And so it begins

A reason I went looking for a free forum was to buy time on the money issue.  Sure, it's not a lot of money now, but going forward it could be.
 
In any venture there's generally some plan for success.  We have not yet defined that.  And a lot of us are still getting over the bullskirt.  The free site allows us all to work through it constructively.

This may come as a shock, but a lot of people think I'm a world class asshole.  So we have some issues to iron out.  
 
So far the site is working and we're getting used to it.  Take a look at the software UKHippy.com is using.  It's interesting, but costly.  I was partial to vBulletin since I've used it on other forums for years and have recently set up a site for a client so their service personnel can discuss stuff.  

So the closest thing we have to a business plan is a few paragraphs on reddit.  
 
I'd say it's time to set up a thread to discuss what we want in a site so we can shop for the right software.  During that time we can start to think about the overall purpose and aim so we don't invest ourselves into something that none of us want to manage.  
 
Frankly, I'd feel better if we had more people involved.  

well no one has ever told me they think you're an asshole.. haha
so i'm not sure what or whose issues are the.. issue here.

i just don't think anyone else is driven to think of it as something that needs a business plan. it COULD be more money in the future, i see where you're coming from.. but i think there's a small group who have taken part in every discussion about building our own forum.. and other than those people, no-one else is going to get directly involved, although others have said they'll happily donate money. that seems like the perfect way to begin, to me. Start the real thing, not testing, and Go. Create a way to donate money. Deal with issues as they arise.

It started in 2009, when Ski p made me a mod and the rest of the Mods dog piled me.  We did this because the chat room, which was about the only place I hung out, was being run by mods who wanted it as a private club.  They ran off the new members as fast as they could and then worked on a lot of the older members.  Lots of people left and didn't return because of their bullskirt. 
 
So Ski p and I came up with a plan that turned me into fly paper for their ire.  And they were as brutal as they could be.  Even digging up old posts of mine to ridicule and hold up as "proof" that I was whatever demon they wanted me to be that day.  Ultimately they each stepped on their own dick, broke the rules repeatedly and Ski p banned them.  Then we actually had peace for a long time.  So long that I started hanging out in the politics forum, for excitement.  
 
Then I met Balbu s!
 
That was the first time I was aware of the site going through what I'm now calling a purge event.  There was another where GB was tossed out with several others around 2013 I think (I was kinda stoned), went off and made their own chat room on Github.

So when it happened this time and I saw everyone setting up on reddit, I realized that we should have done this 8 or so years ago.  We'd probably have a mansion and a company yacht by now!
 
And while I mention selling pipes, that's somewhat in jest.  The real money in sites is ad revenue.  We can do that all kinds of non-invasive ways.  But I do think if we come up with a good name, we should sell t-shirts, coffee mugs and engraved fish scalers.  Greed is not actually my motivator.  But eCommerce is also the mark of a professional site.

 

it's true.  that's exactly what happened after the 2009 purge.



as far as i'm concerned, you've been kind of the group leader through this whole thing.  so i appoint you.

I was just going by the notifications page on Reddit and nothing from stonerslounge was popping up, so I just thought the place went quiet, stuff from other subreddits was still popping up and I got sucked into them, will always have Reddit on my phone I think, for years anyway

I can't get to the reddit page. It says I don't have permission. Can someone give me permission? I need permission.

That r/oddlysatisfying alone is reason enough to keep checking in to Reddit, I love that kind of shiit

did you request permission?  i know you can request it, but i'm not sure where the request goes.  i can't find any pending requests, but i'm not 100% on where to look for them either.

otherwise, you could just post your reddit username here and someone can go in and manually approve that account.  if you post it in like the next 5 minutes i can do it, but i'm about to head out for the night and probably won't get to it until tomorrow otherwise.  but a bunch of people are able to approve users, so someone else might see it and beat me to it.

Thanks. This place is great. So glad you started it.