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Our community needs help via Patreon donations!

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Antvasima

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Hello.

As many of you likely know, we have launched a Patreon subscription service, so our members can donate to help keep our forum sufficiently financed to continue, and would greatly appreciate help from our community and visitors who are willing to help us out.

To become an active supporter of our community, you should go to https://www.patreon.com/vsbattles and become a monthly member. After we have a sufficiently established presence at Patreon, we will also get the ability to accept less expensive yearly subscriptions.

I have been told that we currently only receive roughly 21 Euros per month in Patreon donations, and that, despite our advertisements, with all of our running costs for this forum combined, we need roughly 250 Euros per month to become financially sustainable, so it would be really great if at least a few dozen of our up to 236,000 monthly forum visitors, who appreciate our extreme efforts to produce as high-quality content as we are able, would be willing and able to become supporters for us. Extremely big thanks for any help in this regard.

To show our appreciation for the people with member accounts who help our community in this manner, they will receive an advertisement-free experience when browsing vsbattles.com as long as they continue to support us, and they will also receive personal blue "Supporter" badges below their usernames, similar to the ones for our staff members

In order to do so, at Patreon, please choose one of the monthly subscription/membership tiers (either 2 Euros for a "Supporter" badge, 5 Euros for a "Super Supporter" badge, or 10 Euros for an "Ultra Supporter" badge) and use the exact same username as you use in the VS Battles forum.

We will not receive any personal information as long as you use an anonymous email address as your contact information combined with the same username that you use here, and only see that along with your membership tier. If you already have a Patreon account with your regular email address or real name, the account in question can easily be updated to use anonymous alternatives before you become a supporter for us.

If Patreon itself (we have not added this feature) asks you if you want to provide your real name and home address to us (that happened to me once), simply opt out of that part.

If you want to support us above this to get us financially sustainable quicker, you are of course always welcome to make a larger donation, but be careful to not pay more money than you can afford.

For those who cannot support us financially, we of course appreciate if you accept our advertisements and contribute to the financing of our forum in that way instead.

Massive thanks in advance for any help.

Supporter.jpg
 
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Thank you very much for the help. It is extremely appreciated. I have informed AKM sama that you and Muchacho_mrm need to get Super Supporter badges.

Also, if we ever forget to update your monthly Supporter badges, please tell us about it here, and we will fix it. There is just an awful lot of work to keep track of.
 
I suppose that we could probably set that up, but I need to ask my friend who owns this forum to set it up via Patreon and our forum system manager to add an extra advertisement-free subscription sticker in this forum.
 
Well, my friend who owns the forum will have to pay the difference out of his own pocket every month. He has very charitably been willing to do so so far, but there are no guarantees that he will continue to do so forever, so I would much prefer if we can balance things out, especially given the ongoing economic recession.
 
Well, my friend who owns the forum will have to pay the difference out of his own pocket every month. He has very charitably been willing to do so so far, but there are no guarantees that he will continue to do so forever, so I would much prefer if we can balance things out, especially given the ongoing economic recession.
I Wanted to donate but Patreon Doesnt Allowed My Debit Card To Use
 
Okay. That is unfortunate, but thanks for trying. Paypal accounts work great for Patreon though.
 
I'd try to pay if I could, but then again, I live in Bangladesh. PayPal is illegal here ATM and I don't think Patreon accepts Bangladeshi credit cards let alone debit cards. No donations allowed either, if I try those, the government might arrest me and erase me from existence, and I'm not saying this lightheartedly.
 
Yes. Those are obviously extremely valid reasons, and as I have stated previously, I am very sorry that you and other members here from all over the world have to be oppressed by either your governments or local extremists. The rest of us should consider ourselves very lucky to not have to live under such circumstances.
 
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The owner of this forum just asked me to mention that he has lost 12,000 Euros so far from keeping it alive, and that he would like to gradually reduce that amount if possible.
 
Damn, didn't expect shit to go down this bad. We really are in a rut, huh.
 
Well, my friend is reasonably well off, so he can technically afford it, and I doubt that he will shut us down, but it is still an ongoing drain on his resources, so it is by far best to try to significantly lessen the problem.
 
The owner of this forum just asked me to mention that he has lost 12,000 Euros so far from keeping it alive, and that he would like to gradually reduce that amount if possible.
That does sound like a bad situation. I would help out with this If I had my own stable income source but since this is currently not the case for me as a student it would feel financially irresponsible to me if I did that.
 
Yes, that is obviously no problem. I hope that our non-member visitors will also be willing to donate to support our work.
 
The owner of this forum just asked me to mention that he has lost 12,000 Euros so far from keeping it alive, and that he would like to gradually reduce that amount if possible.
WHAT, are you kidding me, 12,000?? Over the course of what, 2- max 3 years top? Thats a obscene amount of money for something that will never pay back
 
Well, running costs and a good system manager cost money, and we also lost a lot more money than currently before we managed to set up our advertisements.

I have mentioned to Fandom that it would be great if we would be allowed to link to our Patreon subscription page via the front page of our wiki, but it has not been possible to make an exception in that regard so far. They will contact me again if something changes though.
 
We have now added a 10 Euros "Ultra Supporter" monthly subscription badge for those who can afford it.
 
Thank you very much for the help. I will inform AKM about it, so you get your badge.
 
@TheUnshakableOne

Please update your Patreon username to TheUnshakableOne instead, as I will most likely forget who will make the donations in coming months otherwise.
 
Thank you very much for helping out. I will tell AKM sama about it.

However, you will need to change your Patreon username to the same one that you use here, or we will not be able to keep track of who to give a subscription to.

@StorytellingDemonKing was also given an Ultra Supporter subscription. Massive thanks to him for helping out so much.
 
I'd like to suggest a few potential perks for supporting the forum, since many options don't seem properly explored.

Since I'm not sure exactly how customizable this forum is, these will mostly be "things that staff members have access to that don't run much risk".
  • The ability to have slightly longer signatures.
  • The ability to have images in signatures.
  • The ability to have underscores removed from one's username.
  • The ability to have a title set (akin to Ant's "Maintenance worker" one).
  • Animated profile pictures could be locked behind it.
Some more speculative ideas would be
  • The ability to add custom emoticons.
  • The ability to add custom reactions.
  • The ability to feature one thread a month (matches/content revision threads or threads referencing calcs they want feedback on).
For any parts of these that sound risky, they'd be implemented by staff, who can check for unwanted uses.
 
Also if there is a way to add cryptocurrencies as part of payment options, as I am trying to support financially but I’m unable to due to where I’m from, but if crypto is added, then it’s easy to support from almost any part of the world.
 
I'd like to suggest a few potential perks for supporting the forum, since many options don't seem properly explored.

Since I'm not sure exactly how customizable this forum is, these will mostly be "things that staff members have access to that don't run much risk".
  • The ability to have slightly longer signatures.
  • The ability to have images in signatures.
  • The ability to have underscores removed from one's username.
  • The ability to have a title set (akin to Ant's "Maintenance worker" one).
  • Animated profile pictures could be locked behind it.
Thank you for the suggestions.

Slightly longer signatures seems like a good idea, but images in signatures might turn too continuously distracting and spammy for other members, even if the risk for outright offensive ones seems low, so I am not sure either way about the second option, but if it would cover our expenses much better I suppose that it might be fine.

Underscores in usernames does not really seem like something our members would consider a problem, and inconsistently removing them would turn it harder to summon knowledgeable members for content revision threads.

Getting the ability to set a personal description text is probably a good idea.

It is already possible to add animated user avatar images, but they need to fit the allowed XenForo size. I can ask our system manager about if we can increase the allowed size for paying members though.
Some more speculative ideas would be
  • The ability to add custom emoticons.
  • The ability to add custom reactions.
  • The ability to feature one thread a month (matches/content revision threads or threads referencing calcs they want feedback on).
For any parts of these that sound risky, they'd be implemented by staff, who can check for unwanted uses.
Please explain what you mean with custom emoticons. I thought that we already have quite a lot of them to select from. If you mean adding new ones to our list that is available for all members, that seems a bit risky, if offensive or copyrighted images are uploaded.

Custom reactions could turn into a problem, if negative ones that spread toxicity are used for example.

Well, we don't have a feature function, but maybe we could give our paying members/supporters the right to call for a favour once a month (but not more than that) by asking our administrators to check for all of the listed currently active knowledgeable members for the verses relevant for different content revision threads, and then summon them to participate there? Or just send a notification to a total of 4-5 thread moderators and administrators along with helping out with evaluating the thread themselves if there are almost no knowledgeable members or verse supporters listed. However, the evaluations of whether or not a revision is valid to apply should obviously still be fair and matter of fact, with no special treatment in this regard.

Maybe we could structure it something like this?

2 USD/Month Supporters: No displayed advertisements.

5 USD/Month Super Supporters: No displayed advertisements. Longer signature texts. Larger size for personal animated user avatar images.

10 USD/Month Ultra Supporters: No displayed advertisements. Longer signature texts. Larger size for personal user images. A tastefully worded brief personal description text. A small inoffensive image included in one's signature.

20 USD/Month Tier 0 Supporters/Deluxe Supporters (Just suggested titles. Constructive suggestions are obviously welcome.): No displayed advertisements. Longer signature texts. Larger size for personal user images. A tastefully worded brief personal description text. A small inoffensive image included in one's signature. Making 1 request per month in a pinned wiki management forum request thread for guaranteed staff evaluations of content revision discussion threads, but only for threads that the Deluxe Members have created themselves, and only evaluated in a normal manner, not necessarily with any favourable outcomes.
 
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Perhaps add in a limited number of username changes in a 6 month or more time period? Or cap it at 3 changes? Idk if that sounds impactful or useful.
 
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