I don't know. Shard never got back to me, but they use a PayPal add-on on their site for donations. With it only being ~$100/year, we should be able to raise it pretty quickly.
I'm tempted to wait until next summer to have a fundraiser around the time the new books come out. We could then let the money sit in the PayPal account until the site fees need to be renewed each year.
If 300 regular and new users donated a dollar around that time, we'd have three years of funding, minus a reimbursement for the initial year. If we didn't raise much, then we might have to go the Patreon route, with folks donating yearly.
But I'd rather ride the wave of book release interest to hit more people up for smaller amounts. $1 for a year or more of site hosting seems fair.
I'll kick in a hundred bucks to pay for the first year if it's a regular forum like this one. Mostly because I hate Reddit's layout; following a thread is too confusing to me, with hidden comments. And Karma is a stupid system that drives a hivemind mentality.
This place is too cool, and I want to help how I can. I can't do computer things because I'm an old man, but I don't want anyone to have to reach into their pocket if they don't have to. Money's easy; work is hard. When a funding PayPal or whatever is set up, message me, and I'll send the funds.
As far as features, I don't really care about anything beyond being able to post what I want in a linear format.
A function to sort the various Words of Jim would be outstanding; right now, the best we have is a bunch of threads (thoughtfully provided by those with a whole lot of patience), and it's a bit dicey to find things when you're looking for them. A function for users to add a new Word of Jim, with moderator approval (and source provided) would be cool, too. There were a bunch from people who ran into him at signings and such that I don't recall seeing in the overall Word of Jim section (but I could also just not have found them). Maybe a tagging function would work well for that—adding "Red Court," "Mantle," and "Fire" tags to a specific post would make finding things easier.
Perhaps some method by which Words of Jim could be inserted into a post in an automated way would be helpful. Click a thing, have access to tags, sort, find the relevant WoJ, and click to add it at your cursor. That way, there are no copy+pasting errors, and everything would be in the original format. I have absolutely no idea if that's even possible.
A function to tag threads as Theory (though I'd prefer
hypothesis because I'm a grammar fascist) would be helpful.
In terms of forum conduct, I'll just say that I'd like it if the rules were basically "Don't be a d*ck to anyone." Many get defensive during disagreements that are otherwise polite, and conversation often degenerates to name-calling and hurt feelings because unaligned perspectives and interpretations. Maybe a function by which temporary bans can be automatically issued by the community if a certain number of different accounts flag a post (say, ten or twenty or more, a threshold that shouldn't be easy to cross, but one that exists to ease pressure on moderators). It'd make spam easier to contravene.
I think Raidem's idea of applying a certain level of moderator control to thread creators might be a good idea, but that there should be some method to control who can create threads. Maybe a post count requirement before someone has thread-creation privileges, which can be revoked if someone makes constant bullying threads or nonsense ones.
On Patreon: I don't know how payments are sent, but I do know that PayPal requires a modest 3%(ish) per transaction. I don't know what Patreon charges. But they do provide functions for donation rewards that can be set up to automatically go out, and have clear funding goal meters and thresholds. For example, if you need $100 per year, you can have that shown directly on the Patreon page, with progress toward it highly visible. For a community thing, transparency might be a good thing. Donation buttons don't show you how much has already been raised.
