You didn’t mention System Shock, so maybe System Shock.
It was originally released in 1994 but a remake was just recently released and has had favorable feedback. Deus Ex, BioShock and Prey are spiritual successors.
I think you might really be asking about sustainability, not profitability (profit is what you have after all the bills are paid). It's generally donation-based. I'm sure different communities will have different ways of soliciting donations.
EDIT: I'm no longer partial to the below. I much more like PrimalAnimist's suggestions.
For larger, expensive instances, I'm partial to determining the cost of running a single user over some period of time (say, 5 years), and posting that little datum on the community info. Then, each user that donates that amount gets a badge reward. Users that pay double the minimum get a different badge, and so on. Cycle the badges every n years. Some users will have fancier badges, displaying a kindness for the poor and badgeless. Cultivate a culture of gratitude for those who support, and you won't have to worry so much about not having enough.
I dislike this idea because it creates "tiers" of users. Communities might not allow comments from anyone without at least the basic donation badge. Donations incentivized with perceived perks are made with selfish intent. The capitalist system has trained us that in order for people to do something, they must be given a sufficient reward.
This is not true. Using rewards as incentives to motivate people will create division among individuals. When rewards are introduced, the focus shifts from intrinsic motivation and personal satisfaction to the external reward itself. This leads to a competitive mindset where individuals start comparing themselves to others solely based on the rewards they receive.
For example, I've seen something as simple as a user tag being used to restrict and divide a community. (r/conservative comes to mind first).
Honestly, I share your concerns. I'm only recommending it for very expensive instances that aren't receiving enough funding, as an alternative to directly soliciting funds. The beauty of the Fediverse is that if an instance admin tried doing something like punishing the "poor and badgeless," we could all just fuck off. It would alleviate their financial burden, to boot 😃
I get you, I just don't like tying social status to badges and icons that denote financial contribution. That's Elon Musk style. Another solution is you could sell merch for example. And creators on the server could donate artwork they make to be sold on merch like t-shirts, hats, handbags, etc. instead of donating cash.
But, if the intrinsic value of helping keep an instance going isn't enough motivation, there're many other successful methods to implement before resorting to awarding visible badges. Here are a few strategies to increase financial engagement:
Transparency: Provide clear and transparent information about how donations are utilized and the specific projects or initiatives they support. When users understand how their contributions make a difference, they may be more motivated to donate.
Collaboration: Foster a sense of collective ownership and involvement by actively involving users in decision-making processes. Allow them to suggest and vote on some decisions, creating a sense of shared responsibility.
Gamification: Instead of special badges, incorporate gamification elements that track collective progress toward a shared donation goal. Create visual representations or progress meters that show how close the community is to reaching a specific target, encouraging users to contribute and help achieve the goal together.
Impact Reporting: Regularly update users on the impact of their donations. Provide reports or updates that detail how the funds have been utilized and the outcomes achieved. Demonstrating the tangible results of their contributions can strengthen user trust and encourage continued support.
Basically, any way that a person can feel or see their contributions (and importantly the support of the greater community along with them) for the instance will increase engagement.
I can't put aside my sneaking suspicion that can't figure out any of these tools: kbin, lemmy, mastodon, etc.... Is more or less code for, "I have reach and influence on platform x, and I need can't figure out how to be that person here."
Can they setup an account? Can they read? Can they write? These seem to all be achievable. Can they influence? Well... should that be the goal?
I dunno, but the fact that I'm browsing a post with 118 comments using a skin that looks a lot like Apollo tells that things are going in a good direction.
I get you, though. A mailman once made a completely inappropriate joke about my last name that I already had heard so many times and I was just dumbstruck. He was so excited and gaudy to let me in on it. I'm sure he thought I wouldn't know that one. Hopefully he could see the life leave my body, when I monotonously answered "never heard that one before" and remembers that the next time he thinks of a joke about the name of a customer.
Had that same experience at work, and with someone who had just been hired and was being introduced to me for the first time. It wasn’t inappropriate but I’d heard it at least three times that week alone. She didn’t last terribly long in the office.
Speaking as someone who uses OpenRC on all my machines . . . no, systemd is not necessarily slow, and personally I don’t care about the speed of my init system anyway. Thing is, systemd also has nothing that makes it more useful to me than OpenRC, so I have no incentive to change. Plus, I dislike the philosophy behind it, the bloat, and the obnoxious behaviour the project showed when interacting with others in its early days. I’m a splitter, not a lumper, and systemd’s attempts to absorb All The Things strike me as rather . . . Windows-like.
So, in a technical sense I have no reason to believe that systemd is inferior to OpenRC + sysv, and it may be superior for some use cases which are not mine. I don’t spend a lot of time ranting about it, and I see no point in trying to convince people not to use it if it fits their needs. But I still won’t use it if I have another option.
I agree. SystemD is a great service daemon (or, sigh, unit daemon in the stupid parlance). I like unit file syntax and I like the ergonomics of systemctl. It’s solid and I appreciate the feeling of consistency that systemd lends to the otherwise chaotic landscape of Linux distrobutions.
It’s for this reason that I’m willing to forgive SystemD overstepping the boundaries of services somewhat. System init/mounting? Sure, that’s a blurry line after all. Logging? Okay – it does make sense to provide a single reliable solution if the alternative is dealing with dozens of different implementations. Network resolution & session management? Fine, I’ll begrudgingly accept that it’s convenient to be able to treat logins/networking as psuedo-services for the sake of dependencies.
If that’s as far as the scope crept, SystemD and I would be cool, but the so-called “component” list just keeps on going. SystemD has no business being a boot manager, nor a credential manager, nor a user manager, nor a container manager, nor an NTP client. I understand why they can’t deprecate most of this junk, but why can’t they just at least make this cruft optional to install?
Systemd (PID1) is not your boot manager, network deamon, resolver, user manager or ntp service.
Those are entirely independent deamons that happen to be developed under the systemd project umbrella but can be exchanged for equivalent components.
Tkey are gully optional.
In many cases, the systemd project’s one is one of the best choices though, especially when used with other systemd-developed components.
In some cases, there is no other viable choice because the systemd-* is just better and nobody wants to deal with something worse.
My friend recommended the brand saying he never had a problem with it and it was as fast as the day he got it. My wife got one because her Pixel 3 died (apparently a relatively common thing for that model). Then after my wife got one my friend started complaining about his phone and my wife didn’t like her new phone. Then he got a pixel lol. Then I got one. It’s a nice phone. The Pixel 3 was my wife’s favorite before it died. So 2 years later we ditched the one plus for a new Pixel for her.
It seems like one plus used to be a good brand and maybe my friend had some loyalty still or his phone coincidentally started to slow down right after he recommended it lol
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