One thing you're buying when you donate to DU

[Elad]

Me. Yes, I am up for sale, so to speak. If DU makes it's goal, I will be able to quit my full-time dayjob, which keeps me highly distracted from DU, and concentrate all of my energy on improving DU.

As the techie/programmer, you may be unaware what having a full-time elad means to you as a user of DU. Allow me to explain.

When I first came to DU I came as a regular poster looking for an anti-Bush site. I posted for a couple months, and eventually it came up that DU didn't have a programmer and there were some things that needed to be programmed. Being unemployed at the time, I happily volunteered. The initial couple of projects grew and grew, and soon became a constant flow of new features, bug fixing, and other projects. I worked for DU for free, volunteering, for about a year.

After that first year, DU had grown enough that Skinner was able to start sending me a small paycheck. By this point in time, DU had become a full-time job for me. During that first year while I was unemployed, I easily spent 70 or so hours a week, if not more, working on DU in some fashion or another, either programming or doing administrative duties. About the time Skinner started paying me part-time, I finally found a job and started working a dayjob full-time.

This has been the situation now for the past 1 1/2 years or so. I work 32 - 40 hours a week at my dayjob, and then come home and spend another 30 - 50 hours a week on DU. I've been doing this for a long time now, for only a part-time salary from DU, because I believe in DU and I want to see it succeed.

I (and the other admins, for that matter) don't post terribly frequently on the public boards, so you may not know what's going on behind the scenes or how much time, energy and work we actually put into DU on a daily basis. It may seem like we're absent a lot, but we're here everyday, all 3 of us, reading threads, dealing with situations that come up, brainstorming ideas, working on technical issues, and helping the moderators.

I can't remember the last full-day that I went without checking in on DU at least once. DU has become our lives, for better or for worse. Weekends? We don't have weekends. Sure, the office may be empty on the weekends, and we may spend less time on DU than during the weekdays, but we're still here, every weekend, checking in, making sure things are running smoothly, and dealing with any problems.

The job can be extraordinarily stressful, as well. We have to constantly field complaints telling us how crappy our website is and how biased we are towards one side or another. We have to make very tough decisions and then deal with the consequences. We're called names and belittled constantly, and not just by conservatives in the form of hatemail, but also often from people who are supposed to be on our side and are upset about something or another. Skinner, who has to deal with most of these problems, I tell ya what, sometimes I don't know how he does it. The man has the patience of a saint. I would have thrown my computer out the window months ago, screamed "SCREW IT ALL!!" and ran off to be a hermit in the mountains somewhere if I had to deal with half the BS he puts up with. :)

But anyway, back to what I was getting at... if DU makes its goal this fund drive, Skinner will finally be able to hire me full-time. What does it matter to you? Well let me tell you.

Ever get frustrated if the site's running slow? If I'm able to concentrate on DU full-time, I'll be able to babysit the servers all-day everyday, which means I can start to identify bottlenecks in our code and improve the speed. The process takes a lot of time and there's simply no way I can gather enough data to do this when I have to work a dayjob, since I'm at work during the peak-hours when things are busy and the site slows down.

Ever get annoyed with a bug in the software and wish it'd be fixed cuz it always seems to hit ya at the most inopportune time? If I'm able to concentrate on DU full-time, bugs will be fixed much more quickly.

Ever have a cool idea for a new feature and wish you'd be able to see it on DU? If I'm able to concentrate on DU full-time, new features will be coming out much, much more often.

If I'm able to concentrate on DU full-time, not only will I be able to improve how DU runs from the technical end, fix more bugs, and add more features, but there are millions of tiny things that will get done to improve the site as well. I'll have time to add new smilies, I'll have time to finish old projects like the "Member since" date, I'll have more time to help on the administrative end and take some of the workload off of Skinner and EarlG, I'll have more time to do dozens of other little things that have been piling up in my todo list.

And all this will lead to a better DU for everyone, because then all 3 admins will be able to spend more time coming up with new ideas for the website and how we can really make an impact in 2004. Ever since DU was started, we've been building up to this: the 2004 election. Do you really want distracted, stressed out, burned out admins with piles of half-finished projects running the site this year?

None of us are getting rich off of DU. In fact, if you consider the loss of insurance and other benefits I'll take if I work for DU full-time, it could in actuality turn out to be a sorta paycut for me. And for a full-time programmer, I'm offering myself to DU at a bargain-basement price compared to the industry standard.

But if DU doesn't make its goal, I have to keep my dayjob, and much of this won't be possible. DU, the admins, and by extension ALL of you, will be that much worse off going into an election year. So please, take the time to donate. You know DU provides you with a unique service you can't find anywhere else on the internet, and if you want DU to continue to grow, evolve and become a real force that can actually make a difference in the election next year, then send in some money, it doesn't matter how much, whatever you can afford.

Thanks