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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: Decius and Rattle have reached an impass. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

Decius and Rattle have reached an impass
by Rattle at 2:30 am EDT, Jun 20, 2009

Short and sweet...

Tom is refusing to legitimize operations of this site and the organization that claims to own it. The Industrial Memetics C Corp is basically a shell corporation that has never been setup or managed properly. All efforts I have made to correct this have been met with resistance or refusal. Everything related to MemeStreams is in Tom Cross's personal name. Tom has been paying all expenses out of his own pocket. I have been insisting for several years now that we legitimize Industrial Memetics, create a bank account to pay expenses out of, and keep records of expenses.

Basically, the house has been run improperly... Whenever the topic of "why don't you pay expenses?" has come up, the answer has been the same.. Legitimize operations and I (share expense|inject capital).

After an argument on the street in downtown Bethesda, where I presented Tom with several options for handling this issue, it came down to "take it all over or I'm shutting it down". I refuse to let this site die.

As per our shouted agreement, I'm going to take over the site's operations starting Monday. I don't expect this to be a problem, assuming that Decius doesn't create one. Domain ownership transfer and database sync'ing, etc..

I intend to form a new organization to care for the site as a 501.(c)3 and open source the code.

I know I have not been posting often recently. There are multiple reasons for this. I assure you none of them involve a lack of care for this community and what we've created together. Tom and I have our differences, but he is and always will be central to the soul of this community.... Unless he intends to run away from it.


 
RE: Decius and Rattle have reached an impass
by Decius at 2:30 pm EDT, Jun 20, 2009

As Nick has decided to air our dispute publicly, a response is obviously in
order. On many levels this makes sense, because the consequences of this
disagreement effect the entire community, and because an external perspective
might be helpful. With that, I thank you for taking the time to read about
something that you shouldn't have to get involved with. I'm sorry that we
have not been able to resolve this between us.

Nick and I are equal partners in Industrial Memetics, the corporate entity
that owns MemeStreams. This is reasonable because we've both contributed
approximately equal amounts of time and code to the project. However, since
the beginning I have born almost all of the financial responsibilities
associated with operating the site. The two primary servers belong to me,
I pay the monthly hosting costs, I pay for most of the domain names, and
I file the tax returns.

At the heart of this disagreement is the fact that I've never bothered to
write off my expenses on our corporate tax return. The reason is that in
order to write them off, I'd have to account for them accurately, and
time and effort associated with doing that isn't worth the money to me.

A couple years ago Nick decided to put advertisements on MemeStreams. I
was opposed to this decision from the outset for two reasons. The first
is that you can directly extrapolate the amount of money you are going
to make from the amount of traffic you get, and we were not going to make
a lot of money. The second is that any money we do make must be reported
on our annual tax return, thus generating the paperwork nightmare that I
have been trying to avoid.

Against my objections, Nick proceeded. At the time he believed, for some
reason, that we were going to make more money than we were going to make.
We concluded that we would not book the revenue until we actually received
money from Google. In some respects it was an experiment - how much would
this bring in? As I predicted, it brought in next to nothing. After several
years we have not generated enough revenue to reach the minimum amount
that prompts Google to cut you a check.

However, we have generated some revenue. Obviously, at some point, we're
going to have to take receipt of it and book it. It would be my preference
that we simply take the money, do the paperwork, and shut the ads off
so that we don't have to deal with this anymore. Nick doesn't agree. He
has recently become very concerned about dealing with this now and
dealing with it in his way.

In April, he started the conversation off by proposing that we take receipt
of the money from Google, and spend it as follows:

Part would go to registering the corporation in the State of Maryland
(where Nick lives).
Part would go to Nick's wife (who is a C... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]


  
RE: Decius and Rattle have reached an impass
by Rattle at 3:23 pm EDT, Jun 20, 2009

Against my objections, Nick proceeded. At the time he believed, for some reason, that we were going to make more money than we were going to make. We concluded that we would not book the revenue until we actually received money from Google. In some respects it was an experiment - how much would this bring in? As I predicted, it brought in next to nothing. After several years we have not generated enough revenue to reach the minimum amount that prompts Google to cut you a check.

This is a lie. We current have $784.78 owed to us by Google. We have the adsense account configured not to send us payments and hold the money. There is currently no legitimate way to take the revenue since Industrial Memetics isn't setup properly.

It is true that the current level of ad revenue is not enough to fully cover the current operational costs of the site. However, we current have enough money sitting there to cover over a year of the site's operation. We are over-paying for the server and bandwidth that the site is currently running (slowly) on.

This morning I've been working on getting a copy of MemeStreams running on a $38/mo slicehost VM. It's running faster than this one at a third the operational costs.

It's currently available for testing on the memestreams.org domain. Poke at it if you like.. It still needs some work before being ready to move the site to it.


   
RE: Decius and Rattle have reached an impass
by Lost at 4:01 pm EDT, Jun 20, 2009

Rattle wrote:

Against my objections, Nick proceeded. At the time he believed, for some reason, that we were going to make more money than we were going to make. We concluded that we would not book the revenue until we actually received money from Google. In some respects it was an experiment - how much would this bring in? As I predicted, it brought in next to nothing. After several years we have not generated enough revenue to reach the minimum amount that prompts Google to cut you a check.

This is a lie. We current have $784.78 owed to us by Google. We have the adsense account configured not to send us payments and hold the money. There is currently no legitimate way to take the revenue since Industrial Memetics isn't setup properly.

It is true that the current level of ad revenue is not enough to fully cover the current operational costs of the site. However, we current have enough money sitting there to cover over a year of the site's operation. We are over-paying for the server and bandwidth that the site is currently running (slowly) on.

This morning I've been working on getting a copy of MemeStreams running on a $38/mo slicehost VM. It's running faster than this one at a third the operational costs.

It's currently available for testing on the memestreams.org domain. Poke at it if you like.. It still needs some work before being ready to move the site to it.

Oh for fucks' sakes guys.


 
 
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