Jeff, I wasn't trying to misquote you, I didn't even want to quote you, so I paraphrased it the way I read into your comment. It know how the last GB I did was run, and no one made money on it, unless individuals took the parts, built preamps and sold them at a profit, which may well be true, but I have no control over that nor will I lose sleep over it. I did it all as a favor to some people here as well as to some local friends who have helped me out a lot with various things, DIY and otherwise. For the record, the only thing I charged more than cost were the PCBs, I charged $12 and paid about 3.50 in China, but once you factor in the 3 prototype runs I had to do locally (about $250 a pop because of minimums), not to mention the time it took away from other things and my family, the "profit" is hardly worth it. I personally helped many different people complete their builds through email, in much the same way Sahib helped that college student. And the gratitude was worth much more than anything I could have charged for the PCB. I don't know about the group buy you guys are referring to, but I remember quite a few I took part in, like Ed's 1176 trafos, the state tpads, some other small parts stuff, etc.
As for the pultec, I'm happy you bought in, I'm not a kiss@$$, I just know you'll actually use it. That's what I want most of all, for people to use the thing, I'm sure it's the same for you and others and the preamps and other stuff you put out there. I wish I were making a profit on it, but I'm not naive enough to think a project with so many expensive custom parts would make money the way it's offered it here.
I moved the thread to the WM after having the same experience as PeterC. When Ethan gave me a choice, it was running at a huge loss and I didn't want to deal with the drama of BM/WM. So I figured I'd buy some extra parts and leave it up there until it breaks even but from the looks of things we'll have to raise the price considerably once the unpaid parts start shipping cuz we're going to have to pay for them out of pocket. Anyway, it is now running at a slightly lesser loss, whether that is due to WM exposure I don't know, but I am still not happy with the way it was brought to my attention. It just reminds me of grade school, hence the tattle-tale comment.
(side note: even at the price it's at, one guy posted repeatedly that he wished for a lower price, and IIRC, it was PeterC who stuck up for him when others started telling him off. I think Peter's point was that he was not a native English speaker, and there was some humor, intonation, etc lost in translation. He was right, and I just thought I'd point out one more lesson Peter gave this place).
So where that leaves me I don't know, the $20/month is small change compared to what I've gotten from this place, but I am still hoping for a more broad change in the forum's "tax law." No I am not a socialist, but I do believe in fairness to all, so to me a "membership fee" maybe a voluntary one is a much better way to run this place than mandatory taxes on businesses, which reminds me of government, and in this case of non-democratic choices becomes "taxation without representation." I thought we put an end to that, on July 4th, 1776. (how's that for drama
)
Maybe make it a voluntary WM? I don't think any of the current members would opt out, I could be wrong, but if it's seen as advertising, shouldn't it be optional anyway? This whole "shouldn't this be in the WM?" questioning opens up possibilities for people to judge others when they have no place or need to, which I think is especially exemplified in Peter's case.
Jean Clochet said:
Ethan said:
if the same person keeps organizing the same group buy repeatedly, I think that would be cause for some concern.
I'm just wondering who exactly would be concerned and why?
A good point and a question left unanswered.
I think I am no longer concerned with any of this, I just hope this place doesn't go the way of Head-fi.org, an uber-commercial forum which started with things like the CMOY (whose own headwise forum is now defunct because, well, he didn't go commercial). So there we are, a double edged sword. Remove commercial backing and die, or keep promoting commercial activity and become a mess like headfi.
How to walk the fine line?