You are asking for contributions from people and at the same time, you have plans to "monetize" the website by building premium-only features. It feels like exploitation.
No it doesn't, cause there's a massive amount of work that goes in projects like these and there's costs too. Costs that donations don't always pay.
Would you prefer a huge banner while you're browsing asking you to donate and telling you that if we don't meet a certain quota we're shutting down the website, or would you prefer having an additional feature that you may or may not want to pay for? I don't know you, but I'd definitely go for the second one.
And yes, I prefer an unreservedly free website with banners reminding you to donate to a website that makes money off locking certain features to paying costumers only.
Take the example from the white paper (paid help from experts), I don't get how you'd feel exploited that way, since it's not even related to contributions.
a) gets its content solely from its users and
b) locks features away behind a paywall
especially if it's for learning. But to each his own and you cannot please everyone. Don't feel discouraged and keep going. The product looks pretty good.
( your simile with wikipedia breaks apart on the b btw, thats why nobody minds it there )
The other option would be to use advertisements but we feel that would actually not help with our goals of providing the best resources available as sponsored content does not necessarily mean the best.
For now, the only support we get is through Patreon but that currently does not cover the costs for the servers let alone justify the time commitment it takes to support the website with new features and improvements.
I'll gladly contribute to something everyone owns and has rights to, but under no circumstances will I do this for complete strangers that seek to capitalize upon my efforts. I only do that in exchange for a salary.
The idea is the same for this website. Although we don't want to serve other people ads as we think there are better business models than that.
The idea may be the same, but I don't see any point system mentioned for contributors here. So why contribute?
As to why you may want to contribute. If you use the website and you find value in it, you can always make it better not only for yourself but for others. Only here, not only can you add links and resources but you can also directly add features and new things as the entire code base is Open Source and thus anyone can edit/fork and make what they want with it for all other people to enjoy.
We are just trying to find a way to financially support the project without bringing the website down due to not being able to afford to keep it up.
Personally, I would rather "contribute" to Wikipedia than to YouTube.
The content you're asking people to create requires a massive amount of work. Pretending it is same social/economic contract as Wikipedia is just going to turn people off if you do add a premium version.
You are better off being direct and transparent about your funding model if you want people to help. What features would be premium and why is that acceptable? The about page looks like you plan on being a non-profit organization, is that the goal?
In the white paper it mentions that the 'premium' features will in no way block any curated content. The 'premium' features will simply be extra things that we will build like the mentioned `Experts` that you can get direct help from.
Again this is just an idea and in no way final. We wish the project was fully sustained through donations and we currently run no advertisements or anything in which we in some way profit from so in this way we are indeed a non-profit organisation.
However we do want to find a way where we can support maintaining the website by paying for the costs of the servers and the developer time that goes into making this project as amazing as it can be. We are open to ideas on how we can make this better for everyone.
Everything is Open Source and MIT licensed.
Sounds like the 'premium' features are completely unrelated to this project. I think it will make life easier for you if you completely removed them and spun them off to a different project. (I anal btw)
So our current ways people can support us are through donations and that is it. Is there anything else do you think we can do aside from advertisements which we want to avoid?
I think someone like linode or digital ocean or heroku would be a good fit as an advertiser? I don't know how these things work. I do know that the money won't be free.
You can't please everyone. I'd say when in doubt, listen to your contributors and donors.
Thoughts?
It's okay if you still want to take the same path. But it does feel like exploitation to me. I feel much better contributing to Firefox than to Chromium - for example.