4 ms·

> Will Weird Gloop inevitably suffer the same fate? I hope not. Unless explicitly structured to prevent it, my bet is it will. If it's backed by a for-profit e

by diggan 2y ago

> Will Weird Gloop inevitably suffer the same fate? I hope not. Unless explicitly structured to prevent it, my bet is it will. If it's backed by a for-profit entity, it'll eventually need to turn a profit somehow, and users/visitors are the first to lose their experience at that point. However, if Weird Gloop is a properly registered non-profit with shared ownership between multiple individuals, I'll be much more likely to bet it won't suffer the same fate. I skimmed around a bit on the website to try to get an answer to if it is an non-profit, but didn't find anything obvious that says yes/no.

cookmeplox 2y ago
We're already turning a profit! And there are no third-party investors (or debt) – it's all controlled by wiki people[1] [1] https://meta.weirdgloop.org/w/Weird_Gloop_Limited https://meta.weirdgloop.org/w/Weird_Gloop_Limited
- diggan 2y ago
  Aw, I take that as it is in fact a for-profit company already. Regardless, I wish you luck for the future! May you not go down the almost inevitable enshittification hole.
  - cinntaile 2y ago
    If it started that way, I'd say it's less likely to end up "bad". Compared to non-profit websites that get sold to ad businesses.
  - robotnikman 2y ago
    At least it is a private company though, meaning they are are required to make constant year over year gains for shareholders and investors. They have much more control over where the company goes and how it operates.
    - ChadNauseam 2y ago
      publicly traded companies are not "required" to make constant year over year gains for shareholders and investors, that is just what the owners usually decide to tell the company to do. The owners of a privately traded company could decide to, and the owners of a publicly traded company could decide not to. For example, zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes and if other shareholders don't like it they can kick rocks. This is pretty much the same situation that people imagine is the case with privately traded companies, even though facebook is obviously publicly traded.
      - atomicnumber3 2y ago
        "that is just what the owners usually decide to tell the company to do" Because the entire system encourages it. The market rewards growth FAR more than it rewards a consistent dividend payout. (See: companies growing 40% YoY command a significfantly higher earnings multiple than those growing 10% YOY). So imo this is a like saying "people could decide to just invest money and then not seek the best returns possible." Also remember these shareholder are seldom John Smith principled human retail investor. It's firms whose entire purpose themselves is to seek maximum return. "The owners of a privately traded company could decide to" Meanwhile this DOES actually happen sometimes. See: Valve. We all know there's ways Valve could put up really great growth numbers for about 2-3 years while completely destroying all of the things that make Steam so god damn compelling to users that they can command the same cut as Apple, on an OPEN platform (vs Apple fighting utterly tooth and nail to keep iOS 100% airtight locked down). But they don't. "For example, zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes" TBC most founders/CEOs are NOT majority voters in their companies. They answer to the board. Most company founders lose voting control. The fact that Zuck is still in control is incredibly unusual and is a testament to how fast Facebook has grown that he's been able to keep hold of the reins.
        Reason077 2y ago
        Elon Musk is another CEO in total control. Although Tesla is a public company and therefore has a board, it’s stacked with Elon’s allies/appointees and answers to him, not the other way around. Despite Elon not being a majority owner of Tesla stock. And when he took over Twitter in 2022, he immediately dissolved the board and fired the executives who were on it.
  - adw 2y ago
    It’s a company limited by guarantee, which is the structure you use in the UK for non-charity non-profits.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
  How is it making money?
  - cookmeplox 2y ago
    We have services agreements with the League of Legends and RuneScape developers, and we run 1 ad (below-the-fold, not in EU/UK) on the RuneScape wikis. This covers all expenses (including 5 staff) by a pretty healthy margin
  - hiatus 2y ago
    It is described in the linked article. > The company primarily relies on three streams of revenue: user donations, serving ads on select Weird Gloop wikis, and a contract with Jagex that includes a fee to cover hosting and administration costs.
    - dingnuts 2y ago
      I didn't see anything in the article about setting up incentives to keep the same thing from happening to Weird Gloop that happened to Fandom, which means the blog post is just empty marketing. The only difference is that Weird Gloop is the little guy. Competition is good! That might be a good enough reason to choose them if you're in the market for wiki hosting! But the moral posturing won't last if they become dominant, unless they set up incentives fundamentally differently than Fandom did, which doesn't seem to be the case. As long as advertising is one of their revenue sources, the user experience will get crappy as soon as the network effects make it hard to leave. The cycle continues.
      - 35skill 2y ago
        Did you read the post? There's a whole section talking about how they are entering into binding agreements that let communities leave (and take the domain) if they have a better option
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
madeofpalk 2y ago
Can we flip it? Some companies are explicitly structured to guarantee enshittification. Venture capital/private equity is what causes this. We've been poisoned to believe that websites should exist purely to achieve hyperscale and extract as much money as possible. When you look at the real physical world there are tons of small "mom and pop" businesses that are content with being self sustainable without some special corporate structure to legally require that. Maybe websites could be the same?
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  There are millions of websites like that. They don't show up on the first page of search results, so nobody finds them.
  - godshatter 2y ago
    Mainly because our biggest search engine is owned by an ad agency.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  I work for private equity, and while we have a lot of layoffs, we don’t necessarily pursue short term gains (at least, as far as I can determine not as a factor of being PE anyway)

by diggan 2y ago

cookmeplox 2y ago

We're already turning a profit! And there are no third-party investors (or debt) – it's all controlled by wiki people[1] [1] https://meta.weirdgloop.org/w/Weird_Gloop_Limited https://meta.weirdgloop.org/w/Weird_Gloop_Limited

diggan 2y ago
Aw, I take that as it is in fact a for-profit company already. Regardless, I wish you luck for the future! May you not go down the almost inevitable enshittification hole.
- cinntaile 2y ago
  If it started that way, I'd say it's less likely to end up "bad". Compared to non-profit websites that get sold to ad businesses.
- robotnikman 2y ago
  At least it is a private company though, meaning they are are required to make constant year over year gains for shareholders and investors. They have much more control over where the company goes and how it operates.
  - ChadNauseam 2y ago
    publicly traded companies are not "required" to make constant year over year gains for shareholders and investors, that is just what the owners usually decide to tell the company to do. The owners of a privately traded company could decide to, and the owners of a publicly traded company could decide not to. For example, zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes and if other shareholders don't like it they can kick rocks. This is pretty much the same situation that people imagine is the case with privately traded companies, even though facebook is obviously publicly traded.
    - atomicnumber3 2y ago
      "that is just what the owners usually decide to tell the company to do" Because the entire system encourages it. The market rewards growth FAR more than it rewards a consistent dividend payout. (See: companies growing 40% YoY command a significfantly higher earnings multiple than those growing 10% YOY). So imo this is a like saying "people could decide to just invest money and then not seek the best returns possible." Also remember these shareholder are seldom John Smith principled human retail investor. It's firms whose entire purpose themselves is to seek maximum return. "The owners of a privately traded company could decide to" Meanwhile this DOES actually happen sometimes. See: Valve. We all know there's ways Valve could put up really great growth numbers for about 2-3 years while completely destroying all of the things that make Steam so god damn compelling to users that they can command the same cut as Apple, on an OPEN platform (vs Apple fighting utterly tooth and nail to keep iOS 100% airtight locked down). But they don't. "For example, zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes" TBC most founders/CEOs are NOT majority voters in their companies. They answer to the board. Most company founders lose voting control. The fact that Zuck is still in control is incredibly unusual and is a testament to how fast Facebook has grown that he's been able to keep hold of the reins.
      - Reason077 2y ago
        Elon Musk is another CEO in total control. Although Tesla is a public company and therefore has a board, it’s stacked with Elon’s allies/appointees and answers to him, not the other way around. Despite Elon not being a majority owner of Tesla stock. And when he took over Twitter in 2022, he immediately dissolved the board and fired the executives who were on it.
- adw 2y ago
  It’s a company limited by guarantee, which is the structure you use in the UK for non-charity non-profits.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
How is it making money?
- cookmeplox 2y ago
  We have services agreements with the League of Legends and RuneScape developers, and we run 1 ad (below-the-fold, not in EU/UK) on the RuneScape wikis. This covers all expenses (including 5 staff) by a pretty healthy margin
- hiatus 2y ago
  It is described in the linked article. > The company primarily relies on three streams of revenue: user donations, serving ads on select Weird Gloop wikis, and a contract with Jagex that includes a fee to cover hosting and administration costs.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    I didn't see anything in the article about setting up incentives to keep the same thing from happening to Weird Gloop that happened to Fandom, which means the blog post is just empty marketing. The only difference is that Weird Gloop is the little guy. Competition is good! That might be a good enough reason to choose them if you're in the market for wiki hosting! But the moral posturing won't last if they become dominant, unless they set up incentives fundamentally differently than Fandom did, which doesn't seem to be the case. As long as advertising is one of their revenue sources, the user experience will get crappy as soon as the network effects make it hard to leave. The cycle continues.
    - 35skill 2y ago
      Did you read the post? There's a whole section talking about how they are entering into binding agreements that let communities leave (and take the domain) if they have a better option
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

madeofpalk 2y ago

Can we flip it? Some companies are explicitly structured to guarantee enshittification. Venture capital/private equity is what causes this. We've been poisoned to believe that websites should exist purely to achieve hyperscale and extract as much money as possible. When you look at the real physical world there are tons of small "mom and pop" businesses that are content with being self sustainable without some special corporate structure to legally require that. Maybe websites could be the same?

SoftTalker 2y ago
There are millions of websites like that. They don't show up on the first page of search results, so nobody finds them.
- godshatter 2y ago
  Mainly because our biggest search engine is owned by an ad agency.
Aeolun 2y ago
I work for private equity, and while we have a lot of layoffs, we don’t necessarily pursue short term gains (at least, as far as I can determine not as a factor of being PE anyway)