How much does Barbelith cost to run?
From Barbelith
Barbelith does not - it has to be said - cost a lot of money to maintain. We are hosted by http://www.pair.com - a very good quality, practical hosting company in the States. They charge $130 a month for the hosting, which is good and large enough to allow the community to grow (if we want it to).
Nonetheless, $130 a month is a non-insignificant amount of money for one person to pay, and for this reason Tom (when he was last unemployed) was forced to ask for donations towards the running of the place. At the moment Tom has no intention whatsoever of making a profit from the site, and views all donations as a group of friends clubbing together to keep something they all like going. There are no advantages to paying (except you get to feel good about yourself) and you will get no special treatment of any kind. It is generally considered tacky to talk about how much money you've donated - particularly as a means to support your right to speak...
There are two subsections to this document:
Barbelith is looking to develop its message board software in some exciting new directions that (1) support quality discussion (2) create strong community bonds and (3) can be self-run and can change themselves according to the needs of the community itself. Some of this work requires investment of time and / or could be supported by financial donation. If you are aware of any ways in which we could find such funding or investment, then please let us know.
