The Atheist Blogger

This article does not display my current opinions on the subject in hand, and has only been kept up for archive purposes. For my true opinions and explanations, please read this article.

Amongst all the trouble the site suffered during its conception I didn’t think it could get any worse. Power was transferred from the relatively new atheist “Thor” to Brother Richard, an atheist blogger.  Brother Richard asked for volunteers for web design, lawyers, graphic designers, representatives, moderators, and a host of other roles. He also asked for “donators” since the site wasn’t going to pay for itself. I remain slightly skeptical of this part. The site is hosted on Ning.com, a free social networking engine that expects high server usage, so where exactly does Richard need the money? The issue of lawyers seems a little strange as well, seeing as the site isn’t corporate and is in fact governed by Ning.com (who I assume have lawyers).

I was recently invited by vjack to join his new group on Atheist Nexus; a group dedicated to stamping down on atheist discrimination. It’s a great idea, and I support it even if I have now left Atheist Nexus. I suggest anyone still on the site joins the group straight away.

Once I got the email inviting me to join the group, I went straight to Atheist Nexus and did indeed join it. However, I noticed a link at the top of the page saying something about “Phase 1″ of fund raising. Intrigued, I went to the page and read.

Brother Richard starts by commenting on the wonderful transformation the site has gone, becoming one of the fastest growing atheist sites on the web. He also tells how he recently sold his business and is in a state of “semi-retirement”. He wants to spend the rest of the year (which he claims does not need that much income) helping with the site. However, he states:

Of course, it is our hope that the site will continue to grow and provide a comfortable income for our family and the staff that has been working with us, but only time will tell.

What? Excuse me? Since when did Atheist Nexus, a free site, hosted by a free organisation (Ning) for FREE become a platform for earning money? So now we see the corporate nature of Brother Richards ideas. Instead of simply relying on volunteers he decides to earn some money for doing what most people would call a “hobby”. The site doesn’t need that much tending. All the admin is done by Ning, as are the server upgrades and anything else that might take time. What was wrong with keeping volunteers to do the work? I’d already gladly volunteered to help redesign and possibly remake the entire site (FOR FREE) but I never got a response.

Anyway, Brother Richard laid out his donation plans:

That’s right, somehow Brother Richard reckons a small social network (comparitively) for atheists, that has free membership and is hosted on a free platform, is worth $12,500 every 6 months. Firstly I see no need for the taxes to be taken away. Couldn’t this entire organisation just keep itself tax-exempt like most charities? $3,125 seems a lot to waste. Secondly, what exactly do the paypal fees cover? The last time I checked, PayPal only charges for transfers less than $100, and we are dealing with over $12,000 here. I can’t see how any charges could be put in place. Of course, I could very well be wrong, but I have been using PayPal for years and have never occured any such charges.

Moving on to usage fees. Exactly what usage fees is he talking about? Ning is a free platform, are they now paying Ning for priveliged access? If so, it isn’t made clear anywhere on this donations page, and the word “usage” is a very vague term. I’d assume it were server fees, but since when did Atheist Nexus get a server of its own? This might be easily explained by someone, but it isn’t made clear to me currently.

$76.72 goes towards domain costs, which include tranferring, and adding privacy onto the domain. I don’t know where he registered the domain, but he got scammed if he thinks it costs that much to do a simple transfer and get privacy options. In fact, some registrars automatically give you privacy for free. For a 6 month figure (domains usually renewable every 1 year) it is ludicrous.

Internet fees? What internet fees? Are we talking again about the server, or are we more personal now? To me, “internet fees” means the amount you pay your ISP for internet access. So to me, this looks like Brother Richard is trying to get his entire internet paid for by other people. Again, apologies if I am wrong about this, but I can’t see any other definition for internet fees that doesn’t involve a personal connection. I’m not willing to donate any money to people who are just using it for their own luxury benefit.

What are these software upgrades? Are you moving the site to a new social networking engine? Or are you upgradings your PC from XP to Vista? What software are you talking about? Also, if you are moving to a new engine, why not use something free and open source? There are plenty out there. $700 seems a bit much for any software upgrades I can imagine.

$1,000 for “legal fees”, but I fail to see the need for any lawyers. Unless you are planning to charge some people for a service, or you forsee yourself breaking the law in the future because you decide to rip content off someone else (Facebook just sued another social networking site for ripping their content). More explanation is needed here.

Salaries. This is what completely confuses me; the site is run by volunteers, it is small, it doesn’t need much looking after. It could be run successfully by a small team as a hobby, so how can you justify $6,000 salaries? It seems to me like Brother Richard will be getting all of this, seeing as he is the only volunteer I know off without a job. He says he is in “semi-retirement” which suggested to me that he had enough savings to live his life quite happily without much work. If he didn’t have enough savings, then he was a fool to sell his 16 year old business and then decide to embark on the challenge of looking after a social networking site. A social networking site like this does not need a paid staff. It needs a dedicated group of volunteers (which it already has). To designate half the donations to profit the man who has been put in charge is ridiculous.

$300 for promotions and printing. Finally we have a payment that is self explanatory and actually makes sense. This is the only payment I agree with on the list. Every site needs promotion, and although Atheist Nexus has spread pretty far by word of mouth (or word of blog), no harm can come of spending a small amount on advertising.

So now you see why I left Atheist Nexus. I can no longer support a group that asks for donations and yet does not explain the need for donations. I am sorry if this seems a little untrustworthy, but I am a skeptic by nature, and always will be. In my experience on the web, it doesn’t take much to run large groups like this, especially if you are using a free platform. The fact that this fund raising is labelled as “Phase 1″ also adds to my skepticism. Are we expected to donate this much every 6 months? What is to stop the amount next time from being higher? In fact, the higher the bar raises, the more people will likely donate because they don’t want to see their beloved site go down, and the money will come rolling in.

I hope I am wrong about all of this, and Brother Richard has explanations for all his donation requests, but I cannot see how he can reason out of quite a few of them. In light of this, development of a truly free social networking site for atheists will begin in the next few weeks. It will be based on an open source product, and the only donations we will ask for will be to keep the server costs down. The entire team will be made up of volunteers.