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Thanks =/= people willing to support a paid model. What a strange position to take.

It's the only way I can see to try and track how many users have viewed/read this thread without access to the backend stats.

I'm seeing it as an indicator of how many might be willing to contribute. Of course, the issue is how LONG they'll contribute for - unless the sub options are reduced to maybe half yearly and annual. At least then there's the potential for some forward planning by Boards?

Even if they hit the goal, €6 per month that can be stopped anytime won't cut it after month 2/3 max. Then what?

Just thinking, I've only got my IT hat on because that's the area I know, realistically speaking, we've surely got people here who are good at accounting, marketing, involved with grants that may be relevant or other useful and relevant skills.

It's actually mad that you've such a breadth of professionals here and you WOULDN'T try to engage some of them? Many of whom may be willing to donate time worth multiples of the proposed donation tiers. I've seen devs worth 600 quid a day who post here. Even if you got one will to put a few hours in here and there, you'd be far better off financially.


Also, as an aside, to those saying to cull/archive the old threads, i get the idea of trying to trim down costs, but honestly I think the history on the site is part of what makes it valuable.

make what open source?

people suggesting leveraging the dev community in the user base - are they to provide their services for free to the commercial entity that owns Boards? Does Boards become a charity? Even 4chan had an owner, you can't just have an "open source" message board, someone has to own it and ultimately be responsible when the police/lawyers/bailiffs knock on the door. The software running the board is a side issue.

The code base. I'm happy for it to remain commercial, but having users build some features can help cut costs and actually get **** done.

from the sounds of things the first thing that would have to happen is to migrate off Vanilla as the open version of that platform is dead. So step 1 becomes a massive job. I can't see the site surviving on volunteers and it's probably not practical for a commercial company to have unpaid, un-contracted people monkeying about with their code. The reason for moving to Vanilla was to remove all in-house development.

People have offered to help with developer work and would the company be open to being taken over, are those type options on the table if it goes ahead and is failing?

The issue isn't really the site software now although undoubtedly some of the bugs did drive users away. The main problem is the loss of traffic and consequently revenue due to Google changing their algorithm.

What the site therefore needs to do is find a way to getting more users to engage more. Easier said than done of course especially when you have no budget.