Let's talk about that annoying thing we all don't want to think about: funding.
Tildes does have bills to pay. The donations are open, but I'd like to go beyond the basic donations for a moment.
Right now, tildes has server costs, and also the lead developer (Deimos) is donating his full time to the project rather than working for someone else. He can't do that forever, so if we want him full time, we need to get him paid by the non-profit. In the future, that cost is probably going to expand to larger server costs, multiple developers, possibly community managers and other staff - though nothing ridiculous like reddit with 300 people doing marketing.
When we talked about funding, we wondered if we could get all users to toss in one dollar a month, and if there were enough users (millions) even reduce that to one dollar a year. Now that we have a lot of new people here, I'd like to ask what everyone thinks of those funding ideas, and if they have any other good ideas on how to raise money to pay for whatever tildes' costs are.
Once tildes is open source, it should apply for Mozilla's Open Source Support (MOSS), as a Mission Partner.
To qualify, the software needs to be open source and further Mozilla's mission, which I would argue tildes very, very much furthers. Given how many Mozillians hang out on r/Firefox, I would wager it has a good chance.
This does involve a contract or agreement and a Schedule of Work, but historically that has never been anything problematic. The last recipients give a good idea on what that would look like. PyPI was given $170,000 to finish writing a replacement; Harfbuzz was given $60,000 to improve their docs, Tatoeba was given $25,000 to integrate it with Common Voice, the Tor Project's Open Observatory of Network Interference was given $160,000 to make their data more accessible and improve their client software. Going back some, they gave SecureDrop $250,000 to "support the creation of the next version of SecureDrop", so applying for funding to simply develop and host tildes seems doable.
Thanks very much, this is an excellent suggestion. I'll apply for this as soon as the code is open-sourced.
This sounds like a great idea! I never really frequented /r/Firefox, but I am a proud Firefox user on Windows, Linux, and Android.
Wikipedia, for all the faults it has, seems to have little trouble sustaining itself entirely on donations without any site benefits for the donors, and if I understand correctly, brings in enough funding that a significant portion of it goes to other projects and development, rather than just development and operation of the sites themselves. I expect the model could be similarly viable for Tildes.
Doesn’t wikipedia also get grants? I wonder if it would be possible for ~ to seek those out as well.
We have actually looked into this and @deimos has mentioned them before (IIRC in an earlier draft of the blog post)... however most grants come with various strings attached (some antithetical to the principles of tildes, others not), are highly selective of who qualifies and who they ultimately choose (often requiring hours of research to determine if you even qualify) and are lengthy, time consuming processes even if you do qualify.
There are grant services out there to help startups find and apply for applicable grants but they are expensive and not garaunteed to give you any results so using them is a risky proposition especially when most funds (other than the donations already recieved) are out of pocket for @deimos right now.
I'm happy to pay a reasonable amount of money to keep the site up. 1-8 USD per month (charge it yearly if it is in the low end in order to decrease transaction costs) is the range I can imagine acceptable. It would be interesting to participate in partnership with similar sites to decrease the Subscription Hell.
In parallel, have you considered getting money from other non-profits, foundations? I suspect as the public awareness increases about the problems and consequences of the ad-driven web there will or already are foundations who willing to support this kind of endeavour. In EU we have the EU itself which support such projects.
I'd be somewhat opposed to having the fee be above one dollar unless it's critical for the site to survive. I like the idea of millions of users all just tossing in one single dollar a year. It's more democratic and honest that way, and tildes doesn't need five hundred million dollars to operate. Non-profits pay costs, they don't make money.
It's really about salaries. A good developer is between 80-120k a year, good sysadmins 50-90k, and I've got no idea what community managers salaries look like. Victoria did an awesome job with reddit's AMAs, if we're ever that popular, do we want to have people employed like that to handle them? I'd argue yes, but again, it's about the funding, if it can handle the costs. We might want to employ people to be full-time admins, the ultimate top-level moderator. In the end all of this is up to the community. The Spectria non-profit could go in other directions as well, Tildes doesn't have to be the only project it stewards.
I agree that if you can sustain the site with low price point is the better. However, my experience with non-profit operation is that oftentimes sustainabilty is overlooked or ignored especially if it turns out that significant contribution is required by the participants
WhatsApp used to charge around £1.99 a year IIRC before the Facebook acquisition. An annual approach worked for them
I think that was just for extra features though. You could still use the core functionality without paying. I think such a model could work for ~, but then you’d also have to consider whether you want to deprive some users of potentially useful features.
No on Android you had to pay or whatsapp was unusable. They did extend it often without pay, but I once paid for the whatsapp account of a friend of mine because she couldn't extend it
Had an idea about this. What if you could "sponsor Tildes for day!" Basically, it'd be just like any other donation, but instead of your money going into a big pot with all the other donations, you donate X dollars to support Tildes for a specific day. Maybe you could run a banner at the top with that users name for that day, or some other way call out the donation. It feels good to donate but it feels even better to be recognized for that.
That's a very good idea, with an opt-in mechanic since some donators value their privacy.
I suggest some one off fundraising events too. They can coincide with known holiday and events, or jus anniversaries specific to this site, like Deimos bday.
I noticed that this worked pretty well with grassroots political campaigns. Having an achievable goal that people are driven to meet by a certain deadline really motivated extra donations.
What are people's thoughts about financial transparency? I often use sites like Charity Navigator to see breakdowns of how much money an organization receives and where it goes. (I know this is a non-profit corporation, but I think this could still apply.)
I'm not sure what would be included under transparency if it were implemented. Total donations, hosting and miscellaneous costs, salaries if/when they start being paid?
IIRC, Deimos is already planning to make much of Spectria's financials public. I think it's also a disclosure requirement at least up to some point due to the Canadian non-profit structure.
Not just planning to... AFAIK he is actually legally obligated to make his financials transparent in the form of quarterly reports, as per not-for-profit corporation laws in Canada.
That makes sense!
I'll gladly toss in a dollar per month. We could go the protonmail / reddit gold route and give out free accounts that can post and such, and then offer a premium status of some sort that confers benefits like maybe a special badge and an equivalent to reddit's lounge, or perhaps extra site themes. Allowing this to be gifted and associating it with certain comments might also be a good idea like on reddit where you can guild comments.
I'm a bit leery of having people pay for access to the site. I'm not sure premium makes sense either - what would 'premium' features look like in a democratic meritocracy? Can they still be democratic, or are we giving extra power to people who pay to play? If we have pay-for accounts (or even pay-for super-votes like gold), we're going to get a lot of moneyed interests buying access (advertisers that pay to spam, political interest groups that pay to astroturf, and just plain crazy folks who pay to avoid bans they've managed to earn). We'd probably get a lot of cash that way, but I don't think we'd like what these groups do to the site with their expanded access.
Scwag and flags and flairs and badges should be harmless enough, though. I like to think that people 'pay' for the site to show they support the decisions made by the developers and the non-profit, as a way of keeping everyone honest. If tildes takes unpopular actions, people can withdraw their support. The dollar is just a 'vote' of confidence when looked at that way.
No no no, no super votes, just like for example a little yellow sticker attached to the comment to show that someone thought it was good enough they wanted to reward the author with some free premium time. It wouldn't have any impact on voting, and the premium time and features would all be comfort things, like for example having a few more themes under your settings menu or letting you pick among some custom fonts for you to see posts in. It'd make the website maybe look a little nicer, but it wouldn't be essential or undemocratic since it wouldn't change the functionality at all, and tbh you can easily recreate that yourself (like I'm doing right now, overriding the default font with a non-antialiased font). It would just provide a little something to encourage people to donate :)
Ok, so cosmetics only. That's definitely doable.
I'm still not so sure. Yes, you could add that feature, but one thing it would do (like reddit gold does) is to allow some users special features by paying: visual super-votes and buying features for themselves that they wouldn't otherwise have. The little yellow circle is most concerning: it seems a bit silly to me to allow people to make a voting action that is more noticeable than, say, 1000 more people voting on it, just by paying some money. They could even do it for themselves or a friend to give a sense of, "Well, someone agreed strongly with them, so maybe they're right." I especially don't like the fact that someone with a large budget could sticker large numbers of their own or others' comments that align with their agenda. Personally, I'd honestly be happier just donating to the Patreon and maybe getting a sticker on my user page.
Patreon was basically made to do this. Support a creator or creation by those that consume it. I'd happily chip in.
There is a Patreon (super minimal, but it's there): https://www.patreon.com/tildes
Cosmetics that are not eye-catching disruptors of standard voting behavior - like reddit gold.
Fun fact: Reddit admins can hand gold out with a click. Keep that in mind when looking at gilded admin comments in the future. ;)
I like the idea of a little flair or badge. A dollar a month is feasible for most people to not bat an eyelash at, and having a little token showing you pay could also work as effective free marketing. Who wouldn't want a little flair of their own for only a buck? Reminds me of seeing all the TotalFark badges on fark.com
A lot of forums accept donations in exchange for something as simple as having your username a different color, I don't think people need more incentive than that if they really like the site.
Since this is going to be an open source non-profit project, set up a Liberapay account. They don't take a cut of the money. You only pay at cost for processing fees to move money out. I'd be happy to throw a couple bucks from my monthly FOSS fund to ~
I believe we're already set up for crypto donations thanks to coinbase - any cryptos they support. BTC, LTC, ETH, a few others.
I like the idea of giving some cosmetic features to premium users! In my experience, giving anything to users in return will increase the amount of "donations" significantly. Seems like people would rather buy than donate, even if they know that the deal is purely symbolic.
Then, how about mugs, t-shirts, etc?
Regarding this, I like how Ubuntu does it. For every amount of money they have a little icon that says what that amount is worth.
For example, if you're about to donate $15 (the default value) you get:
Which I think is neat. It makes one realise that $15 is actually not all that much.
Putting a notice like "Donate us a cup of coffee" makes $2 look less expensive.
I like the idea of cosmetic features as well. Along with themes and whatnot, maybe also badges for levels of donation or something along those lines. I can see not showing them on each post, as it may unduly influence voting, but maybe on the user's profile page.
I like the badge idea, but I think having different levels of donation is taking it a bit far. People have different financial capabilities, and rewarding bigger donors with shinier badges is only good for showing off, and detracks from the original purpose of donating - to show support to tildes. I think having potential dividers within the community is not healthy, as it might create this elitist "I donated more than you" mindset.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I think $1-10/year is reasonable for a site like this, at least if it reaches critical mass where it is interesting enough to visit on a regular basis. While I'd lean towards posting abilities requiring a donation (though not a subscription, necessarily), it sounds like the powers that be are pretty against that, so I won't try to argue for it here.
What would incentivize me for a donation/subscription would be strong moderation -- forums or sites that this that fill up with shitposting or low-quality discussion just aren't worth my time, and certainly aren't worth my money.
Would there be a way to contribute anonymously for those of us who don't want to have our personal information connected to our account here? Most online payments involve a credit card or paypal which require info like your name, etc.
You can already: https://commerce.coinbase.com/charges/RC8XT3BV
For example: in Bitcoin or any other (popular) cryptocoin
Is there an option available for those who have no experience in cryptocoins?
Hmm, I myself don't know of another way to anonymously transfer money, but maybe someone else does
Buy a prepaid visa debit card at a supermarket with cash and use that, maybe?
Edit: Sorry, I just realized this comment was over a week old, haha.
Of the non-BTC options (Patreon, Stripe), which take the smallest cut?
edit: Ok, answering my own question (and assuming no special circumstances):
edit2: but there doesn't seem to be a way to set-up recurring payments via stripe?
I think Librapay might align with this site's ideals more.
They do 2.925% + $0.35 for a user to add money to their account, and then it seems they can disperse it to creators without any additional fees.
Stripe Billing is what you’re looking for
I was specifically looking for a way to set-up a recurring donation to ~ via stripe, not to make my own billing
there is a patreon as well but I don't know how much they take.
Patreon takes 5%
https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204606125-How-do-you-calculate-fees-
I'd definitely like to set up recurring billing through Stripe eventually, I just haven't had a chance to look into it yet. The more options the better, and then people can choose however they're most comfortable donating.
BAT crypto (Brave Browser) is kinda designed for micropayments like this
Yeah I remember reading about Brave a long time ago. It’s a really interesting idea and something we should definitely look into a bit more seriously.
I’ve already donated a solid chunk of money and would gladly pay $10/mo for premium membership to continue supporting the site. Even if that membership is a token gesture in terms of additional features.
I know this is a terribly insecure and unreliable method - and terribly unfashionable - but could the non-profit have a (snail mail) mailing address? There are more than a few people out there who would feel safely anonymous about putting a money order (or just $10 in cash) in the post/mail but would not feel safe doing so electronically.
I think giving flairs/badges do people who donate may work. If you look to popular online multiplayer games like Dota2, people invest a lot of money in digital clothes for the ingame heroes.
Yeah, I think this would be a great feature. You could even pay to upload a custom icon or badge (like old school forum avatars, but maybe smaller so they fit next to your username and don't take up too much space).
Something another site that I'm on implemented recently was an opt-in, in-browser, CPU cryptocurrency miner (for Monero I think) that pointed to a site run mining pool. They also made the pool public so if someone wanted to point a more efficient miner at it they could.
So it is still technically advertising but maybe you guys should look into something like Basic Attention token with Brave Browser. Just an idea
Honestly if the site gets big enough and has the more subtildes... like fantasyfootball, I'd be fine with paying $1 per month or year. Having a good Android and iOS app is a must though before you can really charge I think
The plan is to go website-only for mobile. I'm sure people will create mobile clients for it themselves, though, but we don't have the resources for that at present - the site itself has to take precedence.
Yea I understand. The mobile has been working pretty well so far honestly. The biggest thing is you're going to have to have more subtildes to make this work because part of the reason I love Reddit are things like fantasy football, NFL, most, college football, cryptocurrency, etc. The main subs are meh. I do like how you're trying to focus on comments which is the real key. I see real potential in this site.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist but something always rubs me the wrong way about voat.
We've already talked to the /r/NFL mods, since they are so angry to be losing their hard-earned CSS/flairs to the redesign. ~sports is going to be a party.
Oh man. /r/NFL is great. I'd be pumped
From another other (buried) comment I made regarding Brave:
As @Amarok said though, mobile apps will all have to be third party which will be easier once we opensource and open up the API. We intend to treat the site itself, through responsive design, to be the primary mobile access point.
Sufficient Velocity has a bunch of stuff I feel are fine, but lots of that is forum specific. What I like the most is the meow rating. If something like that was alivable to people who pay, a lot more would, I think.
Apparently I must be logged in to access that link. Could you describe what this "meow rating" entails, and also maybe anything else you like about it that's relevant?
All benefits you can buy:
-Meow Rating
-Subscriber styling: a gold star next to your username;
-Create new tags
-Tag threads by anyone
-Larger avatar file size - 200Kib (204800 bytes)
-Up to 50 images per post
-15 participants in private conversations
-30 minutes edit time in conversations
-Access to internal advertisement alpha test
-Collaborative Threads
-10 members per thread
-Export Conversation to Collaborative Threads
-Sticky Posts, pin a post to the top of your thread
Meow is a rating like Funny or Like, similar to the comment tags we have here. Uses a little cat face and mostly used as fluff or a general 'like'.
Star is obvious.
New tags are irrelevant here as you can write in whatever. But if that changes this may be useful.
Tagging other people's threads is a useful privilege that can be taken away if abused.
Avatar size and img/post is irrelevant.
I don't know how private conversations work here.
Edit time is because that's helpful.
Internal advertising allows you to advertise a thread in the forum. Generally quests and stories use it.
Collaborative threads allow multiple people to act as OP IIRC.
And stickying is obvious.
I can suggest opt-in advertisement program instead of opt-out by donations advertisement. This will make smoother experience for the first time user, also long-term user will make a decision about how much value in Tildes exists for me.
Advertising goes against everything ~ stands for since we believe it is one of the root causes of all the ills on our current social media platforms. See the announcement post.
~ is also firmly committed to the principles of privacy-by-design and substantial security (using an extremely restrictive CSP). Neither of those will be possible anymore when using a third party ad network, which comes with contractual obligations to hand over user data, allow for third party tracking scripts and forces you to open up a giant XSS vulnerability on your site in the form of their ad portal.
I understand reasons but I disagree on about advertisement will motivate Tildes to the maximize income. Because of Tildes is not for profit organization. Tildes main focus won't about harnessing more money through ads. About privacy on ads, Tildes doesn't have to use Google Ads or any other alternatives. I'm sure there will be some people who would like to pay for just a
imgtag and<a href="...link. It's something like donation but publicly praised on the Tildes homepage.Advertising still degrades user experience no matter how you handle it, display it or incorporate it into your site. There is no getting around that and one of ~ founding principles is catering to its users, not outside influences like advertisers.
Once you start accepting advertising you become reliant on them which gives them power to negotiate and force you to decide between complying with their wishes and undermining your founding principles or potentially going out of business/needing to lay people off. E.g.
Let's say an advertiser pays ~ $2000/mo just to include an
imgand<a hrefin our sidebar. Wow, awesome... that more than covers server costs and a moderate wage for @deimos! Lets do it.6 months from now they decide the
imgand link is not quite enough, so they ask for the ability to add a script to show random images amongst a pool of them. It's not an unreasonable request and since now we are potentially reliant on that $2000/mo in order for @deimos to keep working on the site full time, we agree.6 months later they want to add an animation to the pool instead of just an
img6 months later they want traffic statistics from us to make sure they're getting a decent ROI on their ad.
6 months later they want click tracking and an adblock nag screen.
etc. etc. etc.
So it goes... and step by inevitable step eventually our principles of user-centric focus, privacy-by-design and substantial security have been undermined and we're no different than our competitors.