2025 RationalWiki 'Oregon Plan' Fundraiser

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RationalWiki talk:RationalMedia Foundation

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Welcome, BoN
Use this talk page to bring matters to the attention of the board of trustees, discuss meta matters relevant to mission of the wiki, and to give input on the strategic direction of the wiki.
The RationalMedia trustees are:

SpudApooftGnegiolDuceMoosoliniCosmikdebrisEphromTmtoulouse (operations manager)

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Has RationalMedia Foundation yet moved to an anti-SLAPP state?

There is talk of a libel lawsuit being filed against RationalMedia Foundation on X - so I would suggest moving the RMF as soon as possible out of New Mexico. 149.28.172.217 (talk) 17:44, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Do you have any links to this talk? Carthage (talk) 18:13, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
Not sure what the IP saw but I came across a recent legal discussion on X by Jonatan Pallesen where various of his followers threatened legal action. I believe a group of sockpuppets engaging in joe-jobbing/spoofing/impersonation/parody today are linked to possibly Pallesen and or Jonathan Anomaly (they are in the same "HBD"-sphere). These accounts have been adding unfounded claims and potentially libellous comments to articles of HBDers calling them pro-apartheid, pedophiles and Nazis. I believe this is being done to harm RationalWiki and to try to justify a lawsuit being filed. The word "pedophilic" was added to Pallesens article a few minutes ago. Can hardly be a coincidence the day after this guy talks about suing RationalWiki this gets added to his page by new suspicious accounts. Anti-eugenicist (talk) 01:46, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
A libel suit has to be initiated by the person who thinks they've been defamed, not by some sycophantic follower. This is because of the requirement of needing legal standing to successfully file any lawsuit. Bongolian (talk) 02:03, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
True but I believe Pallesen/Anomaly are likely directing their followers here to vandalise their articles. If extreme unfounded claims get added to their pages they can file lawsuits. Both have unsuccessfully tried to deindex their articles from Google, so I would not be surprised they are now resorting to these dirty tricks. Anti-eugenicist (talk) 02:09, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
And the fallout of the He Who Must Not Be Named case now comes back, which I suspected it would. RMF needs to get to an anti-SLAPP state and fucking fast before this becomes an actual snowball and then an avalanche. Life experience tells me that money makes shit go quicker, so I suggest doing an emergency 'we need to do an emergency move to safeguard our future' fundraiser to make it go quicker. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:03, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
Any idea on the cost of hiring a lawyer for tis, which I presume is the main cost? These two sites have some general information on the process: Foundation Group, "Moving a Nonprofit from One State to Another"[1] and The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, "Overview of Anti-SLAPP Laws".[2] Bongolian (talk) 20:49, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
All this is in the works. Please refer to the October 2024 meeting notes. And thanks for the pointers. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 21:23, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
Can you give us an update with this? It would be useful to know if the foundation has moved to an anti-SLAPP state. 149.28.170.24 (talk) 17:24, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Not yet. In this time around the new year, the board has done nothing, affected by seasonal sluggishness. The next thing is an outreach step as you'll know if you read the linked plan. Hopefully that'll be done this month.
Even in the best case, you can expect that thereafter, it will at a minimum take a few months more to really get it all done, once there's funds, looking into legal assistance, etc. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 20:37, 14 January 2025 (UTC)


Taslima Nasrin

The page was "temporarily" blanked due to a DMCA notice, but that was two and a half years ago. Has any progress been made on the situation? Plutocow (talk) 06:37, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Nothing new as of now. Someone other than Trent (who is Operations Manager in name only, didn't respond on this, and seems to want to retire) who communicates with RW's hosting provider would need to do it. No one has stepped up to replace Trent, but out treasurer @Stabby the Misanthrope deals with the hosting company in other things. Maybe, once he's less busy IRL, he could deal with this, I'll ask. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 13:05, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Resignation

I’m resigning from the Board, effective immediately. I’ve had it with all of this. Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 17:11, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your service. I hope this crap has not soured your wider editing experience. Nobody here could quite manage without your efforts. Best wishes, KaDaShOvA (talk) 23:19, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Duce is back

Since it's been made abundantly fucking clear to me that the Board won't do anything without me there, I'm rescinding my resignation. Failing that, I'm going to ask the Board to appoint me as an interim member. Either way, I'm coming back. Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 13:46, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@DuceMoosolini Yes, we badly need someone who can organize a booze up in a brewery. I'm very glad to have you back. Spud (talk) 13:57, 13 March 2025 (UTC)
I personally think what we need is an actual active Ops Manager. Trent quitting last week was merely making de jure what had effectively been de facto for perhaps several years [correct] though I'm a little annoyed they decided to do this right now [just as another suit came in and not say, three months back to allow us to get into gear finding a successor] but hey, we are at where we are at. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:28, 13 March 2025 (UTC)
Trent has stated before that he wants to relieve his position as Operations Manager a few years ago (this is part of the reason why @Stabby the Misanthrope currently handles the fundraisers; Trent didn't want to do them anymore), but Board-to-Trent communication has... frankly it's embarassingly bad for both parties. On one side, every single board elected from 2020 onwards has had more or less the same problems with inactive board members (there's usually about two or three active members in each cohort, but they end up burning themselves out), not doing the necessary legal paperwork to keep the Foundation up and running and in general leaning on the hope that nothing bad happens to the site that would force them to take action; these issues aren't secret or anything, they're pretty easy to find just by looking at the stuff you've seen the Board do on the wiki. On the other side, Trent hasn't done much in the ways of communication; it took a lot of effort to get him to reach out to get the current situation established (which I'll be honest, still is shit) and general communication from him has been sparse at best. He's also sidestepped the board at least once (whilst handling the previous lawsuit, he first communicated to the Board about it, then proceeded to ignore the Board's decision and post it open-ended as a BoN in the Saloon Bar). Both parties bear responsibility here and unless someone is gonna take a lot of action to get this mess sorted out (and Trent has shown to be unwilling/burned out from doing something like this), the Foundation is just gonna get shaken down by a lawyer at some point, and that's pretty much the end of the site if the Foundation ends up defaulting on a lawsuit and the coffers aren't full enough to pay for it. I wish Duce the best of luck in trying to get this shit sorted, but this also means the site's userbase as a whole mustn't get complacent and assume that the Board "just works" in the background. It hasn't done so in a very long time. -- Techpriest (talk) 23:56, 13 March 2025 (UTC)
So who is it that will be moving to Oregon? And what about tax returns after 2019? Pinkerite (talk) 03:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
No person is moving, the Foundation will just file paperwork telling New Mexico "We're not headquartered in your state anymore and are no longer within your jurisdiction" and telling Oregon "We live here now and are subject to all of your laws". Or something like that. It's merely paperwork but it is paperwork that transforms the legal protections we would enjoy, for the better. For what it's worth, I live in Oregon (and have no interest in moving elsewhere), so if necessary I can conduct official Foundation business in-person should it come to it. Which it probably won't because we're a website on the internet, though I suppose a solar flare could fry all electronics, forcing RationalWiki to pivot to a brick-and-mortar store selling anti-pseudoscience books and toy goats with a brain branded on them. Star of David.png Radioactive afikomen Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments. 05:52, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
So it costs $10K to transfer paperwork from New Mexico to Oregon? Is that what the fundraiser is for? Is that why the transfer from NM to OR didn't happen months ago? Pinkerite (talk) 14:47, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
From my Googling, you can't simply "transfer paperwork". Instead, I am thinking the steps would be:
A) Filing for a new nonprofit corporation in Oregon. Oregon has a handy dandy page on doing this. Creating a non-profit does not look very expensive, it involves filing for articles of incorporation ($50), applying for tax-exempt status, and registering with the Oregon DOJ.
B) Dissolving the New Mexico corporation and merging all assets into the new one. It is *this* that might be... a challenge. It's not as easy as simply signing some papers, from what I can tell. Oregon does have a "Articles of Conversion" process which may help a bit. But still.
Google's AI tells me that the full move process requires a filing fee of $275 (along with a registered Oregon agent) and many other details. Google's AI is often shit, but it can be good for a "gut check". Which, in this case, it seems like that this process is probably complicated enough where getting a business attorney who knows 501(c)(3) state transfer laws is a good idea. Certainly I wouldn't rely on what Google's AI tells me. :) So that's probably a big part of the fundraising. BobJohnson (talk) 15:41, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
Someone involved in running the RMF must have already done this work and provided the estimates in writing to Board Members before the fund raiser was announced. Can we get some information here from whoever is running this fundraiser? Pinkerite (talk) 16:28, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
If I remember my lore right, RMF chose New Mexico mainly on the strength one of the founders [Trent?] lived there and in ~2007 having a person physically present in the state was going to be a plus because back then a lot of the 'filing' may need to have been done in-person. However, it's now 2025 and it's very likely it can all be electronically now.
On Techpriest's point; I think there's a chance that folks have been loathe to point out to the wider community just how precarious RMF's position was in fear that doing so would also reveal to 'our enemies' of said weakness. I will argue now that said enemies are becoming aware of it now anyway so keeping silent is having little to nil positive purpose now. My thoughts on this are similar to what I said before; that RMF needs to do the reincorporation now, raiding our reserves to plug the fundraiser's current shortfall and then when we've safely in an anti-SLAPP state for the board to be brutally honest to the community of the issues facing us and the proposed fixes.
I know I'm a broken record on this, but I do think we need to at least consider the possibility of allowing ads on here. If nothing else, we do appear to have a large backlog of 'remedial works' to sort out to get RW back onto a firm footing and if our userbase is either a) technically incapable of providing volunteers to do this work or b) unable to provide the sufficient funds to pay people to do them we need to find other sources of income to allow us to fix the roof. This need is even more pressing if we need to find a lawyer to defend one or both of the current suits desire blood. In this case, steadfastly saying 'we must not have ads ever ever' but then not coming up with an alternative viable plan to fix the issues is, in my book nothing more than sanctimonious wankery. KarmaPolice (talk) 08:04, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
I agree. Considering legal and quality control issues, it makes sense to have some kind of income in addition to fundraisers. Pinkerite (talk) 16:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
I think this phrases things a little bit backwards. The RMF didn't "choose" New Mexico because the RMF didn't exist yet. Trent incorporated in New Mexico in 2010 because he lived there and you need to put a real address down when filing the paperwork, so he simply used his home address. Also his sister works for the secretary of state for New Mexico so she was able to waive some missed deadlines over the years. (That's right, even way back in 2010, the newly-birthed RMF was staffed with lazy procrastinators!) Star of David.png Radioactive afikomen Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments. 13:58, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────It appears to be illegal for 501(c)(3) organizations to accept advertising (a type of "Unrelated Business Income") in a substantive way:[3]

Another activity that can potentially jeopardize an organization’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status is having too much income generated from activities that are unrelated to the exempt function of the organization. This income comes from a regularly-carried-on trade or business that is not substantially related to the organization’s exempt purpose. “An organization that produces unrelated business income as a result of its unrelated trade or business may have to pay taxes on that income,” said Partner. “Income-producing activity must meet three conditions before the income is potentially taxable.”
First, the activity must be a trade or business. Second, the trade or business must be regularly carried on. Third, the business activity is not substantially related to an organization’s exempt purpose. In other words, the activity itself does not contribute importantly to accomplishing the exempt purpose, other than through the production of funds.

Bongolian (talk) 17:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't appear to be utterly illegal. That if the funds raised aren't 'substantial' (Vs cash raised by fundraising?), are not 'regular' (a one-off for six months to pump-prime?) or are 'related' (advertising for educational materials?) KarmaPolice (talk) 07:45, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

What the fuck is this yap about putting ads on the wiki? Are you daft? I know I'm not the only reader who LOTHES capitalist propaganda. I hope these lawsuits succeed and shut the foundation down if you all do this and someone with some sense takes the content and starts a new wiki with it. Nihilist from the Nile (talk) 17:47, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Quit the angry ranting and present an actual viable alternative, then. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:08, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
Besides that, most of them cocksuckers don't want anything to do with controversial websites, so you'll be stuck with the type ED and The Pirate Bay have, which means I'll have to deal with titties flashing in my face every time I change pages. No thanks. No more RationalWiki for me. Nihilist from the Nile (talk) 18:23, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
I actually can't think of any non-profits that run *ads* on the website. What many of them do, is have some of the following:
  • Merchandising. T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and whatnot. They typically advertise the foundation and/or various causes that they are for.
  • Greater variety in their donation system. Donations are not random begathon campaigns like on here; active donations are allowed at any time. Some offer the ability to set up monthly subscriptions. Some offer various "feel good tiers", like if you donate this much, you are now a "club" member with some benefit (in meatspace charities, for instance, you could get your name on a plaque that certifies that You Donated At Silver, Gold, or Platinum Tiers to Cause XYZ). Some offer easy ways for those looking to donate for tax benefit purposes *cough*. Like, the Wikimedia Foundation allows you to donate stock or set up a charitable gift annuity (CGA). Fancy!... but perhaps attractive to the "retired millionaire" class.
  • Meatspace offers additional ways of raising money, such as fundraising events, charity raffles, and whatnot.
Now, most of what I scanned is *far* bigger than Rationalwiki, so there is probably no need to go *that* far. But still, if there really is a need for revenue, I would take something like an Official Rationalwiki Coffee Mug over actually running advertisements here. BobJohnson (talk) 18:58, 15 March 2025 (UTC)