Discussion on Donating

[barneygale]

A badge is not a promotion.

The idea behind "Reddit Public" is that it is *unranked*. I can join the game as a new player and have *exactly the same abilities* as someone who's played for years and donated huge amounts. This is what we should be proud of, and it contrasts deeply with a huge number of minecraft servers around that have "builder" or "trusted" or "mayor" ranks.

Being unranked does not prevent us from giving cosmetic perks to donors. Why should it? They gain no advantage other than recognition for a charitable act.

Should we be removing the "recent donors"/"top donors" section on nerd.nu/donate, if we're advocating that all charity should be anonymous? If not, why can't we have forum badges too?

And this whole argument seems to be focused on the poorly-defined downsides of cosmetic perks. What about the upsides? All sorts of organisations give cosmetic perks or recognition to donors *because it works*. It will bring in more money. With more money we could run a 4th server, or buy better hardware and not have to worry about lag again. I'd take better gameplay over some supposed incredibly minor weakening of our ethos any day.

I'm also enjoying everyone suddenly giving a shit about possibly giving ordinary players the most minor "rank upgrade". While we're here should we talk about the dozens of former staff who've poured scorn on the "becoming a moderator is not a promotion" idea? Shall we talk about the 2 or 3 staff members who've returned this year *because* they were sick of having to explain region changes through /modreq, or waiting hours for their water requests to get filled?

[Mrloud15]

Because one of the main topics of the meeting is "donations and how to encourage donations".  I know my opinion on something like "Forum Badges" really depends on the financial state of the server.  If we're doing okay, then I'm against it, but if we're really hard up for money, then we need to do whatever we can to encourage donations.  In fact, my answers to that entire section depend on how well the server is doing financially.

 

You did not answer the question, you just gave your opinion and contributed to the discussion without that info.

 

 

May I ask what bits of information are taking so long?

Mostly getting exact amount we have spent over the years. 

[Jauris]

I wouldn't really say it's important to get how much we have spent over the past few years, but mainly this years operating budget and cash reserves.

 

However, it would be nice to see the budgets from previous years, just to compare how we have changed over time.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Jauris

[barneygale]

You did not answer the question, you just gave your opinion and contributed to the discussion without that info.

If someone is polling me over fundraising methods I would like to know expenses and how fundraising is going atm...

Otherwise we can't give you an informed opinion!

Why should roast attempt to answer the questions without information that his answer depends on?

Apparently common sense isn't so common...

 

EDIT: wait wat I think I misread the original quote but now I'm not even sure what it's saying

Edited September 27, 2014 by barneygale

[barneygale]

"Do you think we need to change how we do donations? Oh btw I can see no reason to give you information on how donations are going and what they're used for."

Like, why even bother asking? Is this thread a token gesture or do you actually care about our opinions?

I'm trying very hard but I could not imagine Ludeman, Pilot, Draykhar, Denevein, AlcoJew, Skuld, Eustis, forty_two or pretty much *any other head admin* acting this way.

[Four_Down]

Mostly getting exact amount we have spent over the years. 

Don't worry about that for the meeting, just focus on getting how much it costs per month to keep Nerd running.

 

Anything on top of that is a bonus.

[barneygale]

Monthly costs and current funds remaining would be ideal. That's a reasonable request for a non-profit organisation founded on ideals of community and transparency.

[barneygale]

Here's what nat gave us in 2012: http://www.reddit.com/r/mcpublic/comments/ohfnk/at_long_last_mcpublic_hardware_drive_full/

 

 

Hey guys! Many of you can remember our hardware drive over the summer, and I just wanted to clear up any concerns or questions about the amount of money we spend with a full financial breakdown of it.

Money Input $3035.72 after PayPal fees

Expenses:

1. 1 Month BlackLotus DDoS Mitigation, package #1 under http://www.blacklotus.net/hosting-servers/protected-cloud-servers/ with an upgrade to 5 IP's: $299

2. 1 Month Initial Codero Hosting w/ Setup Fee, same as below Codero invoice w/ standard $25 setup fee: $275

3. Codero KVM Initial Fee, first month KVM charge with initial setup fee: $70.16

4. 5x Codero Hosting @ $250/mo, sample Invoice: http://i.imgur.com/MJtcW.png: $1250

5. 1 Month Incero Hosting, Current Provider, E3-1230/5IP/SSD server w/ setup fee: $334

Total Expenditures: $2228.16 Money Left: $807.56

Our current monthly fee on Incero is $154/mo. This leaves us with 5 months of hosting, however, we are also waiting on a prorated refund for one month of hosting for Codero in the amount of $241.57, leaving us with over 6 months of hosting bills paid in full on Incero.

G'day, and fuck the haters.

-nat

 

 

Edited September 27, 2014 by barneygale

[Difficult1]

As far as donator badges go, maybe give them something in the lobby (small and insignificant). Or, Have a little flair in the forums that says "this player has donated the last month". If it where to go away after a month, then it wouldn't preminently distinguish them against others. Im against having donation badges and special things because for the majority of my time here, i have always been told it wasnt something nerd.nu does. Most people will said we dont really want it to become one of those pay to wins or pay to be diffrent kind of servers.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Difficult1

[barneygale]

pay-to-win is pretty different from cosmetic perks. I'd suggest donating once gives you a permanent badge, and further donations don't give you anything. It works well on waffles.fm.

[Mrloud15]

If someone is polling me over fundraising methods I would like to know expenses and how fundraising is going atm...

Otherwise we can't give you an informed opinion!

Why should roast attempt to answer the questions without information that his answer depends on?

Apparently common sense isn't so common...

 

EDIT: wait wat I think I misread the original quote but now I'm not even sure what it's saying

He already answered the questions... only if we need to.

[Mrloud15]

Alright, so we are waiting for AlLnAtuRalX for information on what we have spent because the stuff like bills, server, etc. are in his name. He has to keep the funds in separate accounts to avoid fees from paypal which is why it's taking so long to get the information. 

 

The servers cost $238 per month, forums cost $25 per 6 months, and redditpublic costs $90 per year. Using this and information from nerd.nu/donate/, we have a minimum amount $1,411 is reserve which is enough to keep the servers running for about 6 more months. Please note that this is only taking into account funds raised in the last 6 months, and we can give an accurate report on our funds once AlLnAtuRalX gets back to us with how much we have spent over the years.

[thedonvito17]

Honestly, the problem here is that it's suggested that donators will somehow have an advantage. If it's a "psychological advantage" than there really is no problem, get over yourself. Have a message on the donation page that says otherwise: "Warning: Before donating, understand that a flair is only for cosmetic purposes, and provides no advantage in gameplay". A great example of this is League of Legends Skins.  They do not determine a persons skill, level, ranking in soloqueue, wins/losses, matchmaking system. They are PURELY cosmetic.  A team of fully skinned players can just as easily lose to a team of non-skinned players.  A person could have all the skins they want, and still be ranked Bronze V. 

 

Conversely, pay to win is when giving money gives a DISTINCT GAMEPLAY ADVANTAGE.  For example: Runescape, with its member items, skills, map locations, quests, and money making opportunities, that are not available to non-members and give them a Superior advantage. Indeed, runescape membership does give players cosmetic advantage but this form of cosmetic advantage is an exception in that ultimately it can become gameplay advantage. A gold trimmed rune kiteshield is still a rune kiteshield in terms of stats HOWEVER it is the difference in worth of the two items, that make it a pay-to-win situation. Gold trimmed items are worth more than their plain counterparts which affects gameplay(money making opportunities), but we are talking about flairs, and flairs I assume aren't going to be traded back and forth between players, which means it has no in-game monetary value, which categorizes it under a the same cosmetic category as league of legends skins. 

 

If you want to get tacky about psychological advantages, I can just as easily say that i feel at a disadvantage to players who have known alt accounts, yet we still allow those. We'll allow the use of alt accounts, but we won't give a cosemetic advantage? k den. 

Edited September 29, 2014 by thedonvito17

[Magnyus]

League of Legends

 

You had me at League.

 

The example you provided was perfect, though I still stand by my rule that any cosmetics should be kept out of in-game and kept on the forums/subreddit/wiki/website.