Re: Upcoming changes
Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 2:42 pm
This is all true as far as it goes. But I do think--as I wrote earlier in this debate--that the uproar is not really because of the specific measure taken. It is after all truly minor in its effects on users. I am convinced that this "pay or wait 15 seconds" approach to fund raising has triggered the controversy rather than caused it. I have to say further that a lot of complaints came not so much from users but from contributors--and for them IMSLP represents indeed a "community", so I don't like the dismissive tone of the last post in this regard.
The real malaise has to do with transparency or rather the lack of it. We have had the membership fee for a while now but does anybody other than two of three "top people" know how successful the approach was? Nobody knows how much the various costs are that are listed. If you ask people to pay you owe them accountability as to how the money is used. Every non profit knows this and IMSLP is in fact if not in law a non profit. In this case it was supposed to pay a staff member for the first time in the site's existence. Has anybody been hired? Has the revenue big enough for it? Moving on: There has to be a budget. It is as secret as the identity of CIA sources. The names of the members of the board are also not posted anywhere findable. Nobody tells anybody anything.
Just now I found something I haven't seen yet. I tried to open a newly posted score and got the message: This is a new score, available only to members. Again, I have no problem with some preferential treatment of members. But I do resent stumbling over this in this fashion. I never saw an announcement for this (there isn't one on this forum, where it ought to be; it also ought to be easily accessible from the IMSLP.org site itself). Which scores are privileged in this way? All new scores? If so for how long? Or is there some other criteria?
Somebody in the know please enlighten us!
The real malaise has to do with transparency or rather the lack of it. We have had the membership fee for a while now but does anybody other than two of three "top people" know how successful the approach was? Nobody knows how much the various costs are that are listed. If you ask people to pay you owe them accountability as to how the money is used. Every non profit knows this and IMSLP is in fact if not in law a non profit. In this case it was supposed to pay a staff member for the first time in the site's existence. Has anybody been hired? Has the revenue big enough for it? Moving on: There has to be a budget. It is as secret as the identity of CIA sources. The names of the members of the board are also not posted anywhere findable. Nobody tells anybody anything.
Just now I found something I haven't seen yet. I tried to open a newly posted score and got the message: This is a new score, available only to members. Again, I have no problem with some preferential treatment of members. But I do resent stumbling over this in this fashion. I never saw an announcement for this (there isn't one on this forum, where it ought to be; it also ought to be easily accessible from the IMSLP.org site itself). Which scores are privileged in this way? All new scores? If so for how long? Or is there some other criteria?
Somebody in the know please enlighten us!