AO Consortium

[slacker_5]

see this .

http://members.lycos.co.uk/slacker55/index.htm

[SittingDuck]

slacker_5: I see it but what is it (yes I know it's a web site)

SittingDuck

[VictorKaum]

Back on topic...

Change of mind: I'm going to agree with Er0k, cwk9 and a few others.
In theory it's a good idea to let AO run by the users but in practice this is almost not possible. I started this thread to gain some opinions about the consortium idea. I hope this site will end up in good hands. But I'm not sure anymore that "the members" are those good hands. People with money can own AO but can they also make the right decisions? Second, I already stated that, who will have enough charisma to follow up JP?

About AO's value / asking price. Many people ask about that, well Louie made an estimation that is close enough to the actual worth and the amount that JP wants to get for it. So people jump back to Louie's post in this thread.

I'm not saying it's impossible but we need to stay realistic, who wants to put in lets say 1000 or more $? You need to be either very rich, stupid or brilliant (choose for yourself) and you have to find 1000 of those... ahum. Now you see why I'm not sure anymore about the consortium idea.
A consortium idea can work when the price is low or the people are close. I mean three brothers can run a company (and even then it's difficult to agree) imagine 1000 different people from different states, countries, ... if the board consists of the 10 richests members it would work but be some sort of discrimination against poorer members. If you say all an equal share then you have the problem that European and American users will pay the same (the Euro is almost the same as the Dollar) but the Asian, African and Arabian users will have to pay more relativly speaking. I mean what's 10$ for someone living in NY? not that much but what's 10$ for someone living in Bangladesh? And now we are only talking about 10$ what if we are talking about 1000$? There is some unjustice here but you can easily say the counter idea. Conclusion it's very difficult to agree. Not only agree when Ao is run by the people but also agree what the structure will be, what to pay,...

[Spyder32]

True, now Louie stated that we all would have to put in $1000 (if that was the plan) and if every member put in that much money, every member would have some part of how the site would be run. Aside from the noted problems, every member would only have a good 1 to 2% of owning it, which isn't worth the price tag. You should pay the full price (whatever it might be) for the whole shebang. Another problem would of course be idealship. If every members owns it, problems would arise because I'm sure every member has a different idea on how they'd like to run it. So, I'm not sure about that idea. Again, it's not my site, not my choice.

[Louie]

It really doesn't matter. We the members ARE AO, if the members flee once John leaves then AO will be nothing. There are tons of members here who have their own forums and etc. We can always move and be as strong as ever. We don't need to invest a million dollars to keep on going.

Power to the people!

[VictorKaum]

Yep Louie, perhaps you are right.

Freedom is good

by Eric Steven Raymond

[Ouroboros]

Very well said, Louie.

WE are "AO"...the domain and the site hits and the clickthroughs mean very little if the interest (us) isn't there to support them.
Hopefully, the formal incarnation of AO (the site, forums, chats, etc) can be kept alive, although I doubt (with much apprehension) that it will be kept alive by punters like us, even though WE are the spirit of AO. Such is the way things work in this day and age, though...
I can rest well knowing that in some fashion AO will be kept alive, though, because WE aren't going to let it die. However the business side turns out, it doesn't matter...AOers will always be AOers...

Ouroboros

[bilo86]

I didn't read the whole thread but if for some reason he couldn't sell it. Just have someone host the forums. These forums are the best community forums I have ever been to. I assume thats all people here at AO do is go to the forums like I do.

[mrcoffee12]

I have many sites, on many servers, but really, if I put a similar set of forums on one of them and told everyone that we can just all move there I doubt it would work, for one thing, just think how much bandwidth this site must use in a day with all of these people coming here EVERY day, how many hits a day does it get, 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? Thats A LOT of bandwidth, The site needs one line (probably a couple T3's or better) dedicated to it to provide enough bandwidth for one, and then you think about the hardware required, not anything you're going to find for cheap. Sure somebody could pay 50$/ month for a nice place to have it and they could probably make some money off of it, but again, who has the ability to make a site like this? I'm sure JP didn't code all these himself, but who would be able to come up with a set of forums and a system like JP has, with members sites hosted, AP's(which aren't that great), and everything else...

The fact is that we are just going to have to give up on the consortium idea and let whoever buys it decide what to do, if they make it too horrible we can always find somewhere else to go and make that our home, however unnerving it may be to those of you who have been here for several years, since the site opened.

[Louie]

It needs a T1 at best. The slowness comes from the database end. I am not saying it would be complex as AO is now. AO started off small and it grew. I doubt everyone would move over too (that being a good thing). We'll just have to see what happens.