Running a major platform like Blender Artists is not easy or cheap. We invest a LOT of time in keeping things running here, both at a technical level as well as in moderating the conversations and ensuring a more positive ‘vibe’ here (we think it’s starting to work!).
While we currently break even financially, having extra financial resources will greatly help us improve the platform with things like:
Upgrade our storage (we’re burning through 3GB a week now and don’t want to clamp down user uploads - you need to be able to share your art!).
Invest more in moderation and community activities.
Invest more time in platform maintenance and optimization.
Fund additional plugin or theme development to futher customise the forum.
Becoming a supporter at any level will remove the AdSense banners from the site. Perhaps you were already using an ad blocker, but now you won’t have to feel bad about it anymore
The Commercial Supporter tier gives access to the Promotions category and allows for 1 commercial post/bump per month + 2 days of global pinning. Each additional $10 will get you one extra day of pinning. See also the update on our commercial policy.
We also offer other options for commercial promotion, please send @bartv a private message to learn more about these.
Finally, all Patreons will also receive a supporters badge.
I don’t want to wear a badge with the word casual on it. Casual supporters support your site with clicks, comments, debate, and answering support questions.
I now have other gripes too. I’ll keep those to myself here. Others have posted many of these complaints elsewhere.
Perhaps I didn’t use the best word for it, but I’m disappointed to see that you choose to interpret that as ‘intimidation’ and decide to therefore not support us. I was hoping the team built up a little more credit than that.
We’re doing an honest thing here and would love to have your support!
At the least, one can just turn off any ad blocker for this site. The ad policy has been carefully done to prevent the intrusion of any that suck data, suck CPU cycles, or try to deliver malware.
I also don’t see how the tier names are any different from the Development Fund tiers, everyone knows that bronze isn’t worth as much as gold so someone could contort that into saying people on that tier aren’t as valuable. The higher tiers have to sound more valuable simply because they will cost you more.
Not right now, I suppose I would have to create separate tiers on Patreon that would not add a badge, but I’m a bit worried this would make things harder to understand. Is this a big issue for you?
If you’re talking about the dev fund badges, it’s already available and I already set mine as private. However it’s not on the Blender Cloud but on Blender ID.
@bartv Since ads don’t seem to be so welcome by some users, what do you think of doing a Wikipedia-like annual donation campaign to be able to drop them?