Ok, I keep thinking about the $6k figure that @Puttitout mentioned in his thread.
For some reason I'm not seeing the costs here.
1. Bandwidth
2. Hosting
3. Cloud flare
4. Dev time costs
5. Legal ???
But we don't know because he didn't come out and say what it is in reality.
So let's say that we have enough people here who could help with programming. Depends on the language.
We have people who could help with server management.
Those who can't or are afraid of don't can and are probably willing to click a few ads per day.
Member management can also be done by a committee but ... Umm ... Yeah ... I get it. The point is that we can source this too.
But !!! I'm gonna say that he wants out of his day job and make this go big like Reddit. We are that close.
So, let's be a bit pragmatic here ...
Nobody likes .net so we go to another language maybe one that has the most goats able to work in; screw the ideological argument of what language is best -- just get the most guns on board.
Once the language is chosen, decide if a framework fit our needs.
Then we move to project manages who lay out a time line and just keep an eye out for areas that aren't staying on track.
I don't see why voat can't be converted to another language within weeks. I do laravel work and could probably have the majority in place within a month if I didn't have to go to work. The database structure is set, the core functions are all there so it's just rewriting those functions in the new target language. Some parts tend to JavaScript / node really well and others need a back end for api endpoints.
Once could starts getting submitted we get the DB guys to evaluate queries. And we get the security guys to hammer the could for all possible entry vectors.
How many people are we technically looking at? Max 20, more likely 10.
The biggest issue is starting paralysis and arguing about what language to use. The project managers can focus on functionality and ranking them in order which helps the coders to stay on target.
Once a beta is in place, we start looking at the marketing group to push for advertisements and social media spamming to pull in more people to the site. Ads can work and I think many of us can live with that ... Maybe have a on going outside link to an Amazon affliate that we go to before shopping at amazon. This could and probably should be a separate site with no voat branding to keep it low key.
Finding a hosting company can't be that hard and I can't see why a $250/month machine run everything. Bandwidth and content legality is the big problem.
I have no idea about cloudflare but I'm sure somebody here knows about this and we try to keep those costs down and still stay secure.
Writing all that out it makes me wonder why the community hasn't been called upon unless it's a business thing which is cool by me because all the work put into this site does deserve some kind of payout.
What do you all think?
view the rest of the comments →
illuminalto ago
Not a transparent request.
For all we know his sig is slipping into an oxy habit and taking him with her. We have nothing to go on here except the words he posted - and just like the rest of the internet we can believe or we can not believe.
I want voat to keep going, but if he's going to call on the user base to fund it, then he should to come out with total costs top to bottom instead of leaking us bits of things to see.
If that ~$6k is the real number, then he can either turn voat into a business (which I guess he owns it now since atko signed over) or he can do exactly what atko did and hand it to someone else. Who? I don't know.
But yeah, the sudden "we're sinking" is not a good sign on hands on management.
Monthly / Bi-weekly checkups, with I don't know, changing the front page ad to infographic would be helpful - but we didn't even get that.
Something stinks.
WhiteRonin ago
I have no problem if he is planning to start a business and hire on help to work on voat and other side projects with money raised by voat. The thing is that it would be nice if he just said it )IF that is what he is thinking). I can see a lot more people pitching in too if he did.
$6k... I just can't figure out where it is all going towards ... unless he is behind in payments ...
illuminalto ago
rant:
The announcement is both sudden and vague. Despite the post length, the palpable information is scant and leans heavily on emotional coercion and a real sense of loss.
His 2 best options are "we need an angel" and "close the site".
Sorry to sound like a fucking 14 year old twat here but. like, what the fuck?
Nowhere in there does he even say "maybe we can just put the servers at 25% load to get costs down for a couple of months until we find new capital". Shit, host the fucking site on angelfire if that's even still a thing or some other dirt cheap shit host and we'll all be happy to communicate at 56k speeds, who gives a shit?
The options are non-strategic, no "long game" in there as far as foresight or projection. Not. Good.
Hats off to the single man out there trying to manage all this madness - but clearly he's stating he can't do it on his own, and instead of the several other options we could have - such as:
We are given an either or.
There are lots of other options to be thought of. Will they be discussed?
WhiteRonin ago
I wish I had alts to upvoat you more!
Do you know any investors for real? Or just saying that if needed with voats name value that finding them should be relatively easy?
illuminalto ago
Yes!
Am I excited about the level of attention and stroking it would bring? Not especially!
How am I supposed to get a group of red-pilled assholes (and rightfully so, niggers) to honestly put out money?
I mean, honestly, I would have the effin "give a stranger gold" up right they fuck away. If people really hated it, I'd would go away, but at least do something, right? Because people enjoy the interaction! Even if the interaction is "Hey I'm not participating in this bullshit gold trophy bullshit" - and then it gets removed as a feature. HEY - FUCKIN HO, we decided SOMETHING as people. Next thing. Next Fucking Thing.
Hard to imagine how you could gamify voat a bit. I suppose the voat point system is a bit gamified itself already, but some sort of contribution mechanism to push people to donate. Keep track of other peoples GOOD DEEDS. LET'S REINFORCE SOME FUCKING GOOD DEEDS. It'll be simple classical human conditioning after that, monkey seeing, and all.
Get people excited for more. The concept of progress. Even if it is a novel feature or update. Ask the community? Ask them everything?
Who has the ideas????
WhiteRonin ago
Gamification or functionality. I'm sure people will tell you what they want and what is fair.
I'm seriously thinking of doing a fork.
illuminalto ago
Noice! A little bit of work, but honestly I see some financial promise in voat or similar community. I seriously don't want to buy it, but I don't want to see it go. If he's going to "close" it, then who's to stop us from getting the domain and relaunching? The propositions are silly.
I just don't understand where his head is at, but he could just have a tough life paying rent like everyone else and not be able to handle the burden end of webmaster/owner.
WhiteRonin ago
I didn't consider buying voat since it's easy enough to start fresh especially if voat closes. I figure this funding round brought in at least 15-20k. 900 posts $10-20 on average -- bad metrics but it's gonna be close I bet.
I doubt he'd let the domain go inactive so it's buying from him.
a single dev could pound out the majority of voat within a month. I can do that on a php framework. The other stuff, like jQuery if done by help would close off dev time within 2 months.
If I had to change out to say golang or node.js and had a helper we could still match that time frame. A 3rd person would guarantee results.
Get a smartass who is good with copy and a some graphics ... Bang running out the door.
This is why I'm seriously considering this.