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Post by microbet on May 19, 2019 16:06:18 GMT
Work or pay with people who do neither seeing ads sounds pretty good. And as nice as the people who pledged large amounts are, many people paying small amounts is more in line with what we want imo.
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Post by microbet on May 19, 2019 16:11:08 GMT
I don't think there's very much liability and a social club could probably work. Maybe the social club could hire an attorney (like simplicitus - who already holds the domain) to hold the domain, account on the hosting service and bank account in trust?
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Post by zikzak on May 19, 2019 16:24:41 GMT
With Discourse we can have integration with Patreon, which could make granting group memberships, voting and other privileges automatic and easy. No need for somebody to manage all that record keeping for every paying member. |
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Post by geewhysee on May 20, 2019 10:51:24 GMT
Work or pay with people who do neither seeing ads sounds pretty good. And as nice as the people who pledged large amounts are, many people paying small amounts is more in line with what we want imo. This seems like the bests solution to me also. I would probably be in the ads bracket but could be convinced to become a member at say $5 a month in order to vote on committee issues. How about something quite simple for ownership terms, incorporate as a co-op, profits (if there are any) split yearly, any active committee member = full share, any dues paying member for the full year = full share the rest get partial share based on how many months they contributed for. Scrub members like me get no share. I imagine the site will run at a loss for a long while possibly forever so I doubt it'll be a major issue but that seems a simple way to square things in the long run. |
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Post by zikzak on May 20, 2019 15:58:28 GMT
We could do a typical corporate structure with voting shareholders. We might be able to legally organize just the forums as a social club under US law, which would grant tax exempt status. But co-op has always made the most sense to me. Deciding who the owners are is mostly separate from the legal issue and needs to be solved first though. Broadly, that seems to be either: a) One person, who operates with as much or as little community input as they see fit b) A small number of people, who operate with as much or as little community input as they see fit
c) A large number of people who democratically run things through committees and delegates The problems with a and b are the obvious lack of democracy. The benefit is that things will move more quickly. The problem with c is where we are right now. Far too few people involved and glacial progress. Maybe this is the poll we need to have first? A straw poll among the entire community about how much it actually wants to own itself and the workload that requires?
We get these brief spurts, usually involving the same handful of people, and then absolutely nobody else picks up the ball and does anything. If we don't start getting deeper and consistent involvement from a lot more people, there is no way a democratic model is going to work. We can pipe dream all we want about a co-op, but it's never going to happen with the participation levels we currently have. If this doesn't start to change very soon we need to accept the reality and move on to something else. |
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Post by microbet on May 20, 2019 16:07:41 GMT
I think policies for administering the site, modding, new forums and whatnot can be put to votes - you just have to live without any quorum requirements for anything from the broad membership.
As far as moving sites goes, we could essentially do it any time. If there were a thread that said we're going to sign up for DigitalOcean or whatever, we'll do something to set up some donations for the first 6 months, anyone who wants to be part of the team/social club/coop can and we'll work out the details as we go, here's a poll on moving forward doing that with Discourse. I'm going to do it if more than 40 people vote and we get 90% saying yes.
You're literally the only person who could pull that off though.
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Post by geewhysee on May 20, 2019 16:09:58 GMT
I don't think the ownership structure needs to have anything to do with the ongoing business of the forum. I shop at the food.coop.co.uk/ co-op every day pretty much, then once a year I get my dividend for being a member. I know nothing about their board (or even if they have one) or any day to day running of the company. I don't need to. All I need to know are the requirements for membership (who gets paid what and why). |
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Post by microbet on May 20, 2019 16:12:14 GMT
I don't think the ownership structure needs to have anything to do with the ongoing business of the forum. I shop at the food.coop.co.uk/ co-op every day pretty much, then once a year I get my dividend for being a member. I know nothing about their board (or even if they have one) or any day to day running of the company. I don't need to. All I need to know are the requirements for membership (who gets paid what and why). It doesn't. Being a official or unofficial member of a group owning the domain or leasing the server shouldn't have anything to do with administering/moderating the site. |
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Post by lapka on May 21, 2019 9:03:30 GMT
My personal current problem here is that I don't even understand what exactly do zak and micro want. If I address it from the other side: What do I want? Or even easier, which alternatives I see for now? - coop - 2+2 model with a couple of people as owners - social club with attorney who holds the domain, hosting account and bank account in trust.
Right?
I don't understand in the last case, who makes the "money"-decisions, like which host, or which advertising do we accept or how the situation with taxes is addressed? I also don't understand in the last case who is liable in case of a law suit for some content?
For a coop it would be a board of directors that is previously voted for, that deals with "money"- questions. (Do we have enough volunteers for the board of directors? It looks right now that the answer is "no"). There would be no personal liability, but the coop as such would be liable with its assets.
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Post by Rexx14 on May 21, 2019 9:17:27 GMT
Liability is my biggest issue. Anything that alleviates that is pretty important Imo.
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Post by microbet on May 21, 2019 13:03:03 GMT
Social club is a coop with less paperwork. It would be easier, less formal, less real life info, to be a member.
There are like 20 million forums on the internet and almost none of them incorporate. Most of them are owned by one person who doesn't worry about liability that much.
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Post by microbet on Jun 8, 2019 17:13:30 GMT
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