Hey all
Today, I am thrilled to share two significant developments with you that will determine our shared future.
Firstly, the issue of donations. Since the inception of this instance, your most frequent request has been the ability to make contributions to support my initiative. While initially, I had never intended to accept donations, I've come to realize the value this brings in ensuring our platform's sustainability. In response to your requests, within the next week, I will be introducing several options for those of you who wish to donate. I want to emphasize that these donations are entirely optional and will directly support our instance's operational necessities - dedicated hardware, colocation fees, email services, and more.
The second announcement needs a full disclosure: it could be an extraordinary idea or potentially not so. Since the beginning of this instance, I've seen a number of insightful posts, recommendations, and ideas that the community has put forward, often superior to what I could have conceptualized myself. Even our instance's name was born from one of your suggestions.
Frequently, I'm approached by users seeking clarity on our rules and guidelines or expressing their thoughts on existing rules. In reflecting upon this, it became clear to me that I've been attempting to determine what's best for the community. But who am I to make these decisions? Just two weeks ago, I was a user among you all. Hence, I'm moving away from the traditional role of decision-making.
Instead, I want to hand over the reins of decision-making to you - the community. I'm excited to announce the creation of a community called agora where you can express your desires for the future of this instance. It's up to you to come together, discuss, and reach a consensus. If you wish to add, remove, or modify a rule, make a post, garner support from other members, and I'll implement the change. This invitation extends beyond our immediate community - I welcome input from everyone across the fediverse. Again to be clear, I gave an example of modifying rules but this applies to anything that I have the ability to do on this instance.
As the instance owner, I only have one caveat to add - any decisions made should not jeopardize the instance's existence or result in legal complications. Aside from that, I'm eager to see where this new direction takes us.
Thank you for your ongoing support, creativity, and engagement.
Out of curiosity, will you be pocketing the excess of donations over any running costs? Because I think we all understand that profit motives can introduce corruption (see how Reddit changed with VC profit motives). If I may offer a suggestion, would you be willing to donate any excess in your donations to other Lemmy instances for the health of the fediverse in general? Or perhaps distribute some of those donations to compensate moderators for key communities on your instance?
What is excess now may be needed later. I'd rather have it stashed away in case there are unexpected server expenses or something.
+1 here. If growth slows and donations drop, the instance needs some savings to continue operating, or if another server upgrade is needed with a large capital expense. Not everything is OpEx.
Maybe it would be a good practice to keep a cap of say +2 years projected running expenses (as an example). If operating costs go up and funds start to run out call for some more donations.
I don't agree with the assumption that providing an amount of donations above the running costs would inherently introduce corruption. I trust TheDude.
I don't think it's appropriate to redirect donations from our users to other servers.
Distributing some of the donations to compensate moderators of communities on this instance is something I could get behind.
+1
I hate the idea that if someone makes any money they become corrupt.
Yet time and time again
Do you have any money? Are you corrupt?
Yes, and yes. I have a little money and I'm a little corrupt.
I don't have a corruptible amount. I'd like to believe I wouldn't be corrupted by excess if I had it but I also don't want to blindly think of myself as immune either.
I'm not accusing anyone.
I agree that we shouldn’t assume corruption if TheDude starts receiving any funds, but I think it would be beneficial to have clear expectations about how donations are being used. If it’s clear that excess funds go straight into TheDude’s pockets, great. Let anyone who wants to donate go for it. But I wouldn’t want anyone to donate thinking that they’re supporting server costs when they’re actually just tipping someone. Whichever way it goes, it just needs to be clear.
Yes. Transparency is the key word. For example at the end of each quarter there could be a post saying that the donations were $X, running costs $Y. If costs are higher this should unsensitize people to donate more. If donations are more and thedude needs some money they may as well mention this too. Or they can just say that they keep $Z amount for the costs of the following quarter etc etc
For me it's also transparency into how they're financially and technologically prepared and stable enough to host this for the long run.
I'm sure they've already spent a lot of their time on this.
There are many thing to consider outside of money: design, backups, monitoring, redundancy, upgrade/change process, fail over, security, networking, hardware and it can get a bit much for a single person to take care of.
Financials is the main focus, but preparedness is important (which incidentally costs money).
Fair enough, that's a good point.
It is my (fresh, hasty and possibly incorrect) understanding that the Lemmy devs themselves could also use some donations. I don't have a lot to give but I would like to support both this instance and the development of the platform as a whole.
https://liberapay.com/Lemmy/donate
They prefer this donation platform. They were getting $40 per week when I first checked almost 2 weeks ago. There's also an opencollective and patreon.
Let the guy get some donations.
I'd let him keep it. Time is money and he has already given a lot of time for the project. Keeping something running is a long time effort and money can be one of the incentives.
I'm fine with it. I think transparency is indeed the key here. If we can see operating costs, and a current donation goal, I don't mind where the excess goes.
Excess should be used for bounties to get features we want implemented added to Lemmy.
A high enough bounty and they can hire a part-time developer to work on our selected improvement.
I think this a good addition to having coffers for a rainy day