Thanks so much for your generous contributions! It is with great pleasure that I can report that we’ve raised enough to cover our costs for another year! The Google Ads have been removed.
As a small token of our appreciation for our supporters, I’d like to send you some AstroBetter stickers. If you contributed and want some stickers, send your mailing address to kelle@astrobetter.com and I’ll snail mail some to you!
If you haven’t contributed, please consider it.
You can always access the contribution form and the links to our affiliate programs (Amazon, BlueHost, Dropbox, Thesis Theme) via the Support page, which is now a menu item in the top navigation bar.
Thanks again for ensuring the longterm success of the AstroBetter blog and wiki! As always, please continue to tell your students and colleagues about the site!
Kelle et al: Thank you for providing this site to the community. I’m just curious though, isn’t the upkeep of a site like astrobetter only around $100 / year, or is there something I’m missing here? Many of us have blogs or websites for collaborative projects aimed at providing something useful to the astronomical community, but this is the first time I’ve seen one requesting personally-donated funds. Doesn’t something this small get covered under the auspices of soft money?
It’s been a couple years and I spend more than $100 a year on it. I’d even like to consider spending significantly more if it will improve the performance (i.e., speed) and reliability of the site. (Things seem to be stable at the moment…but no promises in Jan/Feb when the Rumor Mill will be slammed.)
Up until now, I have covered the costs out of my own pocket, not out of “soft-money” research funds. As this site is not supporting any of my research projects, it would actually not be appropriate for me to charge these expenses to those grants. Plus, like I said in the original post, I want to maintain complete intellectual and creative freedom to say whatever the hell I want without NASA or the NSF getting their feathers ruffled.
There’s also the issue of putting real value on my and the other contributors time and effort. While maintaining this site brings me (and the other contributors) great personal satisfaction, it does not actually move my career as an Astronomy Professor forward in any way. Indeed, it might even hinder it. The small financial contributions from a small percentage of our readership really goes a long way in allowing us to continue to justify dedicating our extremely precious time to providing and maintaining a community resource.