Step 4) of ATARNotes expansion: ATARNotes Trial Exams! A CALL FOR WRITERS

[enwiabe]

So then how does this "go against what VN is about"?

[taiga]

Just a bit of teen angst, settle down Dan were not all as old as you!

[schnappy]

No, it's not teen angst. It was a logical and well thought out comment that clearly isn't getting across.

I cleared up what I meant quite explicitely. Please read that, and it will be obvious what I was saying.

I didn't say making exams was bad. I implied that if VN were to be making lucrative profits, then it would be against the VN spirit. Though I've failed to find it, I do believe reading a statement along the lines of, "the site is for the disadvantaged... succeed in VCE... community... no cost" etc etc. Please read what I've said correctly instead of dismissing it all as pure pessimism and whinging. It's not hard.

[werdna]

(NB at least one set of exams for each subject will be FREE, in case you didn't notice, it's not like he's forcing membership fees upon everyone)

This is a perfect system - it's an awesome idea and giving members one free trial exam is already showing that the initiative is better off than the bigger companies. It's only fair that we pay for the second and third trial exams and so on, you can't just continually refer back to the 'VN spirit' and so on when not giving back to the site (in this case, through purchasing exams) is really a contradiction of it anyway.

The 'no cost' and 'education for all' thing is a very, very good thing but there's an extent to which this can be fulfilled, in terms of financial stability, and so some things have to be sacrificed. I reckon it's an awesome idea, I might apply to be a writer for Legal Studies or Revolutions, I'll see.

[taiga]

The "VN Spirit" is a loose and idealistic term.

I tried to nurture this in the same sense in which you may see it earlier, with no success.

It does seem that in the end it is either 2 exams, 1 free and 1 available for purchase if they wish, or 0.something exams and another set of token promises which do not see much follow through.

Once again, I don't blame anyone for that, making a textbook/trial exams etc. is incredibly time consuming, not too beneficial to one's own study, and quite frankly most people would righteously believe they had better things to do with their time.

If your ethical sense leads you, and enough other people to believe this is such an immoral/"against the spirit" thing to do, so be it, we will have to become a site with nothing but advice/question help (which isn't too bad I would think, but in all honesty there are a tonne of people that come here for exams and their solutions). One thing for sure is that we can't go back to having people post copyright content on here.

I also think that to an extent this is "community building" in the sense that people will be working together for these resources, there will be a sense of anticipation, people will all legally be able to compare their answers to the free set of papers, and it gives more reason for people to be engaged (let's face it, altruistic nature is no majority on this forum - not that I have a problem with that directly).


edit: btw I do appreciate your input, and we are trying to find a balance, and don't think this is purely a money making scheme, the concept of having trial exams has been around for a while, and we're trying to use it as a method to combat quite a few of the issues that we currently have.
re. negging the post, have been negged for worse

[DavidB3ck]

It sucks... Recently the VN Spirit has failed to pay those pesky hosting bills and expansion costs. :p

[ninwa]

No, it's not teen angst. It was a logical and well thought out comment that clearly isn't getting across.

I cleared up what I meant quite explicitely. Please read that, and it will be obvious what I was saying.

I didn't say making exams was bad. I implied that if VN were to be making lucrative profits, then it would be against the VN spirit. Though I've failed to find it, I do believe reading a statement along the lines of, "the site is for the disadvantaged... succeed in VCE... community... no cost" etc etc. Please read what I've said correctly instead of dismissing it all as pure pessimism and whinging. It's not hard.

While I respect your opinion I think you are the one who needs to re-read the original proposal, because offering one set of exams for free, no strings attached, is pretty "for the disadvantaged" and "no cost" to me.

When you say that VN shouldn't be making profit at all, you are suggesting that enwiabe/David's time and effort is not worth any money. They're both too modest to say it (I know, enwiabe modest what?? ) but they both put a SHITLOAD of effort and time into the logistics of the site and making sure it runs smoothly etc. etc., and nobody sees it because it's 1) behind the scenes and 2) they would never trumpet it.

I realise that thought probably never even passed through your mind, but I hope you see now why I found it so offensive and reacted in such a way.

[Fyrefly]

When you say that VN shouldn't be making profit at all, you are suggesting that enwiabe/David's time and effort is not worth any money.

Enwiabe comes onto irc at about 4am, wanting to bounce off ideas for AN.
That's commitment.

At 4am, I just want to sleep =.=zzz

[schnappy]

When you say that VN shouldn't be making profit at all, you are suggesting that enwiabe/David's time and effort is not worth any money.

I didn't say VN shouldn't be making profit. I suggested that making lucrative profit goes against the VN spirit. I do realise it's an idealistic term and yack yack, I simply felt it was worth pointing out. I did consider the 1 free 1 non-free component, I do agree that it is a good thing. You're generalising my comments as purely anti-revenue, which is not how they were intended.

Let me clarify. I feel that if the site were to be making lucrative profit from its user base then the initial intentions of the site would be polarised with that of the current endeavors. I understand hosting costs and the time required to integrate the 'notes' system with SMF, and the inherit time it takes for the stylistic integration to work just right in the way it does. Generating some revenue to cover that is a good idea - I tried to emphasize this when I said huge initially, I realise that small profits can go a long way in running costs, I intended to get across that making huge profits would be somewhat contrary to the VN spirit (Which I've loosely defined prior).

[ninwa]

Lol, well, I guess you'll have to wait for pricing details to be finalised, but I can tell you now that unless all the schools in Victoria want to buy them the profits (if there are even profits) will be nowhere near "lucrative".

[schnappy]

I didn't say they would be... all I've been doing is justifying what I initially I said I'm not trying to say x y z will happen :S

[DavidB3ck]

When you say that VN shouldn't be making profit at all, you are suggesting that enwiabe/David's time and effort is not worth any money.

I didn't say VN shouldn't be making profit. I suggested that making lucrative profit goes against the VN spirit. I do realise it's an idealistic term and yack yack, I simply felt it was worth pointing out. I did consider the 1 free 1 non-free component, I do agree that it is a good thing. You're generalising my comments as purely anti-revenue, which is not how they were intended.

Let me clarify. I feel that if the site were to be making lucrative profit from its user base then the initial intentions of the site would be polarised with that of the current endeavors. I understand hosting costs and the time required to integrate the 'notes' system with SMF, and the inherit time it takes for the stylistic integration to work just right in the way it does. Generating some revenue to cover that is a good idea - I tried to emphasize this when I said huge initially, I realise that small profits can go a long way in running costs, I intended to get across that making huge profits would be somewhat contrary to the VN spirit (Which I've loosely defined prior).

If VN were to make "lucrative profits" directly from its user base, then yes, I suppose it would go against the "VN Spirit". However, we have always tried to minimize the monetary (as well as the annoying (AKA not entirely plastering the boards with ads)) costs to the AN users. If we could continue on that path while generating "lucrative profits", it could only ever be a good thing for our users (and maybe slightly us).

[schnappy]

Well ofcourse having some revenue will help improve the site, but what I'm trying to get at is having top dog website owner (enwiabe?) generating a super secret income is something to be wary of. I'm not trying to criminalise them at all nor suggesting that they're a cunning bastard, but I have seen it happen before where apparent 'costs' were really a front for ridiculous amounts of money going into the pocket of someone.

I'd also like to voice my further support for textbooks - LaTeX + Inkscape --> Awesome. Make them free to download or pay for a print edition - sounds good to me (more so than exams that need to be tediously redone every 12 months).

[shinny]

I'd also like to voice my further support for textbooks - LaTeX + Inkscape --> Awesome. Make them free to download or pay for a print edition - sounds good to me (more so than exams that need to be tediously redone every 12 months).

I don't see why textbooks are more appealing than exams though. Everyone already has their prescribed textbooks which they'll inevitably favour. If you mean more along the lines of summary books, then we've already got notes available on the website which are free, and these free notes are really the foundations which the website was built upon to begin with. If you're asking us to write 'premium' notes and sell those, that seems far more in breach of the 'VN spirit' or whatever than what's being proposed is.

[taiga]

Schnappy in principle I love that idea, I'm actually looking into something which is similar in the sense that it creates content from AN itself (for free).

My only problem is that to make a textbook we need:
1. A team
2. Motivated individuals
3. A motivated team

Without money on the board it is close to impossible to make this happen. There are some amazing individuals ie. Shinny/Burbs etc. who have uploaded notes which go into amazing depth, but these are rare occurrences. If I couldn't get a team together to make 90 marks worth of questions, how on earth are we going to get people to get together and cover a whole course for free. One way could be to have people write snippets, but then the whole thing doesn't necessarily flow as well.

Also with the textbook if we were to charge, we wouldn't be able to generate anything extra for free without another huge bulk of effort. The day that we're selling something education related without offering something similar for free is probably the day that we do clearly overtake the "VN Spirit" line you were talking about. Also to print it, it would be rather costly as we wouldn't have any publishing deals, and taking into account some other stuff that we'd have to sort out, it would also have a pretty big cost price, which would also prevent us from undercutting the monster publishers on affordability =\

That said, I'll definitely look into ways in which we can legitimately go into that (I think one of the ideas I have may address it partially).