[Theforum] community vs. corporations

[Marlene Bruce]

Hi Matt,

>The problem with saying we're doing this because it's a "barrier," is that
>we already have a barrier in place. You don't get an account if you've
>just signed up for a weo account yesterday, for instance. If you want to
>get beyond the barrier without actually contributing, you have to sign up
>for a weo account, wait like three months, then submit a meo application.

Actually, you only have to wait a month, according to:
http://members.evolt.org/signup.cfm

So this means someone can become a member, wait 30 days, submit an
application stating what they'll do with their site, and wallah ...
they're eligible to be approved. While it is suggested, they aren't
*required* to give back to the community at all.

The barrier I'm talking about is asking people to contribute back to
evolt.org for the service we're providing. As this discussion has
evolved, we're now considering that a contribution could take the
form of either a monetary/item donation or by participating in
evolt.org in a significant way (or both if a person chooses).

>meo accounts go to members of our community. That's the barrier. If we
>need the cashola, ok... but let's be upfront about it.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying we (as evolt.org) are not being
up front. Up 'til now we've provided the server space and development
tools gratis, as it indicates on the site. If the situation changes,
I'm sure we'll continue to be up front by notifying people and
changing the site.

>Passing this off as implementing a needed barrier is just something to
>make this easier to go through "the system."

People could still get/keep a members account if they participate in
evolt.org. But if they don't we're considering asking that they gift
us one way or another for the ability to have the server
space/development tools. Why is asking people to give back a bad
thing?

>So, let's be honest:
>
>We're exploiting the popularity of the meo service because we feel we have
>to.

Dan was our angel investor/supporter. Dan has chosen to leave and
take his monetary support with him, which is his right. In doing so,
he has removed our former ability to give our services freely. Now we
have to do something else. We must find a way to support our services
or they'll go away, which won't help any of our members.

I don't mind you criticizing this approach, it helps us decide the
best way to achieve our survival goals.

However it would be wonderful if you could offer an alternative. Do
you have any ideas how we can sustain evolt without going to
corporate backers (and potentially compromising our unbiased,
non-commercial status) and without asking our members to contribute
back to the organization?

>Would we be considering this if we had only 20 members? You can say
>"yes" if you'd like, but I highly doubt that would be the case.

Your moot point doesn't really address the issue at hand.

If we were in your scenario, no we probably wouldn't be considering
this, but if we had only 20 members we probably wouldn't be facing
this problem either. This problem is because we're actually useful to
a lot of people and have become popular. If we only had 20 members we
wouldn't need to be supporting m.e.o. as a separate server (or need
more than shared hosting for all of our sites), and we probably
wouldn't be popular enough to have a b.e.o. and the bandwidth it
consumes.

Cheers,
Marlene