So, bottom line: nobody will know where the donations go...

erinja:...Esperanto people tend to get upset if you pay the market rate for technical work, somehow there is this expectation that Esperanto work should come free or cheap...

Low wages = exploitation. I thought Esperantists were supposed to be more left wing.

There aren't a huge number of Esperanto books on Amazon, and I personally see it as a bit problematic to direct beginners straight to Amazon for Esperanto books

They can buy anything from Amazon. If I was going to buy something on Amazon (like a new iPad), I would be happy to do it through Lernu so that Lernu could make a few dollars. I don't recommend Esperanto books because, as you said, they are few and far between.

I think they have a generic option so that they decide what to display. You won't even have to choose the products. Amazon will choose the products that they think is best.

When we launch our new course, we do also envision selling it in book form...

I think this a brilliant idea and I will certainly buy because I trust that the quality will be high considering the source.

Make sure you add a section and checkbox to the purchase screen that says "Would you like to add a 5 dollar donation to Lernu"

If you click this link and go to amazon, the TYT network will get a percentage of ANYTHING you buy.

[url= http://www.amazon.com/?tag=theyoungturks-20]http://www.amazon.com/?tag=theyoungturks-20[/url]

This is from their website:

Did you know you can support The Young Turks for FREE by shopping online at Amazon.com? Visit Amazon via this link http://www.amazon.com/?tag=theyoungturks-20...

...Your shopping experience on Amazon will be absolutely normal, it will cost you nothing extra, but a small percentage of the cost of your order will be donated to us to help keep our show independent.

This is a good example of what Lernu could do. You might end up with enough revenue that you have a full paid staff of tutors. It is just something to consider.

Alkanadi:

Vestitor:I remember reading on the ESF site about the sums they've put into Lernu - well over a million dollars altogether. I assume that was an initial boost to get things to where they are?

OMG! I hope that is not true. I can create this site and make it even better (such as better functioning and more user friendly forums) in less than 1 day. And, it would be a thousand times more maintainable. The only thing I would struggle with is the dictionary and translating the site to multiple languages because I don't speak multiple languages.

It looks like you did not read my message earlier in the thread. It's roughly 765k over the course of 13 years. That includes not just paid work (art, recording of sounds, programming) but also server fees, some limited travel so the team can have an occasional meeting, etc.

If you want to re-design the site from scratch, you can pay me a million dollars for one day's work.

However, maybe Lernu was so expensive because it was created before turn-key, server-side software was widely available.

This is a joke, right? It has to be a joke, or else you have no idea what goes into a website of this nature. This site is massive and complex. Interactive exercises are individually programmed in. No one could create it in a day, with interactive exercises, translation software, etc. The translation interface alone took weeks (the interface that allows translators to translate the content of the site piece by piece, and see their translations show up immediately - through their normal lernu account, not through having access to the code of the page).

If you really think you can make a better lernu in a day, go ahead and do it. I would love to see it. It is only a day of your time so it won't take a lot of time. You could do it on a Sunday when you don't have a lot to do.

What you are saying is not so different from the Esperanto people who think you can easily make everything free and operate it with volunteers (not ESF, by the way - they pay real money for work). People freaked out when the UEA budgeted EUR 100k to redo their website, and the UEA has a less complex site than lernu. And it's not a one-day project either.

nornen:So, bottom line: nobody will know where the donations go...

Like I said, you should write to ESF and ask them to put a simplified breakdown on their website. I am not sure why you don't do this. It seems more productive than sitting and discussing it in an internet forum that no one from ESF is reading (and I am not ESF, I only interface with them on lernu issues).

They're in the process of redoing their site so I'm sure they would welcome feedback regarding content to include. An expanded donor information page seems reasonable.

erinja:

If you want to re-design the site from scratch, you can pay me a million dollars for one day's work.

This is a joke, right? It has to be a joke, or else you have no idea what goes into a website of this nature.

Nope. No joke. I fully respect you and your opinion. I don't want to get into an argument.

This site is massive and complex.

I know. It is enormous compared to a normal site.

Interactive exercises are individually programmed in.

I can set up something comparable.

No one could create it in a day.

Yes, I can. To be conservative, I will say 'two days' at the most.

The translation interface alone took weeks.

This is the part I would struggle with. This is what I meant when I was talking about the dictionary popups. Also, translating the site to multiple languages will be hard because I don't speak multiple languages.

If you really think you can make a better lernu in a day, go ahead and do it.

1- I like to make decisions based on a cost benefit analysis (pros and cons). What is the benefit? The cost is about 500 dollars of overhead.

2- I don't speak Esperanto well. This would cause a problem creating the course material. I can't make a website for Esperantists when I don't speak Esperanto.

Anyway, I respect you and your opinion and I understand why it is hard to believe.

Alkanadi:

If you really think you can make a better lernu in a day, go ahead and do it.

1- I like to make decisions based on a cost benefit analysis (pros and cons). What is the benefit? The cost is about 500 dollars of overhead.

2- I don't speak Esperanto well. This would cause a problem creating the course material. I can't make a website for Esperantists when I don't speak Esperanto.

Anyway, I respect you and your opinion and I understand why it is hard to believe.

It's not hard to believe. It's impossible to believe, and you can't possibly respect my opinion, because you still insist you could program this site in two days. It's a totally insane statement. I will have to tell lernu programmers that one of our forum users has offered to redo our whole site in two days. I am sure they will have a good laugh, then invite you to do it, because it's hysterical.

It's obvious that you have no idea of the complexity of this site, otherwise you wouldn't be making bold statements that you could program it in only two days.

I'm sure you are very capable but the biggest computer genius and language expert in the world could not program this site in two days. And if that person really does exist, she should contact us because we can just give her half of our budget in a chunk and have the site done in two days (program the exercises, match audio to exercises, write translation interface from scratch, custom forums, etc).

Also I don't think you understood what I meant about the translation interface. No one on this site speaks all those languages. You need only one (human) language to write this site, because the site and all of its content are written in one language only. And you don't even need to speak that language to do the programming. You just program the site and then copy and paste the text. That's how the lernu programmers also programmed a site for teaching Slovak, although neither one speaks any Slovak. Someone else wrote the content and they just wrote the site, of course, though they did learn a little Slovak just from copying and pasting massive amounts of Slovak text and programming exercises.

Obviously you have the base text (in one language) and that's combined with the custom translation interface. Volunteer translators use the translation interface to translate the content. You need zero language skills to program the dictionary interface, it's just database calls, etc. So go ahead. The content is translated. Just write the site with our present content and program it to call up the prewritten translations. You don't need to know any languages. You only program the interface that the volunteers use to translate the content. Simple, right? And custom forums that also automatically put the correct characters in text, also with clickable translations linking to the dictionary. You don't need to speak Esperanto for any of that. It's pretty easy and quick. Right?

erinja:It's not hard to believe. It's impossible to believe... It's obvious that you have no idea of the complexity of this site

What if someone said they will make a website comparable to Facebook, and they will do it in a very short period of time with no programming experience or IT knowledge. And they will make it for a couple hundred dollars. They would be crazy, right?

Yet here it is:
http://verduloj.com/

Roch:Jcow!

Comparison of social networking software

But I haven't heard of any of them!

Yes, it is JCow. There are so many platforms and available software plugins/extensions that are available these days.

You can literally build a site with the same functionality as Facebook, twitter, reddit, ect... and it takes less than a day if you know what you are doing.

The place where I work had a crappy site that didn't work properly. The back end was a mess and very hard to work with. They paid people to program it the old fashion way. It costed them thousands of dollars.

I recreated the site, made it more attractive, added more functionality, and made it more maintainable, ect... And the back end is beautiful. And it has a mobile version that it didn't have before. I did it in a few hours.

erinja:The main donation page has information on UEA account donations..

Could you get ESF or lernu added to UEA's donations page? It's not obvious how to make donations using an UEA account number.