Hey, we can do anything at zombo.com.
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aaaaand, already we need a revenue stream. Not much, but ramen-money.
100+ posts – what could be more concise?
Also, @japhroaig - maybe THIS is where Tweedr ends up. Or starts out. Flames out. Whatevs.
This is like telling artists they can get great exposure, they just have to pony up first?
I agree that it takes money, and the money has to come from somewhere.
But there needs to be a plan for a revenue stream before I drop diaper money on something.
For those of you living the child-free-by-choice life – DIAPER MONEY IS LIKE MAD MONEY YO
Apparently we’ll need need our own disappointed/banned documents, as well.
Revenue stream.
That would be nice, but unlikely. Money flowing in the opposite direction is a big warning sign.
I have bought at least 3 things from Stack Social – 2 courses, and a great deal on flowers for Mother’s Day.
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I don’t have the time I can put into content production other than the absurd things I’m already doing which isn’t germane to you guys’ vision, good luck though, I think you all could cook up something well worth reading. And don’t use Wordpress. Spare yourselves from that sysadmin hellscape.
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I have to agree with @tropo. I’ve built a WP site from the ground up, with custom theme and all and I would never in a million years call myself an expert. (I self-taught all the way through that.) But it’s a tangled messy time consuming endeavor. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed coding into the night and learning as I went, and building small forts out of spent Mountain Dew cans, but it’s like living in a constant state of emergency. I felt like it would be easier with some experienced programmers who actually have been paid for their services, but given another option, it’s a much better use of our time. Hell, even your time is better spent playing in a local LAMP system for a while. At least you won’t ever have to code for IE 6. Holy nightmare monkeys on steroids did I hate doing that.
Well at this stage it’s just hard to monetize something that doesn’t exist. I do think Patreon would likely be sufficient to keep the cashflow monodirectional at least.
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I really have no idea how much $ we’re talking about. If all the labor (“content”, editorial staff, forum mods, etc.) is strictly volunteer, then we’re really only talking hosting costs, right? How much does that go for?
Seriously, I’d toss $500 at this thing right now to get it going. How much time would that buy us? A year? Two weeks? Somebody gimme a little guidance.
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How much do you pay per word?
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Well, whatever the rate ends up being, it will of course only be 75% as high for Foreign models like yourself.
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No offense taken. I’ve heard that perspective from a tech professional more than once. And each choice a group makes helps members resolve whether the project aligns with their other work.
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I think having a lab where things can be toyed with is great, but if you’re going to stand up a public facing server and expect people to manage it on a shoestring or less, it should be as simple as possible.
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While it’s not really my business, I’d recommend focusing on facilitating content creation and not rat-holing into reinventing work other people have already put a lot of time and effort into making easy.
I love dredging into tech. nerdery for hours/days/weeks on end (I have some really lovely prime numbers I could share), but unless you’re starting a project that’s about tinkering with web servers, CSS, html, scripts, software maintenance, keeping an RDBMS healthy, reinventing wheels, etc., that’s as likely to bog things down and cause pain for those contributors that just want to put up compelling writing rather than tinker. If it’s facing the hostile world of the internet there’s the infosec horror to keep you busy for all eternity as well. So I’d suggest you all focus on the core thing of value you’re bringing to the world, which is I think content and community.
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How progressive do we want to make the project? I’m attracted to something more promethean.
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I would suggest looking for a free solution first. WordPress.com does have a free plan offering and requires pretty much zero upkeep. I’m sure there are other plenty of other alternatives too.
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I’m merely on the sidelines, so not really “we.” I would say if you want to expand the scope from writing/community discussion to something more like a web app that also has writing/community, make sure you define your goals in a way you all agree on. I mostly just want to read articles on interesting animals/biology/whatever you have to say, FWIW.
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I don’t know, I for one agree with Action Abe and entry number 8 in this cracked listicle:
We expect titles to describe the article, but you can only be so descriptive before the wordiness of the title drives people away.
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An operational agreement would require a process that’s unlikely to happen here. It’s a fun conversation though.
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What do you mean by “promethean”? Are we thinking of bringing light and heat to the masses via pithy bloggery?
Personally, though I hasten to remind everyone that my written contributions are apt to be underwhelming in number due to all the other demands on my time and attention, I think this project will be perfectly satisfactory as a straightforward blog, with words and pictures and the occasional A/V contribution, but otherwise devoid of bells, whistles, and unnecessarily rococo accessorization.
The hardest part of this, methinks, should be getting together (creating) the actual content.
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This is a pretty awesome idea, count me in!
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Mission statement: (Here’s my sales pitch, if you don’t like it I’ve got other things I can try to sell you on)
Posting a banana and saying “Just look at it!” has been done, I’m interested in finding meaning in our vast pop cultural landscape.
I want to ask.Why is this interesting?
Anything posted on the blog needs to make this explicit, I may personally get off on Youtube videos of left handed albino mimes playing cards, but I need to let you know why I personally find it interesting and hopefully draw you in to my dark dark worldview.
Its a personal blog, where the personality of the writer is as much a part of the attraction as the written word. and/or gifs
Our mission?
Change the nature of discourse on the internet, one blog post at a time. (No pressure) -
Format: Short blogposts commenting on interesting things happening in our world with a few longform pieces as editorial content.
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Decision making: My experiences working with creative people (Limited to: In my younger days, working with writers and musicians. Later managing recording sessions for local bands) you absolutely need someone who has final say over the finished product, you can argue your point and you can try to convince @waetherman but we need to agree that his decision is final.
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Choice of technology: I just took ghost.io (never heard of it till now) out for a spin and I like how making a post is similar to writing a post on discourse, it’s dead simple and it looks like it encourages writing a bit more than other blogging software I’ve seen in the past.
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Finances: It’s a labor of love, participants need to pitch in. We still need a business plan.Checking out ghost’s pricing, prices double if you go from 25,000 unique page views to 100,000. I’d be happy if 5 people read something I wrote but nothing would be sadder than being done in by success or the odd post that goes viral for no good discernible reason.
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Participants: Writing an interesting post a day seems like a daunting task, even writing a couple of things a week can easily become overwhelming, especially if you’re writing long form pieces. I’m sure that it’s probably going to become obvious for some of us if we have what it takes to make it in the blogging world, even if it is just a labor of love.
My opinion on this is simple:
Whoever pitches in, gets to write. Let the hunger games begin.
We’ll need one or more moderators, I’m sure there are some people lurking in this thread who might want to get their hands dirty.
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Just to seed the conversation with a few more perspectives;
Mission statement; I don’t have a brilliant one yet, but I like generally staying positive and aspirational, but also that communicates how the site is different. Right now, “the comment is the content” is a principle that I’d like to include, but that doesn’t quite encompass a mission statement.
Format; I’m thinking it’s a blog in the sense that there is always some referenced material, like a news item. But that the primary focus will be the comment. And by comment, I mean a reasoned opinion that encourages dialog. “reasoned opinion” may include snark or even a WTF, but would also include some higher level analysis. Think “News+First Post” in the same piece, and the conversation can go from there.
Decision making; I’d love to see this work as a holocracy. Holocracy does require some organization though, and there are decisions that have to be made. I see organization and decision making taking place within some sort of steering committee, the membership of which could rotate or be voted upon. but which initially would be folks here who are willing to take that on, and who are all on the same page about the direction of the site.
Choice of technology; It sounds like folks are more and more leaning toward Ghost, which I am not familiar with, but which I will investigate today. I think comments (and the moderation thereof) are incredibly important to any site, but particularly to this proposed project. Discus seems like a good system, but I would want to explore more options.
Either way, I have an “unlimited” host that I can put this on for the time being, but I’m not a very technical person, so I’ll likely need some help.
Finances; Seems like most folks are viewing this as a “labor of love” and I certainly don’t think we should expect to make money, but we should plan for it anyway. I’m not sure exactly how the folks at BB arranged their relationship, but I’m sure they never thought that they’d get to the point where they are today. It all seems to have worked out (though I think there’s at least one “fifth Beatle”) and maybe we can work it all out down the line, but I would hate to get to a point where a decision was made to accept advertising, and money started rolling in, and contributors felt they were cut out. I think that’s happened with a few other sites, and it’s not something I’d like to repeat. My preference would be this; start with a handshake, and see if this gets rolling. If it does, incorporate and offer some kind of stock compensation to contributors - shares per post or something like that. Build that in to the business model so participants are incentivized to keep contributing, but making sure we’re not going completely commercial or creating another Huff Po.
Participants; I don’t think this should be a completely open door - there is too much opportunity for trolling, low quality, etc. I’d like to see some kind of nomination process to start, and moving forward, having people promoted to “editor” status from within discussion boards or something.
Those are just some rough ideas. I don’t want those opinions to stand in the way of a free expression of ideas, and I’m very open to criticism.
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If we have an angel investor, what happens in, say, year 2, when the investor has other projects?
I’m not saying this to slag on you Donald, it’s roughly the same thing I’ve always said at work - what happens if I get hit by a bus? Things will need to continue. Maybe there will be one angel, but there should be a real plan for a revenue stream to obviate that need.
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You sound like you’d be a good person to go camping with. I’ll bring the soy sauce.
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