UKWorkshop Server Upgrade Donation

[Spectric]

the good members have left and been driven out by poor moderation and an unwillingness to ban people

I believe we do have many good members with a lot of knowledge to share and moderation is just that, a balance where neutrality is important and we do not stomp around banning members on a whim, we do have freedom of speech but need to comply with forum rules because it is a public place. When you look at the request for donations they are just that, no one is telling you that you must contribute or else and a donation is a voluntary act so you can just carry on and not worry about it. Lets also not forget that any forum can only be as good as it's members and feedback from members is also welcomed so forget about the backend of the forum and just think of the front end and lets have more of those threads about what you have been doing, like the one @Doug71 has posted with his room upgrade.

 

[paulrbarnard]

It’s easy to ***** about these things. The bottom line is membership is not compulsory and donating is not compulsory. People seem to be taking great offence simply because they think the forum should be free, well it is if you want it to be.
If this forum doesn’t work for you, you don’t have to stay and you can certainly start another forum that behaves in the way you like.
I like the mix of great tips, help and learning available here as well as the debates and to some extent the banter. I do donate because I feel the value I get from the forum is worth the amount I donate. I also support some content creators on Patreon and have a number of other subscriptions for content from the likes of Netflix and music services. You can argue that those other platforms and creators are generating the content while this forum is only hosting ‘our’ content but I see the forum as an enabling platform for the content we create. By donating I’m encouraging the owners to keep the lights on.
Anyone here remember Badger Pond? That was a great example of a successful forum with amazing content that became too much aggravation for the return the owner was getting so it got taken down. All that content disappeared. I would rather that didn’t happen here.
I’m not suggesting to anyone they should donate, simply stating why I do.

 

[artie]

there used to be a real community here but it has changed, the good members have left and been driven out by poor moderation and an unwillingness to ban people, and this was before the takeover.

I've been on this forum for quite a while, sometimes every day and sometimes not for weeks or longer.
The forum presently has many very helpful and civil members.
A few left a while back because not everyone agreed with them and told them so.
Some of them quietly came back and carried on in a less forceful manner.
A moderator is in a catch 22 situation. Not a position I would aspire to.
What possible reason is there for banning someone from a forum?
It's like calling for a thread to be closed, if you don't like it/them ignore it/them.

 

[Fitzroy]

TLDR: Keep posting cool and interesting stuff and ignore the begging letters, we can all move elsewhere if this place fails, UKWS secret santa will live on.

Blah, blah, blah,
This is a really interesting conversation, and I love the different views and the input from people who have some knowledge of forum provision. I've no problem with posting things that I hope people find interesting and add value to the site, WIPs etc, which potentially enable the forum owners to monetise through advertising. I see these as my payment to use the site and as such I'm satisfied the site owner ends up in control of them. However, I have not become a paid up member as it is my understanding that this is a business for the owner and they make money from it.

If the forum is not making the return on investment required the owner can sell it on or close it down. We can all then go off and frequent another forum with a degree of inconvenience and annoyance at having to move home, but no real harm done. Should we as a community decide to 'buy it' or 'take it on' then likely I'd have my hand in my pocket, but i'd own a share as a result.

It's a bit like some of the remote pubs in the UK that are closing down. The local communities have chosen to buy it with a shared funding model as the loss of the facility is not acceptable. Running the pub as a business and asking the locals for donations to keep going is not a long term sustainable business model.

F.

 

[Spectric]

What possible reason is there for banning someone from a forum

In life there has to be limits, if a member is not acting in the best interest of other members and causing problems for others then it does not make for a nice freindly enviroment and draws attention, the moderators as a team will discuss, banning is last resort. The objective is to keep things freindly and not allow personal mud slinging, everyone is entittled to an opinion and to share their views providing it is within the rules. As moderators we give up some time because we believe that the UKW is a good forum for people with an interest in woodworking and associated topics to share knowledge and experiences that hopefully will help others in their journey to become more skilled or learn better methods for doing a task and discuss the good and bad of the available tools and machinery available.

 

[Against_The_Grain]

When you look at the request for donations they are just that, no one is telling you that you must contribute or else and a donation is a voluntary act so you can just carry on and not worry about it.

I’m not so sure, they’re not worded like that, they’re worded in such a way as a plea for help and if I don’t help them the forum could cease to exist. It’s misleading and fraudulent if that is not the case and the people who are more gullible are paying for Keith Ubben’s second yacht.

 

[Against_The_Grain]

If I made a fundraiser about my sick child needing expensive surgery and it turned out that wasn’t the case and there wasn’t even a sick child, and I had gained money to the tune of £10,000 from donations, I would end up going to prison and having to repay the money.

It’s exactly the same thing going on here.

 

[paulrbarnard]

If I made a fundraiser about my sick child needing expensive surgery and it turned out that wasn’t the case and there wasn’t even a sick child, and I had gained money to the tune of £10,000 from donations, I would end up going to prison and having to repay the money.

It’s exactly the same thing going on here.

Then report it to the police

 

[akirk]

Are things not being overly complicated, surely if you were to provide a service then you would expect some form of payment.

If all these forums use the same servers then getting donations from all forums seems the fair way to do it, they probably realise that they cannot get the required amount from just one so are fishing in all of them to reach targets. If you are selling something for say £500 you don't ask £500 but maybe £600 knowing you will have wiggle room.

I must admit that I have never seen where any financial benefit can be gained from running a forum such as the UKW, perhaps @akirk can enlighten us. For me it is having the knowledge and experience of the other members available which is an invaluable asset, many being lifelong woodworkers and makers where experience is priceless and knowing that you can throw a question out there and get advice can be really helpful when woodworking is not your trade or first skill.

Several different points there...

Yes, arguably provision of a service expects a financial return - however there are a number of ways to do that and a forum online which sits in the context of lots of free offerings (other forums / facebook / youtube / etc.) has to be pretty unique to run commercially, otherwise people simply go elsewhere to chat...

Yes, I get the fact that you ask for more money than you need - but, if all those websites need $4k-$5k upgrades then you are talking over $1m which is a lot of money - as an illustration - you can pick up virtual hosting for a couple of hundred pounds p/a which will give you maybe 50 domains, unlimited disk space / fairly high bandwidth / auto-backing up / humans who will give you tech support / etc. - so the cost of one domain online can be at its lowest below £10 p/a The costs increase with primarily bandwidth (how many people wish to connect at the same time / do things at the same time). In the last hour on this forum there have been:
- c. 60 members (the main users if e.g. uploading photos)
- c. 2,700 guests
- c. 900 search engines
that is almost exactly one user per second - in computer terms - not very high as concurrent users... I don't know the resources this forum uses, but can't imagine it to be high - so where exactly are the costs? Software licence might be £10 p/m and arguably staff costs significantly more except that it appears that there is almost no staff input / involvement at all, only unpaid moderators. So genuinely this forum has very low monthly costs in the region of £10 p/m so $4,000 must be several decades of actual running costs!

where is the financial benefit in running a forum?
- telling the members that you need $4k-$5k for servers
- selling premium memberships
- selling adverts
- selling trade memberships
- 'owning' the content (and contrary to some comments above they don't get full ownership of your content - you still own the IP, they may own the reproduction rights which is fundamentally different - i.e. they could print a book with extracts from the forum showing clearly as that - but they couldn't lift the content and print a book without making it clear where the content came from - nor could they take example furniture and sell it commercially...

some forums do more in terms of putting on events / selling merchandise / etc. - lots of opportunities when you consider that you have a captive audience known to be interested in that niche

 

[AES]

If I made a fundraiser about my sick child needing expensive surgery and it turned out that wasn’t the case and there wasn’t even a sick child, and I had gained money to the tune of £10,000 from donations, I would end up going to prison and having to repay the money.

It’s exactly the same thing going on here.

A couple of rather large assumptions there, NO? OR can you actually prove any of that?

Not supporting the forum owners or their requests for funding, but IMO you're going too far when you say, QUOTE: "It's exactly the same thing going on here." UNQUOTE.

 

[Against_The_Grain]

A couple of rather large assumptions there, NO? OR can you actually prove any of that?

Not supporting the forum owners or their requests for funding, but IMO you're going too far when you say, QUOTE: "It's exactly the same thing going on here." UNQUOTE.

I don’t think it’s too far to stretch, especially when I can link dozens of forums owned by the same owners with the exact same pleas for donations, if they’re in such dire straits why are they still buying forums at a rapid pace? I can find forums that have been very recently bought out.

It’s purely a profit generating exercise.

 

[AJB Temple]

Virtually Any business that is not a charity or regulated NPO aims to make a profit. That's fair enough. Various income sources have been suggested in the posts above. One that is missing is the requested use of push notifications (which frequently appears as a web page footer). This apparently gives the site operators permission to send adverts to you and for them not to be treated as unsolicited. I suspect this traffic also generates revenue.

If (and I have no idea of the facts) requests for donations to upgrade servers in fact generate money that is used for another purpose, then that is possibly not honest. In some jurisdictions it would be illegal. Indeed in some it would be criminal.

The T&Cs operated here refer to a contractual relationship with members. The creation of posts in a public forum would almost certainly not be regarded as 'contractual consideration' in some locations, rendering the T&Cs unenforceable. Not that this is likely to be a major factor on a wood forum.

In any case, this commercial web hosting business operates from Panama, where regulations and laws are "flexible". Indeed the country has an enviable reputation for hosting offshore banks, money laundering operations, tax avoidance schemes, fraud and drug cartels allegedly. They do a roaring trade in brown paper envelopes. Allegedly. The UK gov website on Panama has a number of interesting assertions, including that Panamanian waters handle a third of global cocaine traffic, much of which is targeted on the UK, with 30% of it coming to the UK. Panama is clearly an ideal place to set up shop if you wish to be seen as whiter than white.....

 

[Daniel2]

It’s purely a profit generating exercise.

Not much of a business model, if it didn't make a profit

 

[Against_The_Grain]

It’s not about the profit, it’s about the context of the begging letters being about “saving the forum” or “upgrading the equipment” or some other excuse to gain sympathy and make people feel like donating out of the good of their heart when there is no such problem.

If people wish to donate because they enjoy the forum and service it provides, that’s fine, but touting for donations on false pretences is not okay and just preys on the more vulnerable members who are not likely to see through it.

 

[ey_tony]

I don't use the forum except occasionally but I can't see why the site owners don't introduce advertising just as many free sites do to raise revenue?

Sites like this have running costs and expenses plus they need to be continually monitored for content. They don't just magically appear on the internet. Someone must have taken the time to set the sites up and after all they are a great resources for novices or anyone in need of advice or help with something woodwork related so I would think advertising would give the owners the income they deserve.

 

[artie]

I can't see why the site owners don't introduce advertising just as many free sites do to raise revenue?

Haven't you noticed how much advertising there is, if you don't opt out.?

 

[MikeJhn]

I was banned from "The UK's friendliest Electricians Forum" because I answered old threads, according to the Moderator he warned me ten times, I asked where in the Forum rules this was and I was banned, not very friendly.

 

[ey_tony]

Haven't you noticed how much advertising there is, if you don't opt out.?

My bad, seems like I have my ad-blocker switched on. Usually I leave it off if I don't subscribe to a site but use it occasionally. I'll switch it off as I have run web sites in the past and I know how much effort goes into running them.