 Today I learned that 1) to some people a server of ~1000 users is "small" 2) there are apparently servers of ~1000 users where not even ~5% of the people chip in a couple of bucks a month for operational costs?? I don't know what to call a server that doesn't support itself but it doesn't sound like a community. Something more like "a group of people signing up arbitrarily for free web services" 29 comments
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 @darius That reminded of a 2015 blog post by Henry Mintzberg: Networks are not Communities https://mintzberg.org/blog/networks-communities “Networks connect; communities care.” @darius That was recommended by a friend just yesterday when there was a conversation about why Slack groups are _not_ communities, but only networks. Massive difference, and too many seem to mix the two. For example, I am member of a paid Slack group, but there even isn't a way for me to put in money to that. Only way is that admin pays. @darius I thought small was my 50-user local/regional instance! Guess we need a new size category. I’ve been very fortunate that people approached me about donations and encouraged me to set up funding options (I was ready to pay the first year, or at least the equivalent of 12 months at our current size, out of pocket). There’s a huge difference in having a group of people, and having a community. @darius Hi, out of interest: What amount would you suggest to individual users to support their servers? How high are the costs for the maintenance of a +- 1000 server per month? @jume Depends on how expensive the services your admin is using are, but masto.host supports ~2000 users for $90/mo For someone running a server themselves via Linode or DigitalOcean, it can be wildly variable but there is, to me, no way you'd need to spend more than $200/mo for 1k people. So like... ask your users to give a dollar a month and you should be okay? In my experience, people with more money will give more and offset the people who are unable to contribute @jume btw costs to run Friend Camp are publicly available though we are only ~60 active users https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mRtQiH1ZeK5HzPnocwfQmUutHVAhpusxcGq44hsKF7E/edit#gid=0  @aphyr @jume right, obviously this is not paying for sysadmin time like you would pay at a company. 100/mo for hosting seems about right to me, and yeah legal stuff is a whole other ball of wax. On Friend Camp we have ~50% of our active users averaging $3/mo, though some people give $1/mo and some people give like $10/mo. The other half of our active users don't donate, but it works out @darius @jume That's good to know! One of the things I'm trying to do this month (once I get our LLC set up) is figure out how we're actually going to take donations. Libera.pay and the other crowdfunding mechanisms seem to use Stripe for processing, but Stripe's ToS say you need special approval to use it for crowdfunding and their sales team won't get back to me. :-/ @darius Not really sure! I think they may actually be talking about if I wanted to *operate* a crowdfunding site, rather than *use* one. Same goes for Patreon--we gotta get Stripe or Paypal set up first. Can't wait to get banned when they find out we're gaaaaay. @darius @kevix I agree that admins should be talking to their users about this stuff. It is part of the guide I wrote to how to administer a community server  @darius we've got a little over 200 active users, and even that feels like a lot! like @tswan, folks encouraged me to set up donations, so #triangleTootParty is sustained by the folks who use it. :)
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@darius I wonder if there’s a good write up on how to accept and manage donations, etc? I don’t know if this idea of taking over and “saving” users sits well with me vs teaching the admins how to optimize and maybe work together to fund their instances. Tho tbh, I personally don’t accept donations because I don’t need the money and frankly can’t handle the overhead of tracking billing stuff in a timely and organized manner 🫠. @catgoat I don't know of an existing guide -- personally I just maintain a patreon just for friend camp and people give through that. @darius @darius I believe this site should be principally based on the gift economy, meaning not everyone should contribute the same amount as all have different financial situations. Rather, something more along the lines of 'from each their ability, to each their need.' ;) @darius Public radio does fundraisers on an annual schedule. Free commercial services sell consumer data to advertisers. Philanthropists and foundations may give grants, with or without strings and interests. The bills will be paid, or instances will shut down. I’m putting in the eight dollars a month that I will never give to #ElonMusk, because I like #Mastodon and the #FediVerse better than #Twitter. If enough step up with funds and volunteering, then it won’t get dominated @darius I run an actually small server and figure I will take the L for quite some time. I also do my own stream hosting and take an L on that, but that's got a line item in my excel budget. For me at least it's a matter of taking pride in facilitating community, art, and conversation. At some point I will have to Patreon or ask for donations, I don't really like that, but realistically it's inevitable. |
Gregory's Server