Maybe he's trying to decide how big of a donation to give.
Close.
I've been using the Internet for about 23 years, and during that time, I have found that all web sites ( except, of course, for ones associated with obvious major corporations like CNN or Coca-Cola ) from the earliest days, caught on to the idea of a) asking for donations and b) asking for people to volunteer their time for nothing, e
ven when the web site was a profitable enterprise which gave the owner a higher income than his volunteers received from their employers.
Asking for donations arose early on, because online discussions started long before online advertising, and bandwidth costs are always a problem.
Rich people asking for poor people to volunteer their time started with the first political campaign.
It is hardly an innovation.
As an example, at the peak of Internet purchasing of DVD disks, some of the DVD discussion sitew would not allow a reference to a DVD, unless it was a link to a DVD store that contained a referral code for the site. Simple mathematics (number of site members and a conservative very low click through estimate) showed that the site owner should have been able to purchase his own private Caribbean island.
Despite that, he asked for donations and had the usual unpaid mods (because most sites do not make any money and so cannot pay mods).
Note that I consider this site worthwhile, and I always think it is fair for site owners to pocket some money as compensation for the huge amount of work owned.
Before renewing my membership, I just wanted to see if there was a least some need, so I am happy to do so.
But I do think that sites that ask for donations should give some indication of the need. And I understand that memberships are borderline, because some sort of privileges are given... although those are generally thank-you gifts rather than the purpose of the memberships.
