Donate button?

Has there ever been a "Donate" button on ATS? (In ATS fashion, I expect "those" answers) But seriously?

That´s an excellent idea. In stead of selling ATS they should open a GoFoundMe.com account. Worth a try.

-MM

Set one up right now. And I would donate 20 to start. a reply to: MerkabaMeditation

originally posted by: CopeLongCut
Set one up right now. And I would donate 20 to start. a reply to: MerkabaMeditation

An ATS admin should set one up imo, like DontThreadOnMe, to avoid any scammers taking our money by setting up a fake ATS account on GoFoundMe. I´ll match your $20 with $20 myself.

-MM

On it. Ill PM you if he answers back. a reply to: MerkabaMeditation

There was a donate option at one time which I took opportunity to do so.
I guess there no longer is, due to the question.

a reply to: CopeLongCut

Yes.
There was a donate button many moons back.
Also a way to earn points.
For rewards such as hats,mugs,t-shirts,etc.

I never got a hat .
But I did donate substantially to this site
a few times.

Things changed, and the "Not secure'" delineation
occurred. There used to be posts from the owners
and lead staff fairly frequently.
Regardless, this is still one of best sites online.

People move on, there is not the appetite or the energy, especially in this climate of censorship, to run a site like this.

It was one of the best of its kind, but this format is a challenging endeavor in the commercial landscape of the internet, at the best of times.

The death of ATS (arguably happened a while back) signals something a lot more significant than the loss of a website.

Free speech itself is a thing of the past.

Salute to the years of effort that has been ATS, an amazing wealth of knowledge and human interaction to have been part of, and has shaped my perspective into the future.

a reply to: puzzlesphere

Gab is the future.

a reply to: 3n19m470

Gab is more of the same... more layers of user access is not the solution.

You could set up a gofundme or donate button but that would only delay the inevitable.

The website isn't making money and will continue not making money unless something changes here.

originally posted by: CopeLongCut
Has there ever been a "Donate" button on ATS? (In ATS fashion, I expect "those" answers) But seriously?

This has all been discussed before...many times.

GFM works for a few hundred dollars, or a few thousand. The monthly operating costs of this website, the online bandwidth required to support it and the storage of the associated database(s) likely exceed this by an order of magnitude or more.

A large percentage of the really active members (well over 70%) would need to be donating something like $200-$500...per month...(not just once, but every month)...and that's just not a realistic expectation. $20 dollars here and $50 dollars there is not going to work.

The issue is not one of intent and/or heart, but rather one of scale.

Options like GFM can't, don't and won't realistically support something like that.

If ATS is to survive there will need to be a paradigm shift in the way the site operates and where it lives. This is no slight on the current owners and/or their efforts at all. Quite the contrary, it is merely an observation of the changing times.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk

originally posted by: CopeLongCut
Has there ever been a "Donate" button on ATS? (In ATS fashion, I expect "those" answers) But seriously?

This has all been discussed before...many times.

GFM works for a few hundred dollars, or a few thousand. The monthly operating costs of this website, the online bandwidth required to support it and the storage of the associated database(s) likely exceed this by an order of magnitude or more.

A large percentage of the really active members (well over 70%) would need to be donating something like $200-$500...per month...(not just once, but every month)...and that's just not a realistic expectation. $20 dollars here and $50 dollars there is not going to work.

The issue is not one of intent and/or heart, but rather one of scale.

Options like GFM can't, don't and won't realistically support something like that.

If ATS is to survive there will need to be a paradigm shift in the way the site operates and where it lives. This is no slight on the current owners and/or their efforts at all. Quite the contrary, it is merely an observation of the changing times.

I just cannot get my head around why this site costs so much to run a month !

yet GLP and LOP seem to manage just fine as forums with donations and a membership fee ?

Shift the forum to something manageable like my bb that only costs a few hundred a month and make the OLD database a membership fee to access but with the owners wanting 3-5 mill

Someone needs to get real with that value better half a loaf than no loaf at all 50 100 k would be more realistic as all it would take is some one to start NOT so secret .com

a reply to: stonerwilliam

I was involved in some of the early discussions. In fact, I'd like to think I may have started the first serious framing discussions in a serious way. I haven't been involved for a long time because I had to bow out due to other commitments. Consequently, I don't know the current status, but I do believe they are pretty mature at this point.

To your points though, about why it costs so much and why the owners want what seems like a lot; you have to understand there are a lot of variables. One of the big ones is the manner in which the current environment is constructed and how it operates. You also have to understand that times and things change, especially when it comes to the dot-com world and the internet. Just because you'd do something a certain way today doesn't mean that was the way people did it back when this site was founded. And the costs associated with dismantling the existing structure and re-structuring a different way can be and often are prohibitive. Plus, the only time this makes sense is when the venture is very profitable. It's a numbers game. These are all business decisions, and as we all know there are online business decisions which have been colossal failures (ATS is not one of these). Take photobucket as an example, and too many others to count. What starts out as a clever and attractive idea grows into this unmanageable beast which is no longer sustainable. This is when it's "salami slicing" time and hard decisions need to be made. There are no wrong decisions, only decisions which lead to success or ones which just prolong the pain.

The other thing you have to understand is many websites, possibly even ATS, are a subset of a larger business venture. You need to look no further than the top of this page to see it. Notice the red banner doesn't say "abovetopsecret.com", but rather it says "abovenetwork.com". This is a pretty good indicator there is more to it than just a single website. From an electronics infrastructure standpoint you amortize the scaling of your infrastructure across the entire platform. So, for example, if there were multiple websites you scale your infrastructure for all of them, not each one individually. If one of those websites happens to be huge, but several of the others are medium to small if you sell the biggest, most attractive, part for what it would cost to create in today's online paradigm you very well might wind up being left holding the bag for a whole lot of infrastructure and services you'll just get cents on the dollar for.

Here's a good analogy...Hertz corporation may have a whole lot of business ventures beyond just renting cars. But if Hertz corporation were to sell off just the rental car portion of their business for the net value of the cars they rent they'd be left holding the bag for hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure that can't stand on it's own. Then they'd be faced with just liquidating all those assets in the secondary market for pennies on the dollar.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I do remember reading years ago that SO had his fingers in a few other pies maybe another site somewhere else !





if this place is going to close just give it away ?

Post your thoughts in the other threads, in BBQ.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

GoFundMe and similar not allowed.

Closed.