ZZLP/ZZL & Topics & Financials

Re: sports, the ZZL always had running threads about NFL, MLB, soccer etc. That was kinda my thought process for a sports sub-board.

But if the majority view is for one board, that’s fine.

I do get the desire to not be a direct competitor to IC when it comes to discussing UNC sports.
 
If there is to be board segregation (which I do not favor, least until we see how this evolves,) segregate sports, not politics.
 
I was one of the people @altmin tasked with deciding on whether to split the board. I didn't agree with it then but I understood why some wanted it so I voted yes.

I'm gonna stick to what I initially thought...no on the split. Scroll and use ignore if you don't want to see a topic but also let's not go crazy with the non-political threads.
 
NOVAHEEL13 said:
I was one of the people @altmin tasked with deciding on whether to split the board. I didn't agree with it then but I understood why some wanted it so I voted yes.

I'm gonna stick to what I initially thought...no on the split. Scroll and use ignore if you don't want to see a topic but also let's not go crazy with the non-political threads.
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Agreed. What I would have given for an "Ignore Thread" option on the ZZL! All the "add/subtract/change one letter/rearrange other letters game NEW" threads (I refer to them as "rotawa" threads because he consistently keeps them all on page one) and all the passive aggressive stealth-political OCS threads would be out of sight and out of mind!
 
For now, I think the ability to use the Ignore Thread function supports keeping a single combined space to start, and people can sort of design their own experience by what they choose to ignore. I recommend a stand-alone, pinned welcome thread that emphasizes using the Ignore function for threads AND trolls as a way to enjoy the community on your own terms, without being drawn into negative encounters that are bad for your blood pressure and sanity.

I also think that having non-politics topics in reasonable measure among the political ones often helps keep temperatures down. Folks discussing their Wordle strategy might interact differently with the same poster in a political topic than with a poster with whom they only interact over contentions political issues. And I don't say that lightyly -- I supported the ZZL/ZZLP split back in the day because it became difficult to keep the political raiders out of the non-politics threads, but in retrospect I think it also kept people from forming communities around other topics.

FTR, I also was one who got fed up with the number of threads that devolved into swimsuit photo exchanges and discussions of how "doable" every woman mentioned might be. To his credit, Ben responded to me directly about that and I was gratified when IC cleaned that up fairly well.
 
Rock said:
Today (Monday the 29th) is our sixth day and I could never have imagined this forum would grow at the rate it has. It's growing so fast that we're going to have to move up a tier regarding our server hosting because we appear poised to go over our monthly allotment of server resources. More on that later.

An important question is are we going to stick to primarily political topics, with maybe a thread here and there for other stuff, or is it going to be a free for all where we can discuss whatever comes to our ever curious minds. @superrific started a thread discussing this yesterday (Sunday) that I'm merging with this one so there is a bit of pre-baked discussion already below.

Setting this forum up, I do have a few thoughts as it relates to ensuring the success and growth of this forum. First, the genesis of this forum was to discuss politics because well, ZZLP will be shut down a week from today. That does mean that there still is a place to discuss non-political topics on InsideCarolina in the ZZL forum. Here is where it gets a bit tricky. A number of users have already suggested that we open up a ZZL forum (easily achieved) to have non-political discussions. I am unsure how to proceed given we'd kind of become competitors with IC. This would be further enhanced if we opened up sports forums and just became an IC alternative. Now, trust me, I detest 247 more than just about anyone so I understand the appeal of getting away from them but again, I'm not trying to "harm" IC.

With that said, in discussing this with a longtime user over at IC, I don't think it's unreasonable to worry about the future of non-sports discussions altogether on the 247 network. Whoever is calling the shots over there, they don't seem to be under the impression that forums are a worthwhile investment. With that in mind, we are now the owners of ziggazoombalounge.com and zzlounge.com. Both these sites just redirect to zzlpolitics.com but the implication is that one day, they may point towards a split forum or a ZiggaZoomba Lounge forum. My understanding of the ZZL mega forum (and the reason I started that thread regarding the history of it which btw is fabulous) is that it had it all so to speak. Politics and entertainment and food and life. Everything.

Additionally, there are considerations regarding expanding too fast, too soon and spreading posters thin and giving off the appearance of low traffic and all of that. We are off to a great start so perhaps those are considerations that can be ignored (and when the IC ZZLP is officially shut down, traffic will further increase) but it's just another thing to consider.

You all have repeatedly been generous enough to offer to chip in or talked about running ads and things like that to help cover the costs of this forum. When growing a forum, asking people for money is generally not a great way to... grow the forum. Knowing that, I am happy to get us going for now to ensure that we have a place to discuss politics with a presidential election being less than a hundred days away. That said, I'm happy to explain a little of the financials. To get this place up and running has cost around $120.

  • $10 for the domain zzlpolitics.com ($10/year)
  • $60 for the XenForo software license and server hosting ($60/month)
  • $50 for odds and ends related to optimizing the forum including the look/theme
The biggest cost going forward is the monthly hosting fee to keep this place up and running. Other forums either run advertisments, offer subscriptions, offer content, etc. so that's something to figure out down the road. We will have to increase our hosting costs next month to the next tier up which costs $100 a month but gives us 1,000,000 page views a month instead of 400,000 that we get currently. We are currently averaging around 12,000 page views a day (as we had around 61,000 in our first five days) and I expect that to increase with the closing of ZZLP over on IC and the hopeful continued expansion of our user base.

usage.png

So, I'd like to thank you guys for reading my post that's about the length of Tolstoy's War & Peace and hopefully it makes sense as I'm losing steam by the second here, yearning for bed.

Oh, I left out something important as it related to how the ZZL/ZZLP dicussion might go. Thanks to @grimes70 for bringing it up, we now have the ability to ignore threads. If you click on a thread, you'll see the button "Ignore thread" in the top right. Click it and it'll bring up a window that is actually a glitch, click the X on that window, then click the ZZL log or otherwise get back to the topics list and that thread will be ignored. To unignore threads, click on your username/avatar in the top right and you will see "Ignoring" as an option. Click on that and you'll see four categories of things you can ignore, among them "Threads." There you can see what threads you have ignored and remove any of them from being ignored or remove them all. This is also where you see ignored users btw.

I will make a picture guide and all that in time but yeah, trying to get this bad boy flying high and staying aloft. Ok, I'm losing it. Thanks, love you all.

Tired Charles Barkley GIF by NBA on TNT
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I'm good for the $100 per month hosting fee. Just let me know how to get it to you.
 
I don’t understand why IC isn’t keen on forums. It’s the main reason I visit IC. I’m so happy to be part of this new community.
 
nycfan said:
For now, I think the ability to use the Ignore Thread function supports keeping a single combined space to start, and people can sort of design their own experience by what they choose to ignore. I recommend a stand-alone, pinned welcome thread that emphasizes using the Ignore function for threads AND trolls as a way to enjoy the community on your own terms, without being drawn into negative encounters that are bad for your blood pressure and sanity.

I also think that having non-politics topics in reasonable measure among the political ones often helps keep temperatures down. Folks discussing their Wordle strategy might interact differently with the same poster in a political topic than with a poster with whom they only interact over contentions political issues. And I don't say that lightyly -- I supported the ZZL/ZZLP split back in the day because it became difficult to keep the political raiders out of the non-politics threads, but in retrospect I think it also kept people from forming communities around other topics.

FTR, I also was one who got fed up with the number of threads that devolved into swimsuit photo exchanges and discussions of how "doable" every woman mentioned might be. To his credit, Ben responded to me directly about that and I was gratified when IC cleaned that up fairly well.
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Yes, I think the Ignore Thread function will be OK for now. That only goes so far, of course -- if everyone is posting on threads that aren't interesting to me and not posting on ones that are, then the board will become boring. But at that point, the problem might be that I'm not a good fit for the board, and such things happen. That's probably a long way out.
 
wmheel1287 said:
I'm good for the $100 per month hosting fee. Just let me know how to get it to you.
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I suspect a good number of people would love to donate to help keep this place running. My original thought was a voluntary $5/ month or $50/ year "donation" for those who wish to give it. Though maybe the mechanics of that create more work than is necessary.

Whatever the final decision on how to make it possible for people to donate, please let me know. I'd love to see a buffer account so the site has enough money to keep it running for at least a year before we have to make any calls around how to finance it going forward. Better to let the site grow into whatever it can be before we consider pushing people to contribute. I'm sure there will be enough voluntary support up front to keep things going for quite some time.
 
NOVAHEEL13 said:
I was one of the people @altmin tasked with deciding on whether to split the board. I didn't agree with it then but I understood why some wanted it so I voted yes.

I'm gonna stick to what I initially thought...no on the split. Scroll and use ignore if you don't want to see a topic but also let's not go crazy with the non-political threads.
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I was part of this exercise as well. I was one of the few people who voted against it. I felt strongly it would be the death of both boards if it was split... that volume would be split between the two, and the fewer topics on each would increase the rate at which people were leaving. I think it would be a really bad idea to divert traffic to multiple boards when first trying to get this place up and running. You need enough volume to keep two boards highly active before it makes sense to have any split IMO.
 
NYCBlueBlood said:
I suspect a good number of people would love to donate to help keep this place running. My original thought was a voluntary $5/ month or $50/ year "donation" for those who wish to give it. Though maybe the mechanics of that create more work than is necessary.

Whatever the final decision on how to make it possible for people to donate, please let me know. I'd love to see a buffer account so the site has enough money to keep it running for at least a year before we have to make any calls around how to finance it going forward. Better to let the site grow into whatever it can be before we consider pushing people to contribute. I'm sure there will be enough voluntary support up front to keep things going for quite some time.
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Absolutely No need to "require" it but all us regulars would surely do it-because hell I spend more time here than on the Supscription Netflixes etc I glady pay for
 
Count me in for a little $, if needed. And I don’t like the idea of separate boards; just me.
 
Well, you guys are persistent and after some DMs, I will throw up a Venmo link as that's the easiest way for the time being.

100% of your donations will go toward server costs. Here is where the costs are coming from: (Get started with XenForo)

cloud.png

We could save $10 a month by paying for a year costing $1080 instead of $1200 but I think going month to month is a safe choice for the time being. We can always reassess.

I feel like acknowledging those who donate could be a good idea but I don't want people to feel left out. I was thinking perhaps a contributor banner under your username like how mine says Staff member but yours would be a snazzy Carolina Blue. Or any other idea I can't think of at the moment. Let me know.

All that said, the Venmo link to donate is Venmo | Zigga Zoomba (if it asks for the last four of my phone number it is 8408). If you can, please include your username. If you want to try and donate some other way, feel free to DM me and we can figure something out.

Again, I cannot stress enough, do not feel obligated to donate as we get this place up and running. Also, feel free to ask any and all questions. I will be completely transparent with the financials of this place. It is your community after all.

Thanks again and extremely excited to see where this journey takes us!
 
Incoming. Once you sort out the donations to the cause, let us know if more is needed to cover costs.
 
So this Board has brought this ole fart into setting up a VenMO account They say it will be 2-3 days to confirm
 
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