So Where is the Wrong Planet going Alex?

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I guess Alex is not going answer oh well.

Alex di You have a good time at the Night Clup You went to last night. Are You going to answer My Question or what. I can give My money to another site it does not bother Me one way or another. If You are willing to fix the Membership List I am willing to send the money if You are not then I will give it to another site then.

Reading this thread nearly made me ill.


Kevv please keep your money for now. In my opinion, and no doubt many others, the whole issue of the ads and the money is just too shady.

The half-naked women are promised to be removed; it doesn't happen.

Intellitext ads suddenly appear in our posts, and the last time I browsed the whole site, they were still there in places.

A lot of fuss has been made about support and money. Even popular sites don't cost a lot of money to run; bandwidth is pretty cheap these days.

As far as I remember, the memberlist wasn't broken, it just wouldn't allow you to search past the first page, which was explained as a 'security feature'.


All of this plus more I forget makes me think only one thing:

This site is trying to MAKE money, not just support itself.

I can see no other explanation for the strange non-answers you and others have received.

So please think twice about donating to get the memberlist back.

to clarify what made me ill:

I saw a member of a support site, one who is very fond of this site, offer to help financially with running this site, and all he wanted was to know what was going on.

I also saw less than forthcoming answers about the questions, making we wonder how supportive the site really is.

I think if those in charge were very clear about how much it cost to run this place, enough donations would come in during one Month to keep it going for a year. People are happy to help if they know what's going on and where the money is going.

hermit
You do make some very good points. Though I don't really see Alex showing Us (Members) what it takes to run the Wrong Planet. Though Alex You should. If or when I send the money how long would it take to fix the Membership Lists or is it because of security only and is why You can not get past the first page as it is now. Even I am skeptical That You will fix the Membership Lists for You did say You would fix them then You hid them in the end. If I send the money how long will they stay up, My skeptical side of Me would get the best of Me if they get hidden or something like that. The money is no issue to Me. But it is a promise that You will do something and I am wondering how long it would take then how long would it stay up then. I do want to help Alex the Wrong Planet and its Members the best way I can in the end. Will I need to get this in writing though it probably would be best to put it in writing. Are You willing to do that Alex My friend or not. Will You answer this post We will see I guess. Read it carefully okay Alex.

Where is the money going?

The money is going to quite a variety of things. For instance, right now a really talented graphic designer is creating a WrongPlanet.net desktop image for WP members to make into their background wallpaper on their computer. This is costing us a couple hundred dollars. Also, we're attempting to purchase back the WrongPlanet.org domain name from some scammers who live in panama. This will cost us 1,000 dollars.

In addition, a lot of costs are going into advertising the forum using the Google Adwords program, the Overture Search Marketing Program, and the new MSN Adcenter Pilot. We've recently been able to cut back on those expenditures due to good search engine placement.

We're also paying columnists to write articles for the front page.

Other costs include money to pay for the various expenses that come with doing an interview with someone famous (transportation is expensive - luckily all the people I've interviewed have been either local or on the phone/email). Also, money goes towards buying books from them for raffles (which I STILL haven't had the time to set up, despite having interviewed Temple Grandin in December).

Another expense, one of the biggest expenses we're going to have to deal with, is hiring a publicist for WrongPlanet.net so we can get more interviews on channels like CNN so when they do their Aspergers stories they have our insight so they don't continue to misrepresent Aspies like they've been doing (remember Dr. Phil?).

Publicists cost at least 1000 dollars a month.

There are also development costs for maintenance and repair of stuff. The member list isn't going to be fixed for free. I really don't have time to fix it myself with all that's going on. Despite this, I've spent a lot of time trying to fix it.


I don't know if I'm supposed to divulge information about how much the site makes from advertising and donations, but I may do so if we continue to have people doubting where the money is going.

The only one of these expenditures that isn't essential is the desktop and I may just pay for that out of my own pocket. I pay a lot out of my own pocket.


The WrongPlanet network has recently started a new site unrelated to Asperger's Syndrome, and I think the advertising revenue from that site will be a lot more substantial than the revenue from WrongPlanet. When it gets to a point where we can afford to run WrongPlanet with less advertisements because of the other site's revenue, we're probably going to severely limit advertising to the point where it may not even exist -- but that's very, very, far into the future.

If I didn't spend money on making WrongPlanet better, of course I'd have more money than I need to run the site. Sure, hosting is covered by the advertising, but hosting isn't really what makes a site something that people want to go to and it certaintly doesn't leave enough money for a publicist once all the other expenses are factored in.


EDIT: ADDED THIS:

In reality, phpBB has a lot of bugs and we need to upgrade to a professional forum management software (Invision) and pay a database expert to convert the current wrongplanet's incompatible database over to a compatible schema. This will also cost money. The software itself has a yearly license fee. I don't know how much it will cost to get someone to convert the site.

We can't upgrade to the newest version of phpBB without doing some work and the latest version is not as good as invision. Upgrading to a new version of phpBB would take quite some time because of a lot of the customizations we've had to do to make WrongPlanet behave in the way that it should. There isn't a diagnosis profile feature in phpBB by default. That's just one example

It all sounds like empire building to me. I don't know that I want or need to be part of that.

If you want a cheap publicist get some marketing/communications students from your local campus/college/uni to do it as a project.

Alex would You be willing to show the contributors where their money is going to the Wrong Planet Site or not?