This is just a quick message for anyone visiting Voat for the first time.
We have a known blocking issue in our code base. This means that the site is being a spoiled rotten no good son of... often will toggle off for about 10 seconds and then turn itself back on.
It truly is the most annoying bug you can imagine and we are just so happy to have it along for the ride. To make matters worse, response times are very poor right do to traffic.
So heads up, it's a little like a goat track around here right now.
For two guys with fulltime jobs it is not easy to dedicate the time to find such an obscure bug. As we often do, we have to apologize.
Many apologies everyone. We hate it too.
What we don't have at Voat:
- Server Farms
- Engineers (or even employees for that matter)
- Infrastructure budget
- Marketing department
- Salaries ;)
What we do have:
- Freedom of Speech
- Annoying bugs
- Goats
Anyways, just wanted to say welcome to any new people and we hope that what we have outweighs what we don't have.
If you have the means, please consider donating. Every bit helps and means a lot to both of us. https://store.voat.co/donations
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
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solar_flare ago
Is it in the plans to hire anybody to maintain and develop the site?
I'm guessing financing the site is the main problem, right? If so, how much money do you see the site needing per month to be running well, and how can this funding be done transparently?
whisky_cat ago
They've posted this in the past, and the number for hosting alone is over $5k a month. They've taken donations, sold merch, done ads, but I feel they still need a better boost in general.
solar_flare ago
This issue needs to be front and center, because this website has been barely usable for the past month, and won't gain any traction if this keeps up. Maybe they just don't want the website to be a real competitor, and if so I hope they make that abundantly clear. I'll gladly allow untargeted ads if need be. It's no joke, people are desperate to find a place that aren't using illiberal censorship, but it has to work. If this site continues to be completely unreliable, I'm going to start recommending other places.
Donbuster ago
I would disagree there. It's fine. It occasionally eats a comment or two, but its FAR better than having our bits checked...
We have untargeted ads. No one buys them.
You DO realize that, if they didn't want voat to grow, they would stop doing all the work they do to keep it up? Seriously, I'm sure the goats in chief would more than double their free time AND sleep by letting this place die. It's not making a profit, it's breaking even, if that, so the only reason it STAYS up is because they want it to grow, and work towards it. Sure, its a bit rough right now, but so is every website when it's growing.
solar_flare ago
Not a fan of the bit-check thing, but that's not really why the site has been barely usable. The site has an ongoing bug that hasn't been taken care of.
Okay, the financial issue should then be front and center then. Top of the website on every page that Voat is facing financial problems. If it's clearly the major problem/issue it needs to be confronted head on. I get that people can be coy and shy about financial issues, but it's not helpful. Voat is all about straight talk I think, so if they could just give it to us straight and tell us what exactly they need to make this thing run right, I think users would gladly appreciate that.
If we need to go find advertisers, that would be a nice little mission for the userbase to take on. Why not have a funding meter kind of like how reddit has? I'm tired of beating around the issue.
Donbuster ago
Right, I was just pointing out that the bug in question is WAY better than bit checking was a year ago. The current state is annoying, yes, but I trust that Atko and Putt are working on it. Bughunting can be a very laborious process, and you don't really make "Progress" until it's fixed. A bug that seems to happen at random then fix itself seems like its as simple as a a greater than being greater than or equal to in the code, or a bit of code that doesn't account for the 0th case. It could literally be one character in one single line of code in the thousands and thousands of lines that make up the site. A line that looks benign and behaves exactly as wanted in almost every case. Finding a little fucker like that takes time.
solar_flare ago
Which is why websites that aim to grow and be a real competitor have teams of people to do this. Once again this is probably a funding issue, which brings me back to my initial point of the the funding thing being brought to the front and center, if it's indeed the main issue.
Donbuster ago
The problem with funding is that we have too small of a userbase. Every website these days either is started by a major company with the expectation to make a loss the first few years, or by hobbysts who build and maintain the site in their spare time. Revenue for a site comes from advertising, which is more lucrative with more users, donations or subscriptions (which again, scales with users), or via eCommerce transactions (not really relevant here, though I do note a voat store is on the way. Once again, more users means more money). In order to hire a person, you would need to garner enough cash to run the site, AND pay the person a competitive wage. Voat is breaking even at around ~5k a month to host. That's sixty thousand a year. Assuming a wage of 60k a year (which is a bit less than the median wage for a web developer here in the states) we would have to increase donations and ad sales by MORE than 100% (because stability is needed to hire someone, or for atko/ putt to quit their job to do voat full time) to even approach the point where we could have a dedicated developer. That's not going to happen without more users. Users come first, dedicated labor comes second, that's how you have to run a website; any other option makes those running the place go bankrupt.
solar_flare ago
And ^this^ is what I want to see brought front and center so the userbase and admins can have an ongoing discussion on how we solves this. The issue should be stickied on the front page until we come to some kind of agreed upon solution.
Donbuster ago
Except there's only one solution- More users. The way you get more users isn't begging for money, as that's a turn off for people not yet invested in the community, the people you NEED to attract. You do what Atko and Putt have done- you don't try to hide your financial difficulty, but you also don't go out of the way to beg or advertise that fact (which I suspect has something to do with the fact that expired ads now get shown on the sidebar when there's no ad, with a brief note below stating that we don't have ads), you work your ass off to improve the site as best you can, to ensure that potential new users who DO stumble upon the site have a good experience (hence why discussion about the bug has been front and center, as have notes that they are working as hard as they can to find the blasted thing), and you be open to ANY new flood of users (EG: this thread). The time to discuss full time employees is not yet upon us. It's an important discussion to have, but it's simply too early in the site's life for it to be an option. A goal, certainly, one that we can work towards, but they way you get there isn't by constantly bemoaning your inability to employ a developer or two.
solar_flare ago
I disagree, people love honesty and you don't have to "beg" as you put it. If the problem is finances, people will accept that, it's no secret websites cost money to run. As long as it's done reasonably transparent and accountable.