Proposal: Reimbursements For Acquisition And Setup Of Dashtalk

Ryan Taylor

Ryan Taylor

Well-known member
Foundation Member
This is a cross-post from Dashwhale at https://www.dashwhale.org/p/dashtalk-acquisition

Proposal Description:

Dashtalk.org has been a valuable resource for the Dash community and contains a great deal of our community's collective history, work, creativity, and ideas. However, Dashtalk was actually started by a community member (like Dashwhale) at their own expense. However, because the core team didn't control this asset, whenever outages, expired certificates, or other issues have occurred, we have been dependent on the owner to fix the issues. If you use the forums as a resource, I'm sure you've noticed the many outages it has experienced lately. As the database continues to grow, the value of Dashtalk to the community - and our dependence on it - only increases, so it was critical for us to control it.

I am pleased to share that the core team has negotiated the purchase of Dashtalk and the forum historical database and is working to transition / import the entire site to Dash control, while upgrading the versions of software it is running on. This is great news for the community that we were able to preserve the site in its entirety for a reasonable cost.

This proposal is a consolidated set of costs to acquire Dashtalk including:
- The purchase of Dashtalk's database and domains
- The purchase of necessary software to permit hosting of the forums ourselves
- XenForo license
- XenCentral
- Design expenses
- Cost of submitting this proposal

Note that there are no costs included except for direct costs incurred by the team. We are only asking for reimbursement, and no costs for labor. Tungfa, moocowmoo, and fernando have been working very hard behind the scenes to make this all happen.

Please vote to reimburse these guys for their costs!

I used an exchange rate of $7.12 / Dash for all expenses (based on the average market price on March 27th, the most recent available). The community members being reimbursed assume all currency volatility risk.

babygiraffe

dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 2a0100dbd7135ff61ab87680b558d149f8e3c4e4e8594139f274cca54bb6a2a8 yes
 
/popcorn

This thread should prove entertaining.

I honestly think 7k is a little bit much but hey, I'm just here for the show now-a-days.

Argue away!
 
Ok so we're buying the software, the forum licence, the design expenses. But buying the post history, really? Propulsion wants money for the post history or he will delete it?
He should have stated from the beginning he was doing this for profit lol.
 
Thanks babygiraffe, for putting your budget proposal up in here as well so we can discuss it properly.
I already put a comment on Dashwhale, which pretty much summarize it for me so i will leave it at this :

Buying the Dashtalk.org from Propulsion :

Has this forum turned into a valuable, well-used forum ? yes
Is the buy-out pricey ? yes
Is it desireable ? yes
Is it needed ? yes

So i'm voting yes on this one, but there better be a working price ticker in there somewhere after the take-over !! oops did i really type that outloud ? :oops:
 
A few clarifications to things some people are posting here or at dashwhale:

-Propulsion started the forum to help the community and his put a lot of time and money into it. He's had some ads, but that hasn't paid for all the expenses during this two years. Some of us have helped moderating, but he's done everything else.

-Around a year ago he started to be less involved with the community for different reasons, but he has maintained the forum nonetheless. However, as babygiraffe points, there have been problems and it was likely that in the future there would be more because this requires a lot of work. I hope that now that he'll be less burdened with the forum maybe he finds the desire to hang around some more. For those of you who don't know him, he's been really valuable for the project and has done some amazing things. Just check his post history if you want. One that comes to mind right now is recovering someone's wallet with something like 7k coins when nobody else could help. He worked with the hard disk of that guy and was able to recover the wallet and save the day.

-Since he moved on, we have been talking about the possibility of transferring it. Some people will criticize that he doesn't simply give everything to the community, but I think that is not fair. He's developed a great asset we all love and it has value. I think some compensation is reasonable. Forums with some traffic are valuable because of the ad revenue potential and because of the network effects. Moving thousands of users is almost impossible.

-The prices negotiated and the price of Dash itself have varied wildly during this time. Any number will be too much for some and too little for others, there is no way to get to an objective value. I think this amount is reasonable, but my opinion is as good as any other one. Well, mine is worth one less vote because the coins are not in my wallet anymore :sad:

If this proposal passes the forum will be permanently hosted in the team servers and I will transfer the domains to the foundation to avoid anyone having personal control of this key asset again. The ad revenue of the forum, once we set that up again, will also go to the foundation. And we'll be able to do long due changes/maintenance, like the one qwizzie requests :wink:
 
fernando said:
A few clarifications to things some people are posting here or at dashwhale:

-Propulsion started the forum to help the community and his put a lot of time and money into it. He's had some ads, but that hasn't paid for all the expenses during this two years. Some of us have helped moderating, but he's done everything else.

-Around a year ago he started to be less involved with the community for different reasons, but he has maintained the forum nonetheless. However, as babygiraffe points, there have been problems and it was likely that in the future there would be more because this requires a lot of work. I hope that now that he'll be less burdened with the forum maybe he finds the desire to hang around some more. For those of you who don't know him, he's been really valuable for the project and has done some amazing things. Just check his post history if you want. One that comes to mind right now is recovering someone's wallet with something like 7k coins when nobody else could help. He worked with the hard disk of that guy and was able to recover the wallet and save the day.

-Since he moved on, we have been talking about the possibility of transferring it. Some people will criticize that he doesn't simply give everything to the community, but I think that is not fair. He's developed a great asset we all love and it has value. I think some compensation is reasonable. Forums with some traffic are valuable because of the ad revenue potential and because of the network effects. Moving thousands of users is almost impossible.

-The prices negotiated and the price of Dash itself have varied wildly during this time. Any number will be too much for some and too little for others, there is no way to get to an objective value. I think this amount is reasonable, but my opinion is as good as any other one. Well, mine is worth one less vote because the coins are not in my wallet anymore :sad:

If this proposal passes the forum will be permanently hosted in the team servers and I will transfer the domains to the foundation to avoid anyone having personal control of this key asset again. The ad revenue of the forum, once we set that up again, will also go to the foundation. And we'll be able to do long due changes/maintenance, like the one qwizzie requests :wink:
Click to expand...
Thanks for that, Fernando. I for one, agree with everything you said, and will be voting yes. (I second qwizzie about the working price ticker...)
 
fernando said:
A few clarifications to things some people are posting here or at dashwhale:

-Propulsion started the forum to help the community and his put a lot of time and money into it. He's had some ads, but that hasn't paid for all the expenses during this two years. Some of us have helped moderating, but he's done everything else.

-Around a year ago he started to be less involved with the community for different reasons, but he has maintained the forum nonetheless. However, as babygiraffe points, there have been problems and it was likely that in the future there would be more because this requires a lot of work. I hope that now that he'll be less burdened with the forum maybe he finds the desire to hang around some more. For those of you who don't know him, he's been really valuable for the project and has done some amazing things. Just check his post history if you want. One that comes to mind right now is recovering someone's wallet with something like 7k coins when nobody else could help. He worked with the hard disk of that guy and was able to recover the wallet and save the day.

-Since he moved on, we have been talking about the possibility of transferring it. Some people will criticize that he doesn't simply give everything to the community, but I think that is not fair. He's developed a great asset we all love and it has value. I think some compensation is reasonable. Forums with some traffic are valuable because of the ad revenue potential and because of the network effects. Moving thousands of users is almost impossible.

-The prices negotiated and the price of Dash itself have varied wildly during this time. Any number will be too much for some and too little for others, there is no way to get to an objective value. I think this amount is reasonable, but my opinion is as good as any other one. Well, mine is worth one less vote because the coins are not in my wallet anymore :sad:

If this proposal passes the forum will be permanently hosted in the team servers and I will transfer the domains to the foundation to avoid anyone having personal control of this key asset again. The ad revenue of the forum, once we set that up again, will also go to the foundation. And we'll be able to do long due changes/maintenance, like the one qwizzie requests :wink:
Click to expand...

Well put, Fernando.

I think anyone whose been involved Dash for the best part of two years can appreciate the work that Propulsion has put in, certainly in the first year or so and more sporadically since then. Having read practically the entire ANN thread over on BCT I can remember nothing but constructive posts from Propulsion. I don't contribute as much as I would like to either here or over on BCT anymore, but there are times when priorities in life change whether we want them to or not. Best of luck to Propulsion with whatever he is focusing on now! As Fernando has stated, if he can ever find the time to become more involved with Dash again, I'm sure it would be much appreciated by all.

In my opinion the price for the forum and the work done transferring the data is not unreasonable. It's small price to pay to retain an incredibly useful tool for the community, to avoid unnecessary fragmentation and to reward Propulsion in some way for the many hours of dedication he has put in.
 
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I've got a good comment/like ratio I would prefer to keep. 7k sounds hefty. How much wiggle room is there for negotiating price?
 
This seems a prudent decision and the price is more than reasonable, considering the fact he could hold dashtalk hostage. I know he wouldn't, but its that kind of scenario we could have been facing.
 
TaoOfSatoshi said:
Thanks for that, Fernando. I for one, agree with everything you said, and will be voting yes. (I second qwizzie about the working price ticker...)
Click to expand...

that's exactly what it comes down to:
having control of the page and servers
you guys know since how long we are struggling with DT updates ! (new threads , better organisation , broken links,...) it is really time to take control !
in all fairness , props did a great job with this page over the years and it is only fair to compensate him ! (we do not wanna leave any bad tast (in anybodies mouth) behind)
Fernando did a great job brokering this deal and the price is fair !
let's do it , many plans for the new forum :wink:
 
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Can we restructure this into 2 payments so that we can have both Evolution in Marketing and this pass through this Budget? They don't fit nicely together but both are good proposals.
 
itscrazybro said:
babygiraffe can you please respond? There is no reason why these two proposals can't coincide.
Click to expand...
That wouldn't actually solve anything. If I were to split out over two payments, that would only free up ~518 Dash more this month. It would still be short with only 719 Dash available after I split it, whereas the Evolution in marketing is for 775.
 
babygiraffe said:
That wouldn't actually solve anything. If I were to split out over two payments, that would only free up ~518 Dash more this month. It would still be short with only 719 Dash available after I split it, whereas the Evolution in marketing is for 775.
Click to expand...

Or you could split the dashtalk payment I to 3 months.
 
Only because liquidity providers has just slipped ahead. When I made this post liquidity providers was out of the mix.
 
If you look at it now you will see that evolution in marketing is only shy by 435 Dash so a split of the Dashtalk repayment would allow for it to be included into the budget
 
Next in line dashwhale.org acquisition, please let this be a lesson and setup the new website with it built in already.
 
itscrazybro said:
If you look at it now you will see that evolution in marketing is only shy by 435 Dash so a split of the Dashtalk repayment would allow for it to be included into the budget
Click to expand...
OK. I see what you are saying. Here's what I will do. I'll check the each of the folks that are owed funds to see how long they are willing to wait to get paid back and whether or not they are comfortable taking the risk that they will "make the cut" for the next two or three months. Right now, they are BARELY seeing enough support at 11%, so they may or may not feel comfortable risking it. At the end of the day, this is their money that they risked, not mine. They would be the ones that lost money if month #2 or month #3 payments didn't get included in the budget. I simply aggregated the costs and submitted the proposal on behalf of everyone involved. So I don't feel comfortable that this is my call to make unilaterally.

That said, I will ask right away and see what we can do to divide this up and give you guys a better shot at seeing evolution in marketing make it in.

Just another idea to try to help you out... Might I suggest you ask this of other proposal owners, too? I would expect that for example the guys behind the WooCommerce proposal (sitting at 24% support currently) might feel WAY more confident splitting their proposal in half for you than the Dashtalk project guys. I think you might have a better shot at getting the support you need from there. You really only need one or two proposal owners to say "yes" to splitting and it doesn't necessarily need to be this one alone.

EDIT: in fact, right now, with Liquidity providers above you on the list, I would need to split this one in three. If you can get some support from other smaller projects, I might be able to get away with splitting this one into two, which might be more palatable to those owed money. But as you are brokering these "deals" please don't have anyone do anything just yet... I'd hate to see other changes made that are unneeded if the dashtalk guys aren't comfortable with the concept of splitting theirs.
 
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