User:Defiant Elements/Finance Discussion

I just had a discussion with Gcardinal regarding the issue of financing. I personally felt, as I think many other people did, that Cardinal was dismissing a number of ideas out of hand. We both agreed that Donations weren't a real option, we've been trying them for a while now, and the money-flow is essentially non-existent. However, something that came across in our discussion, which hadn't in the discussion on the Financing Discussion Page was that Cardinal felt, the major problem wasn't so much monetary, as it was a problem of his own inability to, at times, dedicate large amounts of time to PvXwiki, and thus there was a constant threat that the site could essentially fall apart. That then ties in to the question of Advertising, because, as Cardinal said, any payments related to Advertising have to go through him, thus, if he wasn't around to manage the advertisements for some period, they could be pulled and we'd be left with a big problem. And therefore, regardless of "who" hosts the site, there's always the threat (assuming it's one individual who does so) of the site going off-line, i.e. one person cannot ensure continuity. Additionally, as far as Ads go, they could potentially slow the site down tremendously.

What I took away from the conversation was a sense that my original perception as shown here: "The perception that you came in with an agenda. I frankly believe that had you simply said, these are all options, but here's why I don't think Ads will work, that would have been better," and here: "You presented a number of options as possible "scenarios."  The second option was to add Ads to the site.  A number of people (it seems to me most, at least in the early discussion), suggested trying Ads as a possible solution, you again dismissed that.  I'm not necessarily saying your reasoning was wrong, however, what made he unhappy was that it seemed you were presenting options with a clear agenda" weren't really accurate in large part because the conversation started with some false assumptions, and then really got out of hand from there.

When it really comes down to it, perhaps one of the core problems was simply the name of the discussion page, PvXwiki:Financing. The connotations of the word "financing" imply that the problem is primarily monetary, which lead people to believe that Ads were one very viable solution, and transferring to another individual (Cory's name came up) was another. However, the problem it would appear is, in reality, buried just beneath the surface. Yes, money is a problem, but a very real aspect of that problem is the fact that as long as the money is being channeled through one person (a person who could at any time become inactive) there's always the possibility that the site could go offline.