Thank mod(s)! December 7, 2017 12:40 PM   Subscribe

I've never made one of these, but today I signed up to make a small monthly donation. The work the mods have been doing on the political threads is incredibly appreciated. I rely on those threads to have a sense of what's going on without having to go to twitter or facebook. Thank you mods for all the hard work you are doing. I really appreciate it. I hope that anyone else who is able to do so and has not done so before will consider donating to keep these folks with at least a bottle of ibuprofen for all the headaches we must cause them.
posted by sio42 to MetaFilter-Related at 12:40 PM (14 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



Heya, thanks for the kind words, and thanks for supporting the site. Ditto everyone who has been able to do so, but also everyone who just hangs around and keeps MetaFilter being a good place to be on the web.

It's been a long year for everybody, and the last week-plus of working on the reset of expectations for politics discussion has been a busy one for us, but it's been pretty heartening to see that change working pretty well and to have folks doing a good job in general of helping make it work.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:43 PM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maybe this is a good place to ask. I've donated in the past with a one time fee, but does MetaFilter use Patreon or a similar service that allows for monthly donations? I set one up for the Mastadon instance I'm a part of and while it's only $1 a month, it feels good to support that and I'm thinking I should set up something similar for my favourite place on the web.
posted by Fizz at 12:51 PM on December 7, 2017


Yeah, we can totally do recurring donations; that's what a whole lot of folks do, in fact! If you check out the Fund MetaFilter page, there's options for recurring PayPal donations and (if you're logged in, which is likely the case for most folks reading this) recurring Stripe donations.

Paypal will do an arbitrary amount monthly; Stripe does monthly too but also has options for quarterly and yearly if that's a better fit.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:54 PM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


For some reason I don't remember there being a subscription/per monthly option. Ah well, I'm glad that's there. Good reminder Cortex.

And also, thanks to you and all the mods.
posted by Fizz at 1:14 PM on December 7, 2017


I set one up for the Mastadon instance I'm a part of and while it's only $1 a month

Be aware that there is some kind of change being pushed by Patreon that is going to increase fees. The $1/month people are pretty pissed about it.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:26 PM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


(The Patreon thing is weird and interesting and would probably make an interesting front page post but to be clear for anyone not sure what that's about, it doesn't have anything to do with MetaFilter's funding options since we don't use Patreon.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:30 PM on December 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


And here is that post, fyi.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:56 PM on December 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's the case for basically every transaction service, yeah: they make their money off a fee structure along the lines of $0.30 + 3%. That's basically the retail rate for small-scale transactions. Usually it's factored quietly into pricing to make these less bumpy for the customer. So PayPal and Stripe both charge such fees, which represent them adding a small vig on top of the underlying credit processing fees that they have to pay to the financial systems that make up the backbone of all this stuff.

For that reason it can be more efficient in raw turns to make fewer lump donations than more frequent small ones, for sufficiently small donations: $1/month doesn't add up to as much as $12/year because you're eating $0.30 twelve times instead of once.

That said, I prefer people do what makes the most sense for their own spending tracking sanity; I'd rather someone do a dollar a month and be able to forget about it than e.g. aim for $12/year and be stressed out by having to take care of a low-frequency event. But that's partly just my own personal inclinations/anxieties about autopay etc. stuff talking, heh.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:16 PM on December 7, 2017


Mefi is how I found out that Paypal has a recurring payment option, so I did it. I'm so glad I found this site.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:51 PM on December 7, 2017


Thanks for the reminder! I've been coasting long enough on my free registration, time to pony up monthly!
Thanks for all you do, Mods of MetaFilter.
posted by Floydd at 6:04 AM on December 8, 2017


My offer still stands, cortex. 🤑
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:25 PM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


The mods here are great.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 12:42 PM on December 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Came over to MetaTalk to say pretty much exactly the same thing - the work in those threads needs to be recognised and appreciated, and after the previous MetaTalk discussion on how it would be implemented I'm pleased to say that I'm also contributing to more of the non-politics threads and doubled my monthly donations to MeFi.
posted by Molesome at 3:33 AM on December 12, 2017


I'd forgotten that I'd set up a small annual contribution until my bank's fraud department payed but questioned the foreign payment. I'm happy I set it up. My guess is that we'll become more and more niche here. Still fun, and a source of rational, energised grassroots activism. Possibly with a level of influence.

Not the only thing, but I can honestly say that Metafilter has given me an outlet to read and write about things that IRL would likely result in troubles.
posted by michswiss at 4:22 AM on December 13, 2017


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