expect that Morrus will have enough cash flow for the site to sleep easy. I expect that he will be able to treat this as a hobby and have fun. I do not expect him to tell us everything that he is going to do with the money.
When I say I want to invest in EN World, I am trying to say that I want to do whatever I can to help avoid getting to this point again in the future. I want to help out. I would like to offer ideas so that other people can take them apart and try to find any value in them. I use these boards a lot and I feel like I can give back to the community a little more than I do already. Invest is probably not the correct word to use. Especially since it is emotionally charged in economic terms. For my word choice, I apologize for any misunderstanding. But, for my intent, I really do want to know if there is any way that I can help in the future.
Thanks for hearing me out!
Oftentimes, we hear invest used in reference to investing in a company. Purchasing a share in the company so that you can receive financial benefit from it. Usually, shareholders have some measure of control over how the company is then run.
When I say that I feel like this is an investment, this is not what I mean.
What I mean is that I spend a fair amount of time here, I suck up my share of bandwidth. And I have been doing that on the generosity of others. On one level, I have always been conscious of that. And it is easy to keep saying, “I’ll be a Community Supporter next month.” It took the unfortunate occurrence of getting it right down to the line before the site is shut down for me to get off my butt and do it.
It is surprising how little time it took me to make that decision. I saw Morrus’ announcement, noticed that it has single digit views, opened it up, did some work, read it and just sat there for a few seconds thinking “But, I was going to become a supporter, what happened?” It took me a few moments to realize that I cared enough to stop sitting on the bench. By the time I returned to the main thread, there was already a thread posted asking how we could help. The rest just keeps getting better. But, back to my point.
I expect that Morrus will have enough cash flow for the site to sleep easy. I expect that he will be able to treat this as a hobby and have fun. I do not expect him to tell us everything that he is going to do with the money.
When I say I want to invest in EN World, I am trying to say that I want to do whatever I can to help avoid getting to this point again in the future. I want to help out. I would like to offer ideas so that other people can take them apart and try to find any value in them. I use these boards a lot and I feel like I can give back to the community a little more than I do already. Invest is probably not the correct word to use. Especially since it is emotionally charged in economic terms. For my word choice, I apologize for any misunderstanding. But, for my intent, I really do want to know if there is any way that I can help in the future.
Thanks for hearing me out!
Krug
Newshound
No way should messageboard payment be compulsory. That'll deter new members from joining.
As we've seen, voluntary payment is more than sufficient to keep the site running.
I suggest Morrus sit down with some advisors and work out a business plan, as others have said. If he wants to run this site FT, fine by me, he can declare his intentions. Lotsa other sites have FT staff (DVDTalk.com, flashkit.com) operating it. It's workable and doable.
As we've seen, voluntary payment is more than sufficient to keep the site running.
I suggest Morrus sit down with some advisors and work out a business plan, as others have said. If he wants to run this site FT, fine by me, he can declare his intentions. Lotsa other sites have FT staff (DVDTalk.com, flashkit.com) operating it. It's workable and doable.
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