A few quick notes on discussions the administrator team has had, since we’ve fielded a lot of questions in these particular fields. We’re posting this both for transparency and to help us limit the load of having to respond to each of you individually.
- We would like to become an official nonprofit at some point, but there is a cost associated with this, we are not lawyers, and we might need to change where/how we collect donations to do so.
- We’ve upgraded the server approximately 7 times now. We’re trying to balance fiscal responsibility with server costs. We are aware that digital ocean isn’t the cheapest server and we are trying to be conservative with estimates and give ourselves extra runtime at whatever tier we are on. We’re also hoping that the upcoming lemmy version will solve a lot of our CPU-bound issues.
We are aware of the following bugs:
- the “report created” indicator flashes in the bottom left corner for some users randomly, even non-moderator users
- sometimes, briefly or without a refresh, the username in the top corner will not be your own; as far as we can tell this is purely cosmetic and is not a security issue
- sometimes the post you’re in changes to another post for no clear reason
I know most users here are against monetization, but I think that a simple Shopify storefront with behaw merch would go a long way to help entice more people to make a monitory donation. I would love a beehaw mug, stickers, and maybe even a shirt or a hat.
Good monetization: giving people tote bags, pens, t-shirts, stickers, coffee mugs, or window clings “in exchange for a donation” like PBS does.
Bad monetization: selling the ability to downvote posts, selling avatars, selling the ability to have your post stickied, and all the other ways shitty forums sell prestige
For only $1/mo $5/vote, I’ll give your user the ability to downvote Comments in this thread only. Act now, time is limited!
I also really do not mind donating via Patreon or Ko-Fi or GoobGab or DinkleCoin or ScrungePay or whatever the hell people use that’s ethical now.
We do have an OpenCollective where you can donate and see our expenses: https://opencollective.com/beehaw
Though please don’t donate if you need the money, we’re doing fine financially.
The approximate yearly budget and estimated annual budget are quite different, what are those two numbers representing? Unrelated: I really appreciate what you’re making happen here, and I really look forward to being a part of it.
Thanks for what you’re doing, we appreciate it.
Incidentally, do you know why I would get a ‘language not allowed’ error when replying to a post that has no swearing/nsfw language?
I’m thinking it must be an error because there wasn’t anything remotely offensive in there.
Couldn’t see how to message a mod so apologies
There’s a select language button on the post. It’s still buggy but it allows you to filter out posts that are in other languages. Sometimes it’ll default to undefined or not let you post because it’s not selected
Thank you for all the tireless work. I can’t even imagine how slammed all of you must be right now.
I mean I have a 10gbps home connection with 1gbps backup and a server rack! No but really, I came from enterprise architecture and built some massive global pubsub networks (on the tune of 900m users/devices). Be happy to give a hand on the infra side if needed!
Thank you for all the hard work! Hopefully things will eventually slow down and less pressure will be on your shoulders. This community is more relaxed and feels like a casual hang out if anything and it’s definitely a breath of fresh air. I’m glad to be here and I’ll be sticking around for sure
