Operating Entities etc
It's good to know that we don't have "trumpets" to sell nor "mercenary resources" to offer. But anyhow, if such stereotype of yours 3 years ago remains wholesome till now, I am pleased to invite you to come to our community. There, we have free resources and volunteer services to tap on your hosting spread. I just hope you may realize, that although
we do suffer and fall due to hardships and force majeure, we continue to
struggle because of a tie that bonds between our community members. I think joining our community may influence your opinion a bit, if not significantly. But if after joining our community and you realize your suspicions are true, then we can just agree to disagree. Cheers!
Dear Efil,
At the very least watching your results was one of the case studies that directly informed my evolving vocabulary and later led to this survey study project.
The basic theme of my sometimes frustrated discourses does remain - a community consists of a collection of people. *Where the community resides* is an independent factor that needs to be solved in some other fashion. Sometimes communities dissolve when the primary meeting facility can no longer continue. In that case I consider them "Communities Emeritus" or dormant, and the people "Alumni", in recognition of the good times.
Sometimes if a new facility becomes available, the community reforms. It is no accident that a charismatic leader can make a difference whether the community does successfully reform, or whether too much momentum was lost.
The operation of the facility is another matter entirely. That *is* a business transaction. Yes, you have had bad luck, for that is the non-accusing term I like to use in my discussions here.
The key point of my emerging discussions here is when the entity *offering service facilities* such as site accounts, refuses to discuss site operations as the economic supply and demand event that it is, and tries to use one of several words such as "community" as a way to deliberately blur the terms and conditions of the offering. There are jokes in business management that "buzzwords" float around in sweeps when it becomes the 'in' word to include in marketing materials. It is that abuse of marketing terminology that frustrates me.
I would like to post one of your updates from your linked thread that I believe serves as a big step towards handling these frustrations.
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Re: The Last Wave
« Reply #10 on: November 15, 2008, 11:33:43 AM »
Here's another update:
Water Seven in the future:
1. Organization change from "Community" to "Private Company Limited." The target date is July 07, 2009. Water Seven will become a registered company (with limited liabilities) here in Japan.
2. Server facilities change from "rental servers" to "home server." We will build our own "data center" (home server) in one of the rooms inside my new house. We will stop renting servers from other companies. There will be no more billing problems to come in the future after this change. The target completion is December 07, 2009.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2008, 11:38:20 AM by Efil »
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Here you go a long way and make an important step towards properly labeling the economic entity of Water Seven that offers accounts, which you now call a "Private Company". The Company, private or otherwise, is the entity that offers space, and it either successfully connects all the economic factors, or it fails.
The "Community" is the collection of people gathered under the leadership of one topical theme such as a Water Seven theme. Leaders may change, and facilities may change. Membership as a whole changes. The collection of people however they congregate is the community.
It is vital to realize that the activities of a group of people acting at the Community level would have some kind of voting process to affect how many of their activities are handled. Imagine for example deciding upon an "official Water Seven" logo or such. A President or a Board may be able to break ties. Prospective new memembers can survey the proposed rules and decide if the spirit of the gathering is right for them.
Imagine for a moment a community that operates as "satellite sites" without necessarily a central forum board. Through emails or even traveling micro-blogs the community may float across several actual service providers. There is a name for this - WebRing. A banner like "Water Seven Web Ring" would be at the top/bottom of each member site, and link to other member sites. The individual site developers would have decisions on what facility to use.
When an individual/group decides to *provide a facility*, then they enter the business world of income and expense. It always develops that someone engaged in providing a facility then tries to adjust the terms of the community to help increase the chances of that facility's economic success. Under US tax law, the minute a dollar shows up on a table, it sorta "starts the clock of What Am I". You can decide to have no revenue and call it a hobby, and hope the whole thing goes away from the legal side. Or you can try to place a few ads to Break Even. But the minute the owner does that, it's off and running as a full business.
There is a worldwide "discussion" of how fierce the moderation should be. Some like strict moderation where everything worse than the term Hell gets disallowed. It makes them feel comfy in a Rated PG setting. But if you review the news, we have a worldwide problem with censorship growing in about 10 countries, so some advocates are pushing to allow slightly fiercer comments to stand so long as they are not truly trolling such as goatse etc.
I would have to review the rules of Water Seven to decide if I chose to apply. I vaguely recall some activity quotas I am not ready to commit to. But it *is* important to me not to risk my site hosting based upon fierce rules. I am always relatively polite even when opinionated. However my philosophy on web hosting is that the fewer the rules the better, retaining only the ones necessary. For example, if the call sign of being a Water Seven member was to display the logo, and one day it developed that we parted ways, all I would do is remove the logo affiliation, and my site continues on its way elsewhere. *It is the fear of losing the entire hosted site contingent upon following strict rules* that I object to the deliberate blurring of "Community" and "Host".
In summary, at some time I may review the terms and conditions of applying to Water Seven. If I were to apply, it would be in the knowledge that generalized hosting is available elsewhere, and that having a customized Water Seven themed site were to provide some value from being a part of that community. A case study for you to ponder is how to process members who choose to separate the duties as a community member vs. contributing towards the facility hosting.
It is a buyer's bazaar out there, despite the marketing attempts to make it look like a seller's managed marketplace. My entire study concept of this thread, which I daresay is growing to noticeable levels, is that when someone runs their own ring of mirror sites, the adventures of the individual nodes become less emotional and that I believe benefits everyone. I have made decisions whether to add hosts to the survey, and so far, about 80% of the well meaning folks have encountered "bad luck". So be it. I can let them do their thing and we all move on.
Best Regards,
--TaoPhoenix
