What happens if the goal isn't met? The site goes offline. Simple. Now, to add wrinkles to that, the huge target was intended to pay for the year's hosting in advance. Obviously, we didn't have the full amount at the turn of the year. Instead, we're adjusting from a 'year in advance' discount over to a 'pay as you go' pricing (quarterly, semi-annual, monthly? I can't say - I simply don't have that information in hand to offer). Suffice to say we had enough from last year to keep us going for a bit, but we'll need more money to stay up for the year. Most of these financial details are in the hands of the site owner, johnboy, who responded earlier in this thread over a year ago to questions over details, but the current information is not in the hands of the admins at this time. We're working on getting those details more available, because as you note - why not keep them public? That would be the intent. But how much are we paid through right now? How much has to be in hand, and by when? We don't have that in hand right now, but are getting it from the owner. We'll update the public information accordingly as soon as we can.
Apologies are nice, in that they acknowledge a shortcoming on someone's part. We apologize. The bad thing about apologies is that they DO NOT change the situation. We've been in this boat for 2 months now without an update, and the public should not be asked to donate when there is such a lack of response - we have contacted our site owner for an update, and will relay it as soon as we can. We acknowledge the current system of operating on 'Bluelight Time' (when we can get to it) is unacceptable when we're asking for your time and money.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
In that email to the owner, we have also requested (limited) access to the account, so we don't need to rely on go-between communications and can update this more frequently.
The donation bar is a manually updated thing by the admin. The reason being, donations made via the alert-pay are NOT the only donations that come in. There are monies from our helping of research efforts and other sources (such as Rexeh above) which simply wouldn't be caught by the alert-pay system, so an admin needs to have visibility into the funding account to know how much we currently have.
There are many such research efforts ongoing in our DRUG STUDIES forum, however many of those do not provide any financial benefit for the site and are primarily functioning for the sake of science. The few that BL chooses to actively support, and in general will return some financial reward for helping recruitment in studies, will be advertised primarily two ways - the banner adds in the top right corner, and some forum focused links we put in the headers of certain forums (if the study is targetting a certain demographic, we take that extra step to advertise in those areas).
That said, the current Inflexxion study on prescription stimulants will be running through the end of the month, and we are stepping up our advertising of that particular study in return for a good portion of our site's financial needs for the year. I know some may ask if we're simply selling out, and our stance is no - we will not associate ourselves, or give support, to someone intending to simply misrepresent us and our members. We also strive for situations where our members may only need to fill out an online survey, anonymously, so all they are asked to give of themselves is a little time, and in return the site gets some monies to keep us online and available for everyone. Your privacy and safety remains a priority. Moreover, we are functioning as a means of recruitment for these studies, this does not mean we endorse the product or result of the studies, but that we are confident in the researcher's efforts at honesty and progress and hope to share their findings with the public at the conclusion of the research.
So, while we DO owe a general update on our financial health as promised above, both in terms of where we are today and where those funds are being spent; we are indeed asking for you to continue to give - if not your money (until we can better justify it's use to you), at least for your time in participating in t his current study which will most certainly benefit the site. Thank you.
