@lodion@aussie.zone mate, this community has been a godsend for me. Thank you so much for setting it up and keeping it running while you had the space for it in your life.
It's been such a joy to feel like I have an extra set of friends to shoot this shit with online, make jokes, make political arguments, nerd out with and generally have a gab.
Wishing you all the best mate, and thanks again.
I’d hate to see AZ shut down and I’m happy to setup regular donations.
There are few places left on the internet where any degree of disagreement is tolerated and overall I have found AZ and its community mods to be reasonable.
Thanks for providing us a little slice of internet away from the likes of Reddit and hoping all goes well for you in the future!
Keen to join on the monthly donation train once there's a link, reckon I've lurked and freeloaded from FOSS long enough!
As I said 3 years ago Lodion, this is your house and you make the rules.
Those rules have been fair, generous even, and have shaped the community that has grown here.
I hope it can continue to live up to your ideals.
Figure out what donation platform works transparency/tax/whatever wise and I'll send something. More direct use than getting Melbourne a hypothetical Numbat...
Firstly, massive thank you Lodian. This is such a safe haven on the internet and I have seen it actively help people and been helped by the kind souls here myself. That's because you gave a shit and built a space. I really appreciate it staying free of ads.
I don't always have a ton of time but I do have tech skills to be a backup on bits and pieces and I am happy to offer skills on the tracking/mod/admin/group funding slide of things. Feel free to chuck me a DM Nath and I can see where I can help.
Thank you so much for hosting this lovely place. It has been a peaceful place from all the louder places of the web and it still is.
Thanks for all you've been doing.
Let us know about recurring donations, if we can see funding goals easily, we can decide how much we'd like to contribute to make sure running costs are met.
Please, when you've sussed it out, provide a link to a donation page <3
Thanks lodion, you made an amazing place :D
Hello everyone,
First up, this site was Lodion's baby. We are all here because of him. He decided a Lemmy instance for Australians needed to exist, mostly free of the dramas of the wider Internet. He set up the whole show and like the Field of Dreams, we all came. I was just a regular user sign-up. I didn't know he had set any of this up, I was just a Reddit exile when they brought in their API changes that both killed third-party apps, and essentially began the whole "We're going to sell all your comments to AI companies". Lodion and I go way back more than 20 years, and when I spotted he was the admin, I volunteered to help out with running the site.
It's you. All of you. You all have made this community what it is. Take you guys away and it's all just a bunch of files on a disk and an empty database. Together, we have all built the site that I still see as an oasis that connects to the globe, but you can dip in as little or as much as you like. Even in Lemmy space, Aussie.Zone is not a huge instance. We've never tried to be. I still don't especially want us to be. I'd rather grow by 10 regulars per month who are all chill and easy to help out than see an influx of 20,000 people who would cause a whole pile of new problems that we just aren't equipped to deal with. I've been the more visible of the two of us on the site, but in terms of "management", my load is maybe 15 minutes per day. Which is great! Because I don't always have much more than that to give on any given day. 90% of the time, I'm just a regular user with that little red "A" next to my name - nothing more.
Lodion and I have been chatting about him stepping away for a while now. I'm willing to take on the stuff he's been doing - but he's been funding the site out of pocket to the tune of around $60ish per month (I haven't seen the raw finances yet, but the last time Lodion mentioned it, the site was costing something in the ballpark of $100 per month to run) for about a year now - and I am not in a place where I can do that. For what this site is, $100/month is a bargain!
So, I disagree with Lodion. This is going to end up being a call for donors. We (all of us) are going to need to find that money. I would say that personally, I easily get $5/month value from the site - and there's 5% all by itself. I believe we can find 20 people who would chip in that much. Frankly, I reckon we could find twice that without getting whiny. Ads are off the table. I hate them. Users hate them. Our users are all smart enough to run adblocks anyway, so I'd only annoy prospective people who aren't members. I have a couple of ideas for incentives for donors, to hopefully make donating more attractive.
There are a couple of things I could use a hand with, and I might take a few of you up on these offers to help. Things like monitoring finances and reporting incoming/outgoing costs. The Molly project also needs help as well. Stuff I haven't really had the chance to prioritise.
Before Lodion fades away, I would love to see this thread turn into a bit of a love fest. Shit's real in his world right now - and a bombardment of love from us all, telling him how much of a difference this site makes to us all, and how grateful we are to him for what he built is in order.
Thank you, mate. I know very well that you don't personally feel like you have done all that much to make this site what it is - and in some aspects, that is true. But it also wouldn't be what it is without you. I have laughed, cried, but most importantly, I have found a community here that I love. This instance has been a daily part of my life for over three years now, and perhaps you didn't make all that - but you made that possible. 100% you. Truly, thank you. ❤️
Lodion, first, thank you. You've shown me a genuinely far healthier side of the internet. A side I never knew existed up until just over three years ago. Thanks to you setting up this instance, I've learned a lot more than I ever thought I would about the web and social media.
Secondly, you've created a community here, i've always thought it'd be good to see you engage more socially, but understood you were very engaged in different ways and perhaps not interested in that side of things anyway, fair enough. But, for my piece at least, I hope you stick around and enjoy more of the social aspect of this community you've been so instrumental in creating. :)
Nath, I hope the transition goes smoothly. I always understood funding was a quiet issue in the background, and I will be there to help with costs. Lets make the funding of this place a sustainable aspect that you don't have to worry about.
Any other help I can jump in to aupport you with, you know where to find me. :)
@shlee@aus.social has been experimenting with a funding union, we could hook into that as the primary funding source. I'm not sure how developed it is.
Shlee seems to have some experience with community funding, the link below is from a week ago at the GenerOZity raffle at PAXAUS 26.
Posters Union is the funding organisation shlee has been setting up to help cover server costs.
We could talk more to shlee about the concept and join in, or use the example as inspiration.
I've used this a couple times seems a legit method.
Kofi has worked well for me as well.
Open Collective is pretty good, it could be used. Good on ya for passing it to Nate rather than just letting it die, but it'll be sad to have you gone
OpenCollective is built around transparent crowd funding / expense management.
Thank you for all you've put into this.
Does something like liberapay work? I dont know much about it but see it on a lot of Foss repos
Sorry to hear.
I donate monthly, so will just redirect to whatever format ends up being chosen.
Currently donate to Lemmy development as well. If money for the instance is a drama, I'll redirect that too.
(Somehow I'm in the top 10 on the leaderboard for both, which is actually kinda sad considering the small amount I'm ponying up)
Well I'm only an idiot but I use this everyday so if we have a solution I'm willing to contribute
Same here
Me too.
I think I've donated once.. as enjoyers of FOSS we really should be better at paying for what we previously expected corporations to front the bill for. Thanks for all of your work.
Thank you for everything. I'm sorry I haven't donated regularly. When a decision is made I will.
Sorry to hear buddy. Best of luck