“Those who had nothing to give, stayed silent; those who had objections, chose some later or earlier time to voice them. That’s probably about the way things should be in a sane human community”
Personally I think that you were speaking to the wrong crowd when trying to fund raise. Or perhaps I should say too wide a crowd. Like trying to fundraise for tokamak fusion in a mailing list where people are interested in fusion in the generality. People who don’t believe that tokamaks will ever be stable/usable are duty bound to try and convince the other people of that so they won’t waste their money (also it means less money in the pot for their projects).
Geek cooperative projects can work, but generally only if there is a mathematical or empirical way to get everyone on the right page, or you have to filter the group you are trying to work with by philosophical position.
With regards to signaling agreement, I think part of the problem is that agreements tend to give little information. If everyone on a certain mailing list said I agree and here is how much money I am donating, I would consider it spam, too much bandwidth for not enough new information… Polls would probably be better, or the organiser of the fund raiser could give running updates (which I believe you did, IIRC).
“Those who had nothing to give, stayed silent; those who had objections, chose some later or earlier time to voice them. That’s probably about the way things should be in a sane human community”
Personally I think that you were speaking to the wrong crowd when trying to fund raise. Or perhaps I should say too wide a crowd. Like trying to fundraise for tokamak fusion in a mailing list where people are interested in fusion in the generality. People who don’t believe that tokamaks will ever be stable/usable are duty bound to try and convince the other people of that so they won’t waste their money (also it means less money in the pot for their projects).
Geek cooperative projects can work, but generally only if there is a mathematical or empirical way to get everyone on the right page, or you have to filter the group you are trying to work with by philosophical position.
With regards to signaling agreement, I think part of the problem is that agreements tend to give little information. If everyone on a certain mailing list said I agree and here is how much money I am donating, I would consider it spam, too much bandwidth for not enough new information… Polls would probably be better, or the organiser of the fund raiser could give running updates (which I believe you did, IIRC).