View Full Version : yet another plea
Right now I'm a little aggravated and agitated, and I also have to admit there’s some disappointment mixed into the brew as well. I'm posting aobu t this issue here b/c I know more people will see it!
Andrew is back online and he posted here saying he's getting server money from exactly 3 people on these forums. 3 people...that's NOT counting me. I was planning to send him $$ this month anyway, that's not the point. The point goes a tad deeper than that, it gets personal and I’m just going to lay it all out for you to see--I now have to find out if there's a balance that I need to cover, which will mean my payment will have to be larger than I had planned on, which means another bill is not going to get paid off, which means I have to incur finance charges. That's only part of what's aggravating me--the finance charge on one of my own bills all b/c I have to cover the balance for the server on a Web site. What's aggravating me the most is you're posting on my dime, and on the dimes of 3 other people who actually care enough about this site to help out and none of you give a crap about that.
I don't like having to nag people, I don't like having to ask for money yet I find myself in the position of having to do both again. And this time I decided to post about it where I knew it would at least get read. Maybe someone more glib of tongue (Kui??) could help me come up with a way to get across the point that several months ago I begged for regular contributors to help keep Milan Mania up and running, because I obviously am not speaking a language anyone else understands.
If you can help out, please PM Rezag or Razoruk to get details. We need contributors, on a regular basis, b/c 3 or 4 people cannot shoulder the entire burden.
Well let me see. I did make only one payment and have been lazy to go on paypal and contribute. Mea Culpa!
Perhaps we can get "patrons" who will commit to a monthly contribution of $25 US per month. Now if I'm correct, the cost of this site was $155 US no??? That would mean at least 6 people commited to paying a minimum $25 USD per month. That doesnt seem too difficult to cough up a mere $25. The difficulty actually is getting people committed to getting online and keeping the bills payed on time. $155 isnt much money to me at all, yet I find it that if I do this myself, it would be a conflict of interest as I might get the attitude that I can dictate what I want on this site. Now I am certain there will be people who dont want that and I dont blame them one bit for it. So we break down the payments and call these folks "patrons" yet with no true dictating priviledges over anyone in this site. I'm satisfied with those who keep this site up i.e. Rezaq, Debs, and others including the moderators. So being a "patron" should not or does not gurantee that such a person will be given any leadership role equal to that of Debs or Rezaq or any of the moderators. My rationale for this is that you admins and Mods do much work to keep the tranquility of the site to a point that it is up and running and such work is in itself is payment in service. Secondly there may be more than 6 committed "patrons" helping this site. If their are 20 of us it isnt right for "patrons" to dictate the rules of MilanMania over a mere $7.75 USD, unless a a donating "patron" is a current Admin or Mod of this site. We as "patrons" donate for the mere love of this site and nothing more.
So let's make a list to what we need to do to make it happen. I'll try to put in my spiel and then we can comment and deliberate on these points.
1. We need to find the 6 or so committed "patrons"
2. Have a posted letter of commitment/agreement so that we can get the funds needed from the "patrons" per monthly basis.
3. The person who is the underwriiten bill payer of MilanMania should also be duly noted as the "treasurer" responsible for the coordination of the on-time bill payments coming from the "patrons".
4. Besides the Treasurer/Bill Payer, all "patrons" should as a matter of interest be made aware of who the other "patrons" are. We need not let the entire MilanMania members know who they are but for commitment sakes if "patrons" know who the other "patrons" are, we can help the treasurer in making sure all of us commit to this obligation.
5. The treasurer should supply to all "patrons" per private mail a list of the expenses pertaining to who has already payed and who has yet to contribute so that we again gurantee some kind of commitment from those who made a pledge to help this site out. I hope it is possible to send the messages to "patrons" by bulk so that it is easier for the treasurer. If not, then we need to find a better way to communicate/coordinate this.
So here are at least five of my ideas to getting this thing done and over with. We still need to explain the guidelines to those wishing to end their "patronage" if a time comes when such can no longer commit to such obligation.
Some might be asking... Well as a "patron" what do I get out of it???
My answer is... For yourself, nothing at all really. But there is another issue. The stake of MilanMania.com as a standout Fan Site Forum for all to come and express ideas and opinions about our beloved team. If there are no patrons to be found than we risk losing this site.
Some might be asking... Well as a "patron" what do I get out of it???
My answer is... For yourself, nothing at all really. But there is another issue. The stake of MilanMania.com as a standout Fan Site Forum for all to come and express ideas and opinions about our beloved team. If there are no patrons to be found than we risk losing this site.
Kui, great post. No mea culpa on your behalf, I'm not pointing fingers or assessing guilt to anyone. But your last statement really sums up what I'm feeling right now.
I know we have members who'd like to donate and simply cannot because of finances. There could be others, for whom, as Kui stated, the $155 a month seems like nothing. Were I in such a position myself, this whole discussion wouldn't even exist. Sadly, for me $155 is a huge amount to have to come up with each and every month. We had a pool of co-owners who paid the monthly costs of the Final Football/Milan Mania server, and over the past few years, as life happens, some have had to drop out. Andrew himself, who is our "server guy" (dealing with the server people, trying to find the cause of glitches people keep whining about, doing all the work when it comes to moving us or upgrading the forum software, etc.) can't afford to keep picking up the balance, NOR SHOULD HE HAVE TO. So it's time to to get the message across to all of you that periodically one or 2 people have been keeping this site up and running for the past year or so and it is becoming an issue. You're posting on my dime and you could care less, HOWEVER let the site run slow or whatever else gets complained about and by the gods, all we get is complaints. You know what? I'm to the point of saying "hey, and you're welcome, thanks for helping us out!"
Over the course of the past year, a couple of mods, Rez and I have discussed the topic of "if people donate, what do they get out of it?" Maybe we'll have to invite Kui into the discussion, but the key is to keep things as simple as possible. We can call these people patrons, and keep things nice a low-key as Kui suggested, which I'm all for. Unless a person is really gung-ho for the site, even in the technical aspects, I don't feel a patron needs to be in the descision making process. In other words, we're doing away with the co-owner idea.
Obviously, as Kui's math indicates, the more people who step up, the less we all have to pay. It can be a monthly thing, which would be great, or it can be "here's $X for the next 2 or 3 months" and in that fashion we could have partons pay on a rotating basis. No patrons most likely will lead to no Milan Mania, despite the fact that I just renewed the domain for 2 years.
Once again.....how many times does this make....let's get a list of people who can throw something into the pot. Once we see how many, we can work out some other details. I'm guessing, unless Andrew says otherwise, we need to get active patrons by January.
Well let me know what the decision is and lets try to get some kind of fund rolling so we dont need to worry about this anymore. Again I dont expect you to take all my points into consideration. It was just me brainstorming.
I appreciate the brainstorming, always!
:dontkn: It does worry me that no one has responded here. This is giving me cause to stop and re-think a few things.
I appreciate the brainstorming, always!
:dontkn: It does worry me that no one has responded here. This is giving me cause to stop and re-think a few things.
Well I hope you talk with the other admins about this as I feel it unfair that you have been the only one that brought this up before the forum. Consider me commited but on the condition that we can get more funders available. It is unfortunate that only you and a few others have been burdened by the cost of maintaining this site while everyone else goes about their own business. That's fine but we for the sake of this site I would hope we get some serious people on board. It would be a shame if this site is no longer an operating entity if we fail to find this saviors of ours. Keep me posted whenever you can Debs. Thanks.
sehnsucht79
11-12-2005, 22:34
Would you accept Juventina money?? :D
I am somewhat unaware of this predicament before... I'll give it some thought (I hate doing payment through paypal though) Anyway pardon me if this has been mentioned before but truth be told the posts above were too long; if I were to contribute some money must it be at a fixed price or has a minimum amount of contribution, or am I free to contribute at whatever price I want?
Contributions can be made in any amount you are comfortable with, at this point the most important thing is for them to be regular contributions.
I too am surprised at the number of replies this has gotten, especially since this issue has been raised before and is not gonna go away, however cheap or expensive the costs are now or gonna be in months to come.
At this point I am considering options and weighing them.
Andrew, who isn't even a Milan fan, has apparently been picking up the slack instead of telling me the balances. A couple months ago it was a pretty big amount and I sent him $200. I don't care what sort of image you have of us average Americans, I don't happen to have a job where I earn $100,000 so if I had to kick in all or even just half of the server costs EACH MONTH, I could not do it. Andrew can't keep footing the bill as he has a family to take care of, and he and I are both in the same boat of either being late paying bills or not paying them off totally and incurring more charges. Hello, why are we doing it? To keep Milan Mania online, that's why.
But not too terribly long ago I went thru an experience and learned a lesson,and the person who taught me that lesson was the original founder of this place, Jan. He went into debt keeping MM and XT online, and went into debt to the tune of an estimated $10,000- $15,000. No one is going to have that happen to them just to keep this place online, but the only way I know to prevent that from happening is to find a group of patrons or co-owners who can help bear the burden.
Here's the cold hard facts guys. I've paid my last in terms of any additional shortfall each month. I can't justify any longer why I can't pay bills or why I can't take my kids to the movies to pay for a site that I don't visit often, don't really have much to do with other than fixing crap when it breaks (the same can be said of FF).
Some months there is no shortfall, other months I have to use what some of the kind folks here have donated for 2-3 months just to make up the shortfall in the cost of the server as people are either late sending money, don't send money or don't send enough because they have x,y, or z going on in their life that month. I'm in the same boat now and if we don't find the shortfall we have the very real possibility of the server company shutting us down for non - payment of the bill.
I'm still willing to send ~$20 a month to whoever is going to be taking care of the financial responsibility of the server moving forward.
I don't think it's fair that Debs or Reza end up with the shortfall that I've been making up every month either. If you want the site to survive - it's pretty much now or never time to show it IMHO, unless Debs, Reza or anyone has anything up their sleeve.
Andrew, to answer what's up my sleeve happens to be closing the site by April 30th if we don't work something out. There's the deadline I have in my mind. Cold hard facts. And those cold, hard facts seem to include that no one cares enough about the site to even SAY anything let alone DO anything, so I'm just going to lay it on the line now--this site WILL close without a group of regularly contributing patrons, investors, co-owners, whatever name you want to give it. Hate to be handing all of you that news right at holiday time, hate to bring all of you down, but look at it from my end of things. I've dumped so much time and money into this place only to find out no one even cares, and how do you think that's making me feel right now?
Wow I am stunned by the response (lack of) to this thread. I'd have thought that more people would want a say on the future of their site.:)
personally i dont want this thread to die, and i think alot of us think the same way too, its just that no one has the balls to be the first to say this, i would pay it it means keeping this place alive, but how much do u guys expect from us? and where do we send them to? ... once i go back to the US ill pay, but thats gonna be in around a month and half's time.
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