Interesting reply, and again I thank you for your thoughts. Still not seeing how “politics” figures in. I’m not trying to provoke any emotional reactions. (Nor do I perceive myself as having any strong emotional reactions to anything I’ve seen on LW so far.)
The part about your BBS especially hits a nerve. I created and operated a BBS in my youth. I did include a financial model in the design of my BBS, but my primary motivation at the time was to create a real cost for abuse of the BBS and secondarily to recover some of the costs. (Dedicated hardware and an extra phone line (I think).) I did not include my programming time as a cost because I mostly regarded that as a learning experience that was also improving my own market value as a programmer. Looking back, I actually think the deficiencies in my financial model greatly limited the success of the system, and if I had done it again, then I would have changed the priorities so that the funding model of the BBS put priority on the main objectives of the users. I even see how I could have arranged the model to align my personal philosophy more closely to the users’ objectives. (But I don’t have a time machine to go back and fix it now and I got busy with other stuff for many years after that...)
I also sympathize (?) or partially concur with the idea of keeping things small and self-contained. However I also see that as part of the financial model. I think the Diaspora fiasco on Kickstarter is a good example of how such things can go wrong. If they had just gotten the first increment of money and started by implementing the kernel server, then maybe the project could have succeeded step by step. Instead, the project hit the jackpot, and they tried to refactor and redesign for the grand new budget, and things mostly went bad after that.
Another relevant example I could use would be Slashdot, though I don’t know how many of the people on LW are familiar with it. My perception is that the rolling ownership indicates a portable nuisance status, though the nuisance status may be some form of non-pressing debt rather than anything that threatens the existence of the website. Whatever the cause, it seems that Slashdot lacks the resources to fix even the oldest and best-known limitations of the system. (In particular, the moderation system of Slashdot would seem to need some adjustments.)
Hmm… I feel like my use of examples is diverging from the guidelines’ intended meaning for “concrete models”.
Interesting reply, and again I thank you for your thoughts. Still not seeing how “politics” figures in. I’m not trying to provoke any emotional reactions. (Nor do I perceive myself as having any strong emotional reactions to anything I’ve seen on LW so far.)
The part about your BBS especially hits a nerve. I created and operated a BBS in my youth. I did include a financial model in the design of my BBS, but my primary motivation at the time was to create a real cost for abuse of the BBS and secondarily to recover some of the costs. (Dedicated hardware and an extra phone line (I think).) I did not include my programming time as a cost because I mostly regarded that as a learning experience that was also improving my own market value as a programmer. Looking back, I actually think the deficiencies in my financial model greatly limited the success of the system, and if I had done it again, then I would have changed the priorities so that the funding model of the BBS put priority on the main objectives of the users. I even see how I could have arranged the model to align my personal philosophy more closely to the users’ objectives. (But I don’t have a time machine to go back and fix it now and I got busy with other stuff for many years after that...)
I also sympathize (?) or partially concur with the idea of keeping things small and self-contained. However I also see that as part of the financial model. I think the Diaspora fiasco on Kickstarter is a good example of how such things can go wrong. If they had just gotten the first increment of money and started by implementing the kernel server, then maybe the project could have succeeded step by step. Instead, the project hit the jackpot, and they tried to refactor and redesign for the grand new budget, and things mostly went bad after that.
Another relevant example I could use would be Slashdot, though I don’t know how many of the people on LW are familiar with it. My perception is that the rolling ownership indicates a portable nuisance status, though the nuisance status may be some form of non-pressing debt rather than anything that threatens the existence of the website. Whatever the cause, it seems that Slashdot lacks the resources to fix even the oldest and best-known limitations of the system. (In particular, the moderation system of Slashdot would seem to need some adjustments.)
Hmm… I feel like my use of examples is diverging from the guidelines’ intended meaning for “concrete models”.