There are issues that have been on my mind for a few days, and I wanted to talk about them with you.
Downvotes
As you may notice, downvotes have been completely off for the last few days. I did this because I couldn't resist the pressure of some friends :/ I still don't know what to do about this. The majority of members probably want it to be completely open. As mods, posters and admins; some think it should be closed, some think it should be restricted (I guess).
I guess there is no solution that makes everyone happy. I realized I don't have admin skills in stressful situations, I'm a fucking stupid lol :D I miss @gabe so much.
lemmyposter212 suggested "fuzzy votes" or something that can work for us too. I think I'll just ghost this issue for a while.
Donations
As you know, all our donation accounts have been closed. Since it was my first time opening a site in the NSFW area, I had no experience. I reviewed some adult donation sites but most of them were shady. Honestly I couldn't trust them.
There are only coins now. But I guess most people don't want to deal with coins. It is because I didn't get any donations about 4 months now :D Those sent from Github Sponsor or Patreon were also returned to donators as well. I received $200-ish donations so far.
We are currently the 2nd largest instance in Lemmy. After lemmy.world, we're bigger than lemmy.ml and lemm.ee! I don't think it will work this way anymore. On an annual basis, I need to spend a month's salary for Lemmy NSFW.
Building community is hard, it's even harder when everyone is hard and/or wet...
I can't really offer much in terms of advice other than maybe reach out to people that have done this journey before? Top of mind is the guys and gals over at empornium.is which is a very active and alive NSFW community with healthy donation flow. It's of course not the exact same as what you've built here but I'm confident there is bound to be overlaps in challenges and experiences.
You do good work but you should of course not have to spend 1/12 of your income on helping us get off. Unless you're hardcore into FinDom that is...
The site is invite only and I don't have any to give out at this time I'm afraid. But the people active there can be reached on IRC. I'll send the details to you privately.