Forum:Financial Questions

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I have some questions for the accountant of this site:

• Who is the accountant (or the person who handles the donations)?
• Are contributions to Uncyclopedia tax-deductible? Given the (arguably political, decidedly noneducational, purely for entertainment) nature of this site, I think that they are not tax-deductible in the U.S. because Uncyclopedia does not meet any of the criteria for a 501c3 nonprofit organization that are posted on the IRS' website[1][2]. Are they tax deductible anywhere in the world?
• Will formal or informal financial statements (or an income statement at least) be posted to the Village Dump or elsewhere where the Uncyclopedia community can view them regularly? If not, why not?
• Which country's laws apply to the working of this site? If there is a non-profit organization, which country is it organized in?

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Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 04:10, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

As usual, I handle donations and merchandise sales. My qualifications are that I have a calculator and a Jewish friend. Donations to Uncyclopedia are not tax-deductible in the U.S. because it's classified as a 501(C)7 Social and Recreation Club. I don't know about contributions from taxpayers in other countries but I'll certainly look into that information and post what I can find here. Formal financial statements will be available in PDF format on the donations page every three months. --EMC ^[TALK] 20:01 Feb 25 2013

Thank you, that answers most of my questions. Is the Uncyclomedia Foundation organized here in the U.S.? I will go to the donations page soon and look for the statements there. Once I have my property tax covered, I might donate a little bit soon. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 21:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes it is organized in the United States and Uncyclopedia's content is still subject to U.S. laws. --EMC ^[TALK] 21:41 Feb 25 2013

As a social group it'd fall under a similar blanket in Australia, which would make it likewise non-tax deductible. It would also be exempt from having to be claimed on tax returns by the partners of organisation if the total earnings were below AUD$1,500 per annum, if based here, so I'm assuming there is a similar threshold in the US. That considers a total profit/loss factor, by the way. (There's an answer from an Australian ex-bank managers perspective on the taxable aspect. That would cover approximately 2 potential donors.)

As a rough figure, what have been the profit/loss of the site so far? Are we gleaning enough from sales/donations to meet ongoing cost? (And assuming we aren't, how soon until that becomes an issue?) Nominally Humane! 11:39 25 Feb

It works differently in the U.S. We don't have to claim Uncyclopedia on our taxes at all, and we could only lose our tax exempt status if 35% of our revenue comes from sources outside of our "membership", which in this case we claim is both our users and readers. In other words, if store sales and the ads on our e-store make up more than 35% of our revenue then we'll have to try and claim as a 501(C)4. And I can't make a projection about whether we're on target until our first report is out in March but the information at the bottom of the Donate page is still pretty accurate. --EMC ^[TALK] 01:23 Feb 26 2013

The current situation is unsustainable

Well, we may just as well head over the fiscal cliff of Uncyclopedia like the US did, or we find another way of getting revenue. Why not we advertise Uncyclopedia on Google? We shouldn't have ads on Uncyclopedia, but we can advertise Uncyclopedia and make it part of the revenue. Just saying, that advertising Uncyclopedia can bring more customers and therefore more people willing to donate to Uncyclopedia. |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Aussie CUN|IC Kill | 03:49, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I too am concerned, given what I saw on the donate page. Is the server expense recurring, or was it a one time cost? If it is recurring, how long before we become plastered in ads or require our readers to donate to read this wiki? If it was a one time cost, this is less of a concern, since eventually donations will cover it though it may take a few years at this rate. Advertising Uncyclopedia would bring more readers, and more potential donors, but would bring with it additional expenses. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 04:17, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, so for just the servers alone we are actually looking at $100 on a month-to-month basis beginning April 11th. I just talked to Lyrithya about this thread and we're going to begin a fundraising campaign with goal of $1,500 which would obviously cover a whole year plus various fees we anticipate paying. Advertising is something we can consider if we can first just cover the cost of the site. --EMC ^[TALK] 05:51 Feb 26 2013

Are we talking about raising $1,500 by April 11th, or are we looking at that target over a 12 month basis, and just hoping we can keep up enough energy on it that it develops into a steady stream of income? Nominally Humane! 09:42 26 Feb

I think that you guys are paying too much for the quality you've received, honestly. Ajraddatz (Talk) 00:48, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Why do you say that? -— Lyrithya ༆ 02:55, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Because Uncyclopedia is the Worst. Duh. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 05:56, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I told Legoktm a bit about it... I think I know of a much cheaper alternative which would do far more for you. BUT, give me a couple of weeks to make sure it actually works with a large wiki. Ajraddatz (Talk) 18:00, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

No ads?

Ads suck. However, one site which was linked to some UnNews, some newspaper, has an option: want to see ads or not? That would be elegant. I don't know how much advertisers would pay for ads nobody watches - but they do already pay for ones everybody hates. -- Style  Guide 09:28, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

We've talked about ads but the problem, aside from not wanting them at all, is that we don't have any traffic information yet because somebody didn't set up Google Analytics properly. And I suspect that we don't have the traffic (yet) to charge $100 a month for ad space on Uncyclopedia. Although if ads ever were to be installed on Uncyclopedia, they would be very limited and email confirmed users would not see them. But right now this is not even an option on the table and Uncyclopedia will remain ad free. --EMC ^[TALK] 16:26 Feb 28 2013

I think ads are the way to go if we want to be sustainable. Just use adblock if you don't care for them. We have that bare area below the sidebar and you could put one at the base. Any extra money might go back into a Poo Lit Surprise competition and increasing visitor rates (you could earn $50 writing here and winning blah blah blah). --Nikau (talk) 15:09, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I forgot the copyright issues. Damn. --Nikau (talk) 15:12, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, how many users do we have?

If we have 30 users and everyone gives 50, problem's solved. For 60 users it will be 25. 120 users, 12,50. Getting anywhere? -- Style  Guide 18:02, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

You assume that people who use this site have $50. -- The Zombiebaron 19:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Where? I rather assume we might have 120 users. -- Style  Guide 19:56, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm technically still a student...one who is forced to eats chineese instant noodles for the last few days of each month. How I'd love to have 50 dollars to donate. --ShabiDOO 01:56, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I am 16 and have no control over my bank accounts. Not everyone can donate. ~Sir Frosty (Talk to me!) 07:54, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I feel you, man. I'm 20 and I don't have any control over my bank accounts. Lord Scofield Stark 13:58, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Flippin' ek . . . yer all ankle biters! <scream> I'm 58 (and feel nearly dead). Are there any other KOS here? Hoof Hearted (talk) 23:04, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not quite that old, but I do have grey in my beard. (I need to start putting a blue rinse through it.) Nominally Humane! 12:07 01 Mar

I'm 14, and when my allowance is hiked a few monies then I will try. Why don't a few uncyclopedians get together and play guitar and drums on the street of their nearest big city, with a hate hate hat out for donations, and a big sign explaining what they're doing. All the cool 14 years olds participate in drum circles. Aleister 12:45 1-3-'13

Let me ask again:

How many users do we have, approximately? 120 who would be willing to pester their moms and dads for 12,50 to keep Uncyclopedia alive for a year? Don't tell me all our student users are orphans. -- Style  Guide 06:51, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Special:ActiveUsers. But that includes those with less than a dozen edits over the last 30 days. (Including me. And Page blanking troll.) Nominally Humane! 07:04 27 Feb

Harasoo. I counted approximately 60-80 users with more than a couple of actions during the last 30 days. I must admit this is slightly less than I thought. In any case - if all those can be shaken for $25, issue is solved, right? Well, in any case, to have any hope of steering the site through the financial (how can i put it in the most positive way?) fuckup, we should keep writing articles that are funny enough to pay for. (I almost typed "good enough" there, but what does "good" have to do with "funny"? Maybe if they have sex.) -- Style  Guide 07:46, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Just a thought but why not start an official eBay account? I've seen comedy ads on there from time to time though it could be used to sell actual items (donated possibly by editors or readers). The "draw" would be the account and item descriptions being written in a comedic tone though they would be legitimate sales. This could be done as UnStore or perhaps as a fictional eBay seller. In any case, it might defray some of the costs and be a neat way to promote the website. MadMax (talk) 01:45, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Let's start selling hair elastics that were used by Jesus on eBay. We will get $15,000 in no time. -- The Zombiebaron 01:52, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Now you're just being ridiculous. Jesus never used hair elastics on Ebay. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 03:04, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

You mean, GalileeBay? |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Aussie CUN|IC Kill | 11:23, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

And I say woe unto thee, ye Snipers and Pharisees. For thoust bump up cost of postage and handling, yet deliver by standard mail. Nominally Humane! 01:01 28 Feb

Even Wikipedia only expects $5 per user in its occasional fundraising drives, and it offers an excellent resource. I think if this wiki asks for donations, people will drift elsewhere. I don't see the problem with ads, - there's a huge difference between tacky/pop-up ads and discreet ones offering relevant products and services. Ads on FaceBook and Google are non-intrusive in terms of appearance, for example. Leverage (talk) 13:14, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Ads on Facebook and google both are horrible. Google's ads are becoming more and more intrusive, so it's becoming harder to determine what is an ad and what is a link. And Facebook ads are ugly and take up real estate - to the point where I no longer use Facebook - predominantly to avoid the constant barrage of advertising. But adding advertising brings up the issue of retaining content that has been licensed under CC-NC, along with any other issues that may crop up as being sponsored by a commercial entity. Nominally Humane! 02:09 28 Feb

Useless proposition

Get a few of my paintings sold and you'll get 1500 pretty quick. We can split the sell 50/50. They've been gathering dust since last spring. It's too slow for the present situation, but the offer stands. -- Style  Guide 06:33, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

ALSO, and perhaps more importantly

A bit over $100 per month? Are you sure? Is that because of the traffic? It can hardly be because of the storage space needed, can it? -- Style  Guide 08:47, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Which is a valid point. I used to do contracting work for a host locally. I figure about $30-$40 per month for hosting - based upon size required and active elements. Add sundries for domain name, technical, and other crap an extra $100 for set up. Nominally Humane! 09:25 27 Feb

Yeah. You might want to ask Mhaille, for instance. He has at the very least decent current connections. -- Style  Guide 09:54, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Uncyc runs on dedicated leased servers. It actually sounds like a screaming deal, considering what I've paid over the years for colo space and hardware to fill it. This server is cheap in comparison to most shared server hosting with similar bandwidth available. You'd be floored by how much one company I managed the site/servers for was paying per dedicated leased server and less bandwidth 8 years ago. » Brig Sir Dawg | t | v | c » 2013.03.03.14:37

Update

The figure of $100 per month is correct. It's a bit expensive because we expect to host several other foreign language Uncyclopedias who said they would not be on board until after the move. We are working with them now to bring their sites over, thus increasing the pool of potential donors. Right now our goal for this fundraiser is $500 by April 11th, which will cover the site until September when we will hopefully have more sites moved off of Wikia. We invite you all to donate or share the donation page with friends, family, pets, complete strangers, and the pets of complete strangers. We'll put out our first revenue and expense report in April, not March, so we'll know where we stand and if we need to look into other alternatives for revenue or hosting. I'll update the donations page periodically as more donations come in. --EMC ^[TALK] 16:21 Feb 28 2013

The main reason I was really surprised at the "low" cost was that I like looking at a rabid right-wing website named FreeRepublic for the entertainment value as well as for some news they dig up which I don't see elsewhere. It seems once or twice a year the owner moans and groans and sets a fundraising limit of something like 25,000 dollars American, just to keep his server going and to keep it ad-free. Methinks he and his family and his nephews and nieces may be making a living off of the gullible users there. I don't have a server or website, so never knew the cost of being hosted. When my ship comes in I'll be donating a nice amount, but the ship is somewhere out to sea and presumed lost at the moment, but I've got my eyeglass out and some spotters on the shore. Aleister 12:54 1-3-'13

Kickstarter

Maybe. We ARE a creative something or other, after all. -- T​K​F​​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​UU​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​CK 05:20, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

GREAT IDEA:If we do kickstarter...the proposal should be first class done. We should also be prepared to have VERY clear ideas of ownership and a plan incase it gets popular and TONS of money comes in (which is a rather small but still possible result). --ShabiDOO 13:43, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

It could become a public company, and people could buy shares in it, and show their stake to other investors as part of a sexy portfolio. --Leverage (talk) 14:53, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Why not? There are quite a few good writers on board and so forth et cetera. The only risk about making it an actual business is that shareholders might start grumbling if we insult values they believe in. And then again, who with any insultable values would buy Uncyclopedia stock in the first place? It might work. Style  Guide 16:30, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Most kick starter proposals bring in little money. But those that catch on can explode into donations of thousands of dollars. Im just saying that having even a skeleton plan isn't a bad idea...in any case. --ShabiDOO 23:43, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Let's just corner the market and we'll be rich. I think it's pretty simple. -- Style  Guide 06:09, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

We have a cornerable market? Nominally Humane! 06:22 02 Mar

Oops. -- Style  Guide 08:13, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

North Korea

Could we get them so make some Uncyclopedia.co propaganda? How does that sound? —  (talk) (contributions) 16:45, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Ask them. -- Style  Guide 16:54, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I thought Uncyclopedia was already a North Korean Limited Liability Corporation. » Brig Sir Dawg | t | v | c » 2013.03.08.17:54

Wait... uh...

[Based on what was said above] Uncyclopedia is organised in the US, not Uncyclomedia Foundation, or is it? Uncyclomedia Foundation is meant as the international board ("umbrella" or something with this genre) for fun with possibility for hosting, not to be seen as a real organisation or whatsoever. Apart from this wiki, the rest of Uncyclomedia is more or less Canadian with kind of strict obedience to local laws (in case of Oncyclopedia that is the Belgian Federal Government and the Dutch Government). Given the fact that things are mostly written in a foreign language, the projects' content will not affect the US or so (technically yes, but no one would ever discover by translation). So the impact of these US laws, you can say, are relative. However, I express my fear that you won't communicate about projects (including UnMeta, UnCommons and so on) that will be placed under the US. As a logical result, the local integrity of foreign wikis *that are not officially organised anywhere* might be overruled by legal decisions made by the US in shared bases such as UnCommons. For instance, a picture in this hosting's UnCommons base is banned, but is still used in the orginal (CarlB's) one. As the orginal one is no part of a legal entity except for Carl himself AND seen the fact that the two versions bare the same name, the US could have the permission to ban it with us as well. My thinking contains definitely holes and my argumentation is not that perfect, but I just want to avoid that any of your actions (copying wikis from us and such) would lead to complicated issues. Dunno what exactly the staff of this wiki is aiming at, but I would advise to stick to your decent project of running Uncyclopedia independently and, when you choose to include "foreign" wikis that are part of the Uncyclomedia hosting (CarlB), to communicate about it with us (CarlB, me, Roy, communities in question or someone who's active around). Not that we are the decisive factors, but just to keep us informed.

My concrete questions to this staff is - before you use the terms in further communication:

• define "Uncyclomedia" and tell what this term has to do with you, Uncyclopedia, as a legal entity;
• what kind of organisation/legal entity is this wiki part of?
• if it's a legal entity, there must be statutes, charters, rules, or alike. This is not "don't be a dick", it's more than that.
• what will you tell to communities that plan to move to your servers? Will they be restricted by US laws for things they are actually allowed to express in their home country? Or vice versa? I'm not going to commence debate about how liberal US rules are, but communities must know what precisely they are facing. If you know what I mean.

If this is again a fantasy or a bizarre dream of mine, just... forget the above. Only, I must know to what I want to give my donation and want people to be clear about their terminology... 83.134.65.38 02:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Everything is completely in stable status. We did legal work earlier. Although I, myself, do not know much more details.  SIR Peasewhizz de NY Biblio HOS Awards 02:14 3.15.13

Get Desciclopedia!

Maybe the Brazilians can run the website for us. Just saying. |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Aussie CUN|IC Kill | 09:57, 20 March 2013 (UTC)