Please Don't Be Offended By The Blue

[startgroove]

I'm posting this sort of for some one else. Not because they asked me to, but because they expressed a concern, but did not want to offend the site managers.

The issue is about the blue high lighted names. It appears the names are high lighted for those who have made contributions to the site managers or controllers. There are many more names which are not high lighted. As my friend pointed out, this has the affect (maybe unintended) to shame those who did not contribute. In addition, this might be interpreted (or perhaps mis-interpreted) as being partisan, since there has been recent conflict among the hierarchy of this site.

[MordEth]

I'm posting this sort of for some one else. Not because they asked me to, but because they expressed a concern, but did not want to offend the site managers.

The issue is about the blue high lighted names. It appears the names are high lighted for those who have made contributions to the site managers or controllers. There are many more names which are not high lighted. As my friend pointed out, this has the affect (maybe unintended) to shame those who did not contribute. In addition, this might be interpreted (or perhaps mis-interpreted) as being partisan, since there has been recent conflict among the hierarchy of this site.

startgroove,

I added the Patrons group as a quick and easy way to thank everyone who donated to continue to support this site. The holidays have not been particularly kind to me; when I have not been working, I have spent a lot of my time in the hospitsl with a friend who is slowly declining. I do not know how much longer he has to live. So rather than spend a lot of time writing thank you e-mails to the people who cared enough to donate, I added that group and have added everyone who either a) used the e-mail with which they registered for this forum to donate or b) let me know their donation e-mail.

Doing something like this to recognize the people that support a site or channel is not an uncommon thing. Look at YouTube and Patreon or Twitch or other services.

There is no minimum contribution to join the Patrons group, nor is there any requirement that you must donate to the forum to keep using it, exactly as you always have done for over a decade. But to my mind, everyone who wants to complain about this seems to have some ridiculous sense of entitlement. On the 7th of this month, I will have hosted this forum for 11 years, wholly at my own expense (prior to adding the dontation button in December of last year, primarily to cover the cost of renewing the domain for 5 more years). I had already paid out of my pocket for this year’s hosting.

I also spent a lot of time in December with the hosting provider, fixing the stability of the forum.

I do not collect phonographs. I do this wholly as a favor to one of my friends in Boston and the members of this site, some of whom I consider friends.

If you would rather be somewhere else hosted by someone else, I’m not stopping anyone from setting up yet another competing forum. You’ve still got Moo’s board at http://victrolagramophones.proboards.com/ where the last post was in August, 2019.

FYI, I was also considering adding other groups (e.g., the founding members, members of various phonograph societies), but have held off on it because it seems like it will only result in more people complaining.

Regards,

David