No problem
whee, I'm not offended and would always rather folks feel comfortable with speaking freely than have them feeling like they can't say something because they don't want to hurt my feelings.
There are several reasons for not elaborating on the servo installation here. First, I need to be sure that the installation works, lest I lead someone else down the wrong path. Second, if the forum was the best place for it, then this thread probably wouldn't be. The third is that I'd rather have the content in the newsletter. I think less about trying to sell more newsletters and more about trying to provide better value to the folks who have already paid for it, but I realize those two may be the same thing.
The intersection of free information and monetized information gets sticky. This is something that I think about a lot, and have tried to find good balance with. That thinking leads me to believe that whether or not information is free to consume, it is never free to produce. In a setting like this, the information is generously donated by the folks who post it. It is also subsidized by other participants who pass it through an editorial process by speaking up when it seems to be wrong or unclear. It is also subsidized by the provider of the venue, which in this case is Bearhawk Aircraft and BH Services LLC. We have some really generous people who donate a lot of time and effort to help fellow builders, which is great. The minor costs of keeping the lights on (so to speak) are insignificant when compared to the value of these efforts.
When we took over the Beartracks venture from its last publisher in 2012, I talked at length with several builders to try and make a good plan going forward. Some made the very good case that the newsletter content should be available for free, including back issues. (Safety updates, while included in the newsletter and sometimes elaborated on there, should always be free). Some made the very good case that if we are charging for the newsletter, we should not expect the writers to donate the content. We face the reality that as of now, the web hosting company, security certificate company, and domain registrars do not provide their services for free. Who should incur those costs, and at what stage in the overall information delivery process? We arrived at the following compromise: we halved the cost of the pdf newsletter from $16 to $8 per year. We started paying writers a small amount to offset their trouble, though it is never enough to really pay what the content is worth, at least to me. In an effort to increase the value of the back issue content without increasing the price, we manually input all of the past issues into a database-driven venue that allows for easier access and interaction. (This was a project of hundreds, not tens of hours). Keep in mind that while the content in that archive is far from perfect and very far from complete, all of it has at one point passed under the eyes of Bob Barrows and received his nod, and much of it has received similar approval from Mark. Mark sees much of what is on the forum and will speak up if he disagrees, but it is safe to assume that essentially none of the content here has Bob's oversight.
The additional cost of producing the newsletter is in the effort it takes to rustle up content, assemble it, send it out for various approvals, and distribute it to the subscribers. Those things require about as much time as managing subscriptions, handling changes to addresses, etc. For the few folks that still subscribe to the paper version, we maintain an expensive color laser printer, buy stamps, envelopes, etc. The extra $10 per year doesn't cover the additional cost of the paper version of the newsletter, but being that we have so few people using that option, I'd rather subsidize that minor loss and not have to increase the yearly rate, which already seems so high.
To give you some napkin-level math about the financial situation of the newsletter, half of all subscription fees go to paying the writers and the expenses related to internet delivery. (I'll add that when we can't get enough writers to fill an issue, then I have to write articles to make up the difference, though I don't pay myself for those articles). That leaves about $1000 per year. About half of this is consumed by subsidizing the other Bearhawk internet ventures like the message board, and in paying the expenses related to housekeeping for the LLC. The rest, if divided by the approximate number of hours devoted to the newsletter alone, pays me at a rate of around $5 per hour, unless it instead covers some one-time expense of the Bearhawk-related stuff, like expenses to keep the store going, etc. I don't ever actually pay myself that money, it just sits in the LLC's account, and somehow finds its way to some other expense as time goes on. I have the good fortune of having a very well-paid day job (at least as of now) and without getting into specifics, let's just say that a year's worth of Bearhawk work pays less than a couple of hours of day job work. I say this not because I'm asking for sympathy or compliments, but rather just to make the point that while, yes, money does change hands in the newsletter, the few things that I help coordinate in the BH community are labors of love. I do them because as a builder, I want for them to be done, and it seems that nobody else wants to do them.
