Mar 18 2007
Starting A Tip Jar
Giving this post a brief bump to the top for the weekend.
Folks, we here at the Strata-Sphere really appreciate our readers and those who take the time to post their thoughts on the issues of the day. Even those I may disagree with on an issue here and there, I appreciate their inputs. Many times these disagreements force me to sharpen my arguments, so I see this as all as a great benefit to me personally. But there are just as many times where I am the one learning something new.
When I started this blog I was not prepared for all the wonderful connections I have made to the readers and what a treasure they have been to me. For this I am forever grateful.
But needless to say this labor of love requires resources, so we are humbly going to add a tip jar to the site. Of course no one is required to pay to read this site. If you want that kind of treatment I suggest you go to Times Select where you can pay the ridiculous price of $50 to read liberals ranting and raving. For those who want something more tangible for their money than my incoherent (and misspelled) ramblings, we are going to be launching some Strata-Sphere Gear in phases here soon. Probably beginning with coffee mugs. For those who are not interested in any of these options keep reading and enjoy.
I cannot thank you all enough for your participation in this grand experiment – this new world of global information and the electronic public square. It is truly is a bold new world now that anyone can voice their views to a wide audience. Thanks!
Cheers, AJStrata
I want to thank those who graciously donated already! I would also like to ask folks their views on whether there would be interest in Strata-Sphere gear like mugs, etc. And I would like any advice on whether we should have a reminder or something like other blogs do regarding donations. Some have a once a month or once a year reminder post. Or whether a reminder is needed at all. The interesting thing about a blog is once a post is off the main page it pretty much rarely gets seen again. Suffice to say I am still very new at this and would rather not insult or put off our readers, so suggestions welcomed!
I think a brief reminder is reasonable. Or a little note somewhere on the page that the site is sponsored, in part, by the community that participates in it. I wouldn’t, however, want to see an NPR style “begathon” unless there was some major project the readership wanted to fund.
As for gear, that is pretty simple with things such as cafe press and other sites of that ilk. Just put a link to it and people get it. They handle the fulfillment end but there probably isn’t a whole lot of residual in it for the site. Sure, I would buy a coffee cup or a t-shirt.
You comment about postings being abandoned once they are off the main page is interesting to me because I have thought about how I would do blog software if I ever had the time. You are pretty much at the mercy of the software you use and what your host provides. I would like to see some mechanism for the community to rank the posts, the comments, and the overall importance of the thread. In a perfect world there would be a page with the various postings in each category listed by headline as bullet items. You could sort them by rank or date. A thread that doesn’t have a lot of comments might still be ranked high in importance by the readers. Or an article might not be ranked high but the comments might be ranked of high quality by the readers. So I should be able to sort articles having to do with “Katrina” by order of appearance, or by popularity of the posting, or the quality of comments … for example … a post itself might berather routine, but someone might raise a great point in a comment and that causes the thread to become pretty important.
Anyway, its probably another thing in life I will never had time to do but I thought I would throw it out there in case someone else gets an idea they might want to run with … I think the blogosphere would be the better for it.
AJ I would rather give you the $50 then the Times anyday!!!
Would like to give, don’t want to use Paypal, several other blog have a mail address to use. Thanks for all you do to help us learn the facts about these issues.
Crosspatch,
That’s an interesting idea about ranking posts in order to view a catagory by rank. The programmer in me is intrigued! Many content portals do allow that kind of thing, I may have to research how it is done by others and how to best do the same thing in WordPress.
LJ (who doesn’t actually NEED another project)
Just hit the Jar on the way out. Thanks to you all for the “must read” everyday, in fact, several times a day!
Here is a tip that is not monetary. Have you noticed that the big global warming culprit is now labeled as carbon dioxide? The biggest producer of carbon dioxide is people who use oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Since the majority of the public worldwide has bought into the global warming hoax and seem willing to do anything to stop mankind from killing the planet it appears those who know what”s best for everyone are ready to go to the next step in their “Global Sustainability” Program.
If you remember this all started when someone came up with the idea that world could only sustain 2 billon people without it eventually being sapped dry of everything that sustains life. At that time the world population was around 6 billion, meaning that 4 billion had to go one way or the other. Now that the public has bought into the first stage and agree that the world is in a crisis because of man, the next step is to convince people that they have to get rid of two thirds of the world’s population. Since people use oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, while plants use carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, carbon dioxide is now listed as the greatest green house threat to the planet in every recent press release. Make no mistake about it. Repeatedly calling for the cut back in the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is the first step in dehumanizing and eliminating human beings . Even with universal abortion, which eliminates one out of three potential citizens in the developed world, and China’s one child per family policy, the worlds population is expected to increase to 9 billion by 2050. For those supporting the Global Sustainability Policy, the only solutiuon is to find a way to get rid of all these surplus people . Unless someone exposes this as the ultimate plan, and calls attention to the repeated calls for the elimination of man produced Carbon dioxide, before too long people will be talked into getting rid of all the “eaters” who are old, sick, handicapped, and otherwise unproductive.