The-Monero-Moon-CCS-Proposal-August2022-John-Foss

changed the description

Thumbing down due to your hourly rates being double~ that of Monero Observer

I like the form, as much as I like the compact Monero Observer's, as they both complement each other.

Thanks for the reply @plowsof.

An hourly rate half of what I am proposing I would be working just below minimum wage in my country (Aus). Additionally, in regards to the dollar amount of the proposal, I'm asking for less in USD terms than my previous two proposals (both were around $350).

Writing the Monero Moon requires me to take time off from my day job, and I'd be earning less writing the Moon than my day job. This isn't a money grab from me, I love Monero and want to help it succeed more than anything. If I was a millionaire I'd just write it for free (hopefully one day!)

Dear John.

It is not clear to me what the business model of the monero moon is. It is certainly not a reader-funded newsletter. For this reason alone, its mere existence is meaningless.

You intend that with a discrete audience, dubitable literary quality and no advantage over the competition, to establish a subsidy scheme maintained through repeated CCS and anonymous donations.

How long do you intend to keep this up?

You also expect that the rest of monero users, who do not have the privilege of living in your country, with that huge "minimum" salary are willing to pay, with their effort and work, the outrageous figure you ask for, which is many times what a worker anywhere else in the world earns per hour.

I reject your proposal. Close the monero moon. Relieve us of your annoying pleas.

Thanks @FlamingAtlas for your feedback.

There is no 'real' business model to the Monero Moon.

It is not funded by sponsorship money (e.g. paid ads within the newsletter) or any other external third parties.

It is and always has been a community funded newsletter via the CCS (I guess this is the business model?), so unsure why you would claim the newsletter's existence to be 'meaningless'. I encourage you to take a look at the other Monero newsletters and compare them with The Monero Moon.

If the marketing of Monero isn't valued or deemed necessary then I'm ok with that, and I'll continue championing Monero in a personal capacity via less time consuming means. I'm 100% about the promotion of Monero and love it to bits - the tech, the community, the ideology - everything about it. They say don't marry your bags but unlike other past Monero contributors, I firmly believe that if your financially aligned with the cause then you will work even harder to see it succeed.

I have no idea how long the community will want to financially support the newsletter. That's why this proposal has been made - to determine whether The Monero Moon is something valued by the community, and if it's worthy of funding. Again, if I was in a financial position to publish it entirely for free, then I would.

I don't think I'm making 'annoying pleas'. Judging by your post history I find it odd that you (and other potential sockpuppet accounts) would previously denounce other proposals such as Monerkon and other community building initiatives.

John, I appreciate your help.

I briefly believed you would end your response without suggesting that my account is a sockpuppet. Honored, I say.

You're right; let people determine whether or not it's worthwhile to keep publishing the monero moon.

I wish you luck.

you're not active in the community on matrix/irc where most of the devs/contributors are , so you'll never have the inside scoop on any recent events.

I've seen several allegations that the moon has had many grammar / spelling errors. I've personally spotted a few myself and i find your sentence structure low effort / hard to read.

You've had a bad track record reg. ccs' as you abandoned one already (which i advocated for you to be paid for still). Thankfully when this happened we got Monero Observer.

you openly admit to having 'bags of monero' that you have married and you take 4 week vacations and travel around the world to monerokon events, have a day job already, and are terrified at the thought of working for around $20 an hour. why should anyone donate to you?

i can also go on a 4 week vacation, return, and read monero observer - pick the stories i like - crop some twitter screenshots and make a 3 hour long newsletter (im tempted to do it for free to be honest). AND you include your donation link at the end of each issue as if you're not sponsored in full already.

"If you like the newsletter and want more of this content, then shout me a round of beers by donating some spare Monero you didn’t lose during your boating accident."

At the time of writing there are over 441 subscribers to The Monero Moon newsletter.

Also

I have no idea how long the community will want to financially support the newsletter.

I support using ccs to get a newsletter off the ground (at lower rates) but I would argue that future funding models for production of an established newsletter - especially one that has competitors - be done directly with the readers (subscribers).

Asking for 36xmr/6months

At 441subs = 36xmr/6months/441subscribers=0.0136/subscriber/month or 0.163xmr/subscriber/year

If only 150 readers are willing to contribute, the cost would be 36xmr/6mth/150subs=0.04xmr/mth or 0.48xmr/sub/year

Adding 500 subs (ability to raise funds) to the increased rates and low monero price, I'd have to thumbs down this proposal. I dont think we should be paying to maintain third party newsletters simply because it is the easiest, yet most ineffecient way to collect funds. There is no security model in relying on ccs to produce competitive newsletters.

Thanks.

EDIT: Sorry for the wall of text, didn't expect to write this much.

Typically I stay away from commenting on CCS proposals, simply because I'm not a dev and can't add much to the conversation, and I think many other Monero users don't comment for the same reason.

I was very surprised when @plowsof mentioned in the matrix community channel that this proposal was getting mostly negative feedback. The Monero Moon is the one newsletter that I actually read, for the simple reason that it is fun. Compare it to the other three newsletters that were mentioned:

monero.observer is the most "professional" one, but has a terrible UX. The right aligned menu is needlessly irritating, the font is annoying to read and each post is littered¹ with² often³ unnecessary⁴ references⁵. Images are sparse and the overall tone is serious, a bit like a dry research paper or journal. I read a few of the posts if somebody shared a link to a particular interesting topic.
localmonero.co/the-monero-standard is pretty good. It briefly touches on the most important news ans showcases interesting Monero related projects. The overall design is approachable, and a light mood thanks to the images.
revuo-xmr.com the most forgettable of the three. A list of links and some graphics with price talk isn't particular interesting for me.

These short summaries are not here to throw shade at the creators, I'm happy for every single contribution and I'm certain that there will be die hard fans for each. However they do* illustrate the contrast to the Monero Moon quite nicely:

The Monero Moon isn't a scientific article and it doesn't want to be. It's meant for easy consumption. If I'm winding down after a stressful day by browsing reddit/twitter/4chan (I know, bad habit, don't judge) the last thing I want is to work trough the latest technical dev talks and click through to the sources. Even if somebody shares a link and I click on it, chances are that I'll leave the moment the wall of text hits me. The Monero Moon is not only advertised more regularly then the others, but I always read or at least skim though it. Here is why:

Every paragraph is kept brief and complemented with a image, diagram or embedded video/tweet which also nicely separates the paragraphs. Together with excellent formatting this makes it "glace-able", so you rarely miss the important points when skimming through it. The topics cover not only the "important" technical improvements, but also provide a decent overview over the rest of the community activity, including news related to privacy, merchants and the best memes.

Most people who are deep enough into Monero that they review CCS requests on gitlab don't need any newsletter for the most recent news, they learn about it first hand from the IRC dev channels or whatnot. But newsletters like this are important for people like me, who just want to know roughly what's going on in the community these days.

I think it's clear that I'm personally a fan of the Monero Moon, but some of the criticism is justified. A few opinions:

you're not active in the community on matrix/irc where most of the devs/contributors are , so you'll never have the inside scoop on any recent events

The Monero Moon does not have to be the fastest news source. The the Monero Observer reports first, and the Monero Moon links to it a week later it is "soon enough" in most cases.

I've seen several allegations that the moon has had many grammar / spelling errors.

All errors are suboptimal, no question. As a non-native speaker I didn't notice any myself, and the overall writing style is clear to me. It might not be elegant, but I'd argue that it doesn't have to be. I prefer the homebrew "dude-just-loves-his-hobby"-vibes it currently has.

You've had a bad track record reg. ccs' as you abandoned one already

I don't know the circumstances, but this is a bad look. Not a deal breaker though, if payout after completed work is acceptable.

you openly admit to having 'bags of monero' that you have married

Everybody who invests there free time into monero is more or less married to their bags, whether they admit it or not. Who wouldn't want to see their own work succeed? "marring your bags" is a bit of a meme and does imo not indicate the size of the bags.

take 4 week vacations and travel around the world to monerokon events

~~I don't see how being dedicated enough to spend a significant amount of time and money on participating in the community is a downside.~~ See Amendment regarding the 4 weeks vacation below.

It is not clear to me what the business model of the monero moon is.

It's marketing to people who are interested in monero and it's community. Marketing is an expense, and doesn't directly pay the bills.

Racism

~~Not mentioned here, but in the matrix community room. Couldn't verify the claims, because the tweets were deleted.~~

Idc in the slightest what your political views are and how you live your life. BUT as "John Foss" you have to stay neutral, not because it's the right thing to do, but because it is a requirement for any news reporting.

I'm sorry for the false accusations, see details in my second comment below.

Finally the most important topic: Cost. Or more precisely: Is the cost worth it?

I think the subscriber stats are not that meaningful. What matters is how many people actually read it and use it as their primary news source. This statistic is of course hard to come by.

For example, 1000 readers is equivalent to ~0.29c per read.

A cost of 0.29$ or 29ct per unique impression is a very steep price. I've donated 0.1XMR≈15USD once over a 1 year period, and with that I intended to cover the cost of at least 9 other people who don't donate. This means I consider a maximum of 0.001XMR/view reasonable, more than double what you ask for. This matches:

Thumbing down due to your hourly rates being double~ that of Monero Observer

...have a day job already, and are terrified at the thought of working for around $20 an hour. [...] AND you include your donation link at the end of each issue as if you're not sponsored in full already.

Contributing to any open source project in any way is usually unpaid volunteer work. Over the past 2 years I've spend 100s of hours helping random people if they have questions, engaging with the community (like this reply) or just making memes. Never once was I paid or have asked for donations. Same goes for my open source work outside the Monero community. I know it's a hobby, and it doesn't have to pay.

I don't judge that you want to be paid, but don't be surprised if the donors, who likely do a lot of unpaid volunteer work, become irritated.

I think the Monero Moon is a valuable resource and "community advertisement" worth keeping around. If the uptrend in viewers continues and you reach about 3000 regular viewers the asking price might be justified (0.10$/view). Until then we may need to negotiate different rates.

Thanks for the positive comment xD

there are no negotiations after giving a thumbs up.

my comments about bags are alluding to the fact that if you have a day job, and you're dropping money on round the world flights (sure, this trip was work related/networking) long vacations, and you have a hobby that's pumping you're bags (that you're not using) - why would i / anyone donate to you? so you can hoard more? he's supposed to be good at marketing our cryptocurrency, marketing his own newsletter should be trivial.

a hobby does not have recurring 3 month paid contracts. and i shouldn't be noticing errors after 4 + years of writing. its not just spelling mistakes, its the structure of sentences.

you don't think other people can produce a "dude loves his hobby" newsletter in the 4 weeks he is gone for his hourly rates?

Edit* please read this proposal out loud. you will stumble, and need to re-read the sentence. You'll do a double take when you read "While the having the best tech and" ....

Okey, didn't know that, removed my thumbs up for now.

I don't mind spending money on community building projects. Helping new-ish people to get comfortable and understand that we play different than the typical crypto-bros is worth a lot. And I imagine that the Monero Moon does a good job with this, although we don't have detailed numbers to proof this.

Honestly I don't think there are many people who can capture similar vibes. His style is accepted by users on reddit, twitter and 4chan; and you know how different those groups can be. I'm not opposed to finding someone who can do the same job at a fairer price, if you know someone suitable feel free to suggest it.

Form my point of view the payment is for the commitment, in contrast I do my hobbies only when I feel like it. In that context the 4 week vacation is worse than I claimed previously, and I agree that is is indeed an issue.

I'm not happy with the proposed rates either, even if you ignore the "he already has bags and doesn't need more money" part. The cost per view is just too high. An ad agency pays 0.1-1ct per view on youtube, so the 10ct/view I suggested as a maximum are generous in comparison and still only a third of the requested amount.

I read the specific sentence out aloud and unfortunately I have to agree, this is bad and shouldn't happen in any paid article.

Thanks for the reply guys

I have written a lot here and I do not write this holding any grudges or negative feelings. I love Monero, love writing the Monero Moon, and I just want to share my thoughts in a friendly way.

I'm not active in the IRC channels (I used to be a couple of years back), but I still lurk in there. Additionally, I occasionally reach out directly to devs asking questions, and keep tabs on the Monero Github issues.

There is the odd spelling mistake, and while that sucks I usually go back and fix it up as soon as possible if there is. I don't have anyone else proof reading for me before publishing and after a long day of researching/writing/publishing/marketing etc, combined with the fact I've read thru it a bunch of times already I can miss minor errors. As for the sentence structure being poor, that is your opinion. It is meant to be brief. Many people have actually said they find it easier to read. With today's newsletters, most people just want a quick bullet point, and then I provide links for them to go learn more. I can also make mistakes with some technical information but that happens with any news publication, I apologise if anything is ever incorrect. It can sometimes be challenging as a nontechnical person having to wrap my head around all the monero developments, but I feel like I do an ok job.

Research for the Monero Moon takes time. I don’t just pick stories from Monero Observer. I go through a number of different sources, platforms, forums, social media, etc to find the content that I believe is meaningful to Monero. I’m not just copy another website when I write the Monero Moon newsletter.

For my first CCS I struggled to publish it and I was public about this. I reached out to, I think it was rehrar and deBRUYNE in late 2018, informing them that I would be unable to continue the newsletter at the time. I then made this Reddit post in January 2019 asking someone to take over but no one was interested. https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/aikm7i/the_monero_moon_newsletter/. The left over funds were donated to the Monero General Fund, I never was paid for any work I didn't do. Then in March 2021, I put out another CCS requesting funding and put out another 13 issues, but had to put that on pause until the start of 2022 because I was so busy with work and family that I couldn't fit in the time needed to write the newsletter. I then finished off the remaining issues in early 2022, and fulfilled my CCS milestones for that proposal. I have just finished my most recent proposal too. Total score: 2 completed, 1 half completed.

I don't have any plans on abandoning the Monero Moon anytime soon. Since the beginning of the year I have arranged my working week to accommodate the time needed to write the newsletter. Since the start of 2022 I have published every week (except for one).

I just read something about me or The Monero Moon in an above comment mentioning racism? I have no idea how on Earth anyone would come to that conclusion. This appears to be ‘cancel culture’ type FUD and saddens me. I have been nothing but accepting of everyone in the Monero community no matter their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. and cannot stand for people making things up about me. I don’t know what people are saying about me in chatrooms but it doesn’t sound nice.

My partner's grandfather is 95 and sick, lives on the other side of the world to us, and because of COVID we haven't seen him in over 3 years, and would like to before he passes away. This is the first trip for us in 3 years. Are Monero contributors not allowed breaks? I feel it's a bit unfair that I'm being judged on this. I'm not living the high life over here. I've just got bills and rent to pay. Travelling to Monerokon was reduced in costs because it's a tax break and I was away for only a week (I needed to get back to work), and spent a ¼ of that travelling there and back. Setting aside 10+ hours to research/write a newsletter week after week can sometimes feel like a grind and the remuneration helps me justify it with my family. This is more than a hobby, it is a bit of a job in a sense and I pay income tax on my earnings from the CCS.

Outside of writing the Monero Moon newsletter I contribute to the promotion of Monero constantly on social media platform and still adhere to the open sourced project nature of things. I use Monero whenever I can and try spend it whenever possible. I am happy to negotiate on the rates, but if I can earn more from my day job, then it makes it a tough decision for me as I am financially unable to produce the newsletter for free as much as I would love to.

I encourage everyone to create their own newsletter of promotional Monero content. The more info about Monero in the public the better in my opinion. Monero needs more marketing. There's a reason Coke and Nike and McDonalds are so successful.

I love the CCS system, and think it’s a great way to support development of Monero, but if it is only technical development and not marketing, I’m ok with that. It’s a bummer to see sock puppets and the author of another Monero newsletter downvote my proposal.

This has made me ponder, the nature of the CCS, how accurately is it serving the community when a small minority of the community that use IRC and Git getting to decide on CCS proposals that the broader Monero community on Reddit or Twitter may support. I understand this is important for anyone interacting with code, but for marketing material it is a little different. The proposal could go through, and at the end of the day, if people do not want to fund something, they don’t have to?

The Monero Moon aims to present Monero to normal everyday people. A CT said, the Monero Moon is supposed to be fun and encourage newcomers to look into Monero. The Monero community is an ever growing dynamic beast with people from all walks of life so it’s hard to come up with something that everyone is going to appreciate. The Monero Moon is not marketed towards the Monero community. Sure, they’re apart of the target audience, but really I’m hoping people read the newsletter and think, “Wow, Monero is cool, I didn’t know that about Monero. I think I want to help that project and run my own node!”.

Sorry for the dump of text but just thought I’d get it all out! I just love Monero, love writing the Monero Moon, and am happy with whatever outcome or decision the community comes to regarding this proposal. Just please don’t leave me hanging like last time!

Cheers! John

Can you proof read your proposal and correct the errors in there (and your comments here too). Your hourly rates suggest you should be able to do this.

if you are incapable of writing coherently due to external issues, then you should not be applying for a ccs to represent Monero to outsiders if this is going to be their first impression of it. Its not about spelling errors.

Im sorry about the situation with your grandfather (Australia has/had very strict travel rules also). What about other people though? while you are away for 4 weeks im sure someone desperately in need of funds will gladly write 4 issues of a monero news letter for over 290$ an issue (xmr@145usd). Other people in this world are suffering, not just yourself.

When you purchase subscribers for your newsletter / twitter, do you consider that as a tax break? is this why your numbers are increasing? (maybe disclose this in your proposal, seems important to mention)

https://nitter.it/johnfoss69/status/1547525469800906752
https://nitter.it/johnfoss69/status/1555477081252802560

Shall we arrange a giveaway for people to like this ccs proposal? Anyone can register here, just like they can register for your giveaways (even sock puppet accounts) , encourage your fans to leave feedback here please. How many sock puppets are here now? 1?2? how many sock puppets are subscribed to you?

Being OK at your job is not good enough.

heres a tip for you to copy and paste when you proof read and correct your comments here: "I’m not just copy another website" -> "I’m not just another copy and paste website"

Thanks for the reply again plowsof.

I'm sorry that you are so upset by my proposal.

I agree that there can be spelling mistakes, but besides the monerochan images, can you please elaborate on how the Monero Moon could be improved, if in your opinion it is a poor representation of the Monero project?

I'm not asking to be paid anything while away as I won't be writing or publishing issues, so of course someone could submit a CCS proposal to publish a newsletter to fill the gap.

Addressing the give aways you bring up, it's a novel way to bring attention to Monero. I'm doing it to promote Monero from my own pocket. Bring in users via the tweet, then that brings them to the newsletter, and then they might become interested in Monero and joining the community.

I'm not using giveaways as a form of leverage to gain CCS or community approval for myself or The Monero Moon.

I don't have sock puppets.

I'm in no way trying to take advantage of the community.

I encourage everyone to leave feedback here, regardless of if they support this proposal or not. Over the years I have been involved with Monero, I have always done my best to remain neutral on all issues.

I'm still neutral about this proposal now. I don't mind if it's not funded. If not it's all good. It just means that I will move on and direct my time and resources elsewhere. I don't mean that in spiteful way, it's just the reality of the situation for me. The $290 is a quote, I'm happy to drop it back to $250. If the community does not value the Monero Moon as I do then that's ok. Monero will continue to thrive and grow without me as it has done with others in the past.

It does upset and sadden me hearing the response from you and others here regarding my personal situation and dislike of my work on the Monero Moon as I feel like I put a lot of effort into it, but I guess it can be expected you can't please everyone when contributing to a decentralized project.

In summary: I'm offering keep writing the Monero Moon for $250usd per issue.

Cheers,

John

Edit - I just realised I quoted in USD, XMR like I had for the milestones. $250 per issue / $145 (original moving average rate when CCS was posted) = 1.7XMR per issue.

I just read something about me or The Monero Moon in an above comment mentioning racism?

Alright, first and foremost I have to retract my statement regarding the racism, the comment on matrix was referring to a different newsletter and I mixed it up. I am sorry for this unfounded accusation.

Are Monero contributors not allowed breaks?

You and everyone else is of course allowed to take breaks. But one very important aspect of a newsletter is that it is a reliable source of information, and readers should not be left without any updates for 4 weeks. A short weekly filler newsletter containing only the 3 most important updates on "Development, Releases, and Technology" would be enough imho. Do you know anyone who could write such a guest article while you are away?

When you purchase subscribers for your newsletter / twitter, do you consider that as a tax break? is this why your numbers are increasing? (maybe disclose this in your proposal, seems important to mention)

Argumenting with increased subscriber counts looses its meaning when you directly or indirectly purchase subscribers with giveaways. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool and generous thing to do, but doesn't help your argument. Do you have any statistics or analytics on organic page views?

i apologise for the point regarding 'being able to afford a long 4 week vacation'. As per https://www.awu.net.au/annualleave/ every worker in Australia is entitled to 4 weeks annual leave. You will receive full pay (up to 38 hours per week) for the entire 4 weeks, and also a 17.5% bonus (leave loading).

Imagine reading this CV for a job application : hi, im guaranteed to not make issues for 4 weeks, and im going to miss the odd week here and there and i don't mind if i don't get the job, ill just do something else

So if you dont get merged to funding , that's it? you're not going to ask your subscribers for donations? you love Monero but don't mind that we're going to lose your newsletter / marketing skills? After 4 long years, done.. over, just like that?

Show some passion / self belief ... lets find people who actually do mind that their proposal gets funded.

"I pay income tax on my earnings from the CCS."

You donate 9/36 xmr to the government in taxes?.. LOL

"If the community does not value the Monero Moon as I do then that's ok."

It's your taxable, for profit, small business. This is not a not-for-profit, open source, forkable repo. This is your taxable, for profit,(registered?) small businesses. The community should not be fully funding your business. Your business should be self-sustaining.

"So if you dont get merged to funding , that's it? you're not going to ask your subscribers for donations? you love Monero but don't mind that we're going to lose your newsletter / marketing skills? After 4 long years, done.. over, just like that?" - plowsof

Refusing to find a business model / quitting because you cant milk ccs.. is pretty dishonest. You're basically saying No ccs == no monero moon + you dont care about your readers enough to ask them to support you. Perhaps you dont think your readers will support you.

If you can use ccs to pay taxes and buy twitter followers.. I implore you to find a sustainable business model.

The-Monero-Moon-CCS-Proposal-August2022-John-Foss

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