Money Money Money

[DavidV]

Thanks to the generosity of our patrons and advertisers, the piggy bank for ObjectivismOnline is filling up. I would like to solicit ideas on how the funds can be invested to improve this website. What changes would you like to see?

[iouswuoibev]

Thanks to the generosity of our patrons and advertisers, the piggy bank for ObjectivismOnline is filling up. I would like to solicit ideas on how the funds can be invested to improve this website. What changes would you like to see?

What can money buy for an online forum except more bandwidth? I can't think of anything.

Hey, that might be not such a bad idea, then you could raise the flood control threshold which is, at present, very slightly annoying.

[DavidV]

Flood control is there to prevent abuse and make people think before posting, not because of bandwith limitations.

[iouswuoibev]

Flood control is there to prevent abuse and make people think before posting, not because of bandwith limitations.

So what ideas have you?

[Scott_Connery]

Advertising and or paid writers are the only things I can think of.

[JMeganSnow]

Thanks to the generosity of our patrons and advertisers, the piggy bank for ObjectivismOnline is filling up. I would like to solicit ideas on how the funds can be invested to improve this website. What changes would you like to see?

Is there any possibility of maybe getting some guest posters? I mean, like setting up a time when someone like Andy Bernstein or Harry Binswanger would be here to answer sticky questions people might have?

I could see confining this sort of thing to the Premium forums, and maybe asking people to submit their preliminary questions beforehand. It'd definitely be an incentive to become a patron.

It's just something that I think might be cool.

[gags]

I like that idea. Hell, I'd pay for that.

[DavidOdden]

I could see confining this sort of thing to the Premium forums, and maybe asking people to submit their preliminary questions beforehand.

It would be a good idea to wait (a brief moment) and see if other ideas come out that are more appealing, but I would be surprised if anything comes even close to this suggestion in its excellence. You should take that as my support for doing so. Edited February 18, 2006 by DavidOdden

[dondigitalia]

I have a variant of Jennifer's idea. Does this forum have chat capabilities? How about a moderated live chat with one of the bigshots?

[DavidOdden]

I have a variant of Jennifer's idea. Does this forum have chat capabilities? How about a moderated live chat with one of the bigshots?

Very top of the page... live chat. Which featured Onkar Ghate some while ago. It isn't "run" by this forum, but you can check it out to see {how well / if} it works currently.

<An after the fact analysis shows that I can't connect anymore. Dunno if that's now, or ever: I don't do IRC generally>

[JMeganSnow]

I would actually prefer it not to be chat, because chats don't stay up on the forum for everyone to see. I have too little patience for people trying to talk over me to put up with chat except in very specific circumstances.

[dondigitalia]

I would actually prefer it not to be chat, because chats don't stay up on the forum for everyone to see. I have too little patience for people trying to talk over me to put up with chat except in very specific circumstances.

I have participated in moderated chats in the past where it wasn't just a free-for-all of everyone talking. There is usually a "raise hand" feature built in to avoid everyone trying to talk at once; sNerd will have to tell us if that is feasible. Also, on THE FORUM, Betsy ran a moderated chat a while back, and then they posted the transcript up in its own thread, so everyone was able to see it, whether they attended or not.

The big benefit I see of a chat is that it allows for immediate follow-up questions. More often than not, a good answer to a question leads to more questions. Would a regular forum format with pre-submitted questions be able to accomodate those?

[softwareNerd]

I've never used the Chat function on the forum, but it's up there on the first line just below the advert. It says "Live Chat".

Update: I just clicked on it. It seems to run a little Java Applet that connect to an IRC channel not run by GreedyCapitalist. So, I guess that rules that out!

Edited February 19, 2006 by softwareNerd

[JMeganSnow]

The big benefit I see of a chat is that it allows for immediate follow-up questions. More often than not, a good answer to a question leads to more questions. Would a regular forum format with pre-submitted questions be able to accomodate those?

Of course; I know quite a few people that engage in play-by-post RPGs; it's similar to live chat, you can just say more at one go. The idea of submitting preliminary questions beforehand was to give the guest time to gather up any information they thought they might need to lead a discussion on the issue; they would post a preliminary response and then the discussion could develop from there, just like a regular forum thread but with a limited time frame, so you wouldn't want to post, go get dinner, sleep, go to work, and come back to resume the discussion 21 hours later.

Of course, I'm kind of whistling in the dark here until David posts whether he thinks this idea is feasable or not.

[Dismuke]

How about a guest SPEAKER? Yeah, I know, everybody here is in different parts of the world. But, in this day and age, there are ways to hold a live talk by telephone and/or computer conferencing.

One possibility: see if one of the very well known Objectivist intellectuals would be willing take on a remote speaking engagement. One could have it either as a talk about a particular subject or strictly a Q & A session or a combination of both. Those who are premium subscribers would be able to join in the live talk for either free or a significantly reduced rate. Those who are not subscribers would join in on the live talk for a fee. Those on the live talk would be able to ask questions during any Q&A until the alloted time runs out. I believe most conference call services have a way to allow such questions to be placed in a queue - I have heard it done on quarterly earnings conference calls for publicly traded companies that I have listened in on . Finally, those who are not able to join in during the live talk could be able to access a password protected archived version of it on the OO website - perhaps for free to premium members and for a fee somewhat smaller than the fee for the live talk for non-members.

If you do something like that, be sure to shop around for a variety of potential vendors because my experience with that sort of thing is that price ranges can often be VERY wide for the exact same service. I have seen it with the per-listener cost of shoutcast streams as well as with web hosting. My guess (and it is just a guess) is the exact same is true with conference services. If a Fortune 500 company ends up paying $500 to host a conference call instead of $50, well, in the grand scheme of things, the extra $450 doesn't mean a whole lot, especially if it saves whoever is setting things up a bit of time. But for a small website, such price differences can be a matter of make or break - so it is always worthwhile shopping around if the first price quote is a deal killer.

As for guest speakers - Dr. Ridpath is one I have seen speak in person a few times and have always enjoyed. Dr. Binswanger is a really cool speaker as well - and of course there are others. I suspect Dr. Peikoff does not take many such speaking engagements these days - but it doesn't hurt to ask. If you could get one who knew Ayn Rand in person, that would really make for a great Q&A. And the advantage to prospective speakers, which might make them more inclined to accept, is they would not have to travel or even leave their house to do the engagement. And, you could publicize the talk elsewhere which would be good publicity for the Forum.

Anyhow, that's my 27.765 cents worth (i.e. 2 cents worth adjusted for inflation of the fiat currency)

[DavidV]

Last year, we held an IRC chat with Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate. It was on the now-defunct #AynRand chat room. It was moderated, so people had to ask for permission to ask questions.

The challenge in getting bigwigs involved is just getting them to participate. I can’t afford a “speaker’s fee” sufficient to really pay for their time, so they would have to volunteer. Our best chance of that is getting a member who knows one of them personally to ask them. In the care of ARI, it was they who suggested the chat – probably because several of their employees were active here.

One idea for chat is Campfire – see http://www.campfirenow.com/ It would cost about $24 pet month, with a max of 20 simultaneous users. There are other solutions for chat that might be better.

[dondigitalia]

The challenge in getting bigwigs involved is just getting them to participate. I can’t afford a “speaker’s fee” sufficient to really pay for their time, so they would have to volunteer.

Are you sure about that? I am currently in the process of planning a speaker event for the SFSU/Berkeley O'ist Club, and it's not as expensive as I thought it would be. I'm honestly not sure how much of what ARI is estimating is speaker fees, and what is travel/hotel expenses, but I can get a list of who might be available for this and what their fees would be. Of course, I can only give a very rough estimate of how much cash your sitting on based on the number of patrons, so if you've already looked into it, ignore everything I've said.

One idea for chat is Campfire – see http://www.campfirenow.com/ It would cost about $24 pet month, with a max of 20 simultaneous users. There are other solutions for chat that might be better.

I'm against the idea of a regular chat room that's open for general usage mostly because I don't think it would be used and it would end up being a waste of money. Personally, I'd rather see the fees I've paid be used as a donation to ARI or just into your pocket as payment than see them be spent on something that won't be used. The reason I don't think it would be used is because the chat room on THE FORUM is barely used at all during the hours it is open every day.

[DavidV]

Btw, I just Googled some chat rooms and set one up at http://ObjectivismOnline.com/chat/

Are you sure about that? I am currently in the process of planning a speaker event for the SFSU/Berkeley O'ist Club, and it's not as expensive as I thought it would be.

I've hosted several speakers with my own club, so I know it's not that much, but it's not something we could do on a monthly basis. I would like something that could be a regular feature of the site.

[Dismuke]

One idea for chat is Campfire – see http://www.campfirenow.com/ It would cost about $24 pet month, with a max of 20 simultaneous users. There are other solutions for chat that might be better.

Yes, there are solutions which are better than that.

I shopped around for chat services a couple of months ago as I wanted to add a chat room for Radio Dismuke listeners to have the opportunity to interact with each other during the occasional live broadcasts and other special programming I feature.

Since my intention was to have the chat room open only during special programming rather than 24 x 7, I really did not want to spend a great deal of money on a feature which I considered semi-marginal in the first place.

One of the web hosting services I use provides me with up to 10 chatrooms with, I believe, about 30 simultaneous users each. I also found a few free services on the web which were available. Unfortunately, not a single one of the free services allowed for admins who have the ability to kick and block visitors who are rude or behave badly. Because I wanted my listeners to have a positive experience, I considered having that feature to be essential. And I needed the ability to appoint others to function as admins because during the chats I would be busy doing the broadcast.

I looked into getting an IRC channel and perhaps a java based browser interface - all of which I could have done for free. Unfortunately, I could not figure out to set IRC up so that user IP addresses would remain confidential to other users. That was also a HUGE issue for me. If any of my listeners do not have appropriate firewalls and such on their computers, their IP address being exposed could result in my inadvertently setting them up for an attack. It was also a concern for me as I, too, would be logged in - at the same IP address from which my broadcast emanates.

Finally, after a couple of weeks looking around and almost giving up, I found a service that met all my requirements. http://www.sigmachat.com/

I have their Professional Service plan which, for $75 per year gives me unlimited simultaneous users, the ability for me to give admin privileges to as many users as I wish and the ability to mask IP addresss from other users (though they are visible to myself and the people I have designated as admins). I can also, if I wish, register user ids so that regular visitors do not have to worry about someone using their ID or pretending to be that person. For $100 per year, you can set it up so that users can register their own id - which would probably be something you would want if you were to keep the chat room open a lot. Also, there is an Enterprise package which has additional features, including the ability to host advertisements and track click throughs. That only costs $135 per year

So far, I have had the room up for 3 broadcasts and it has worked well. The ONLY issue I have had with it is the fact that I am supposed to get a daily transcript log of all activity on the chatroom. The first time I used it, I had failed to set it up correctly. But it did not work on subsequent times either and that is something I will have to get them to look at before the next time I use the program.

Of all the ones that I looked at, Sigma Chat was by far the best in terms of price and features with their top tier package being far less expensive than other services I looked at that did not offer nearly as much.

Edited February 19, 2006 by Dismuke

[Hal]

Whats wrong with IRC? I dont understand why you'd choose to pay for a chatroom when you can set up an IRC channel for free - plus the dedicated client software is normally far nicer to use than horrible brower-based 'webchat' stuff. But you can set up web-based interfaces to IRC channels using CGI:IRC or whatever if you really want to, and you can write a script to log the channel and upload the results easily enough.

If you dont want to rely on a different network hosting your channel, you could run a dedicated OO.net irc server.

Edited February 27, 2006 by Hal

[Felix]

How about a guest SPEAKER? Yeah, I know, everybody here is in different parts of the world. But, in this day and age, there are ways to hold a live talk by telephone and/or computer conferencing.

One possibility: see if one of the very well known Objectivist intellectuals would be willing take on a remote speaking engagement.

I like this idea most. It is the audio-feature I like about it. And I know that this is not very expensive, especially because the tape can be recorded and then sold afterwards. This mp3-recording is often part of the service of such teleseminar-offers. A question and answer format would be great. We could collect questions on this forum beforehand and have one of the moderators do the interview.

[Cecil]

Thanks to the generosity of our patrons and advertisers, the piggy bank for ObjectivismOnline is filling up. I would like to solicit ideas on how the funds can be invested to improve this website. What changes would you like to see?

I would like to suggest a Paypal Money Market Account. I use it because 1) they provide a no-fee debit card(s) for everyday expenses and 2) they pay currently 4.45% on deposited funds (no fee) and 3) one can easily move funds from and to one's commercial bank, again with no fees, and finally 4) they rebate 1% annually for all debit card purchases. In non-financial considerations, they are owned by Ebay - the global symbol of 'the trader.' Another thing I like about them is that their motif doesn't hawk things like 'FDIC Insured' which constantly remind one of Big Brother.

Cecil R. Williams

[softwareNerd]

Hi Cecil, Welcome.

By asking where to "invest" the money, GreedyCapitalist was actually where to spend it in a way that would add the most value.

[gags]

By asking where to "invest" the money, GreedyCapitalist was actually where to spend it.....

That's a very Clintonian use of the word invest.

[softwareNerd]

At the risk of straying off-topic, it's a fine colloquial usage. What one is asking is this: where to spend some values (money) so that we can produce new (in this case non-monetary) values.

When a politican uses the term, the real question is whether new values are produced and, more importantly, of value to whom?

(Of course, this doesn't mean GC isn't closet Clinton-ite. )