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I absolutely agree with this.
LFGSS needs a few leaders who are tirelessly motivated in addition to accepting the risks identified and working through it.
I know I cannot, I have no time or energy to beyond the little I was doing... but this is what is needed.
A group of 10 Directors isn't really functional... ultimately 1 or 2 will run everything... but Directors alone can't actually run anything, you need someone to do sysadmin things, and I believe (hope to be proven wrong) that you also need programmers to get the systems compliant with whatever is identified.
Then of course fundraising... and everything spoken about adds to the amount you have to fundraise. Want a CIC? Fees, post office box, annual accounts via accountant... all which cost. Want transparent fundraising? Platform fees, payment provider fees... you receive about 10-20% less of the donation, you need to raise more. Want insurance against some of the risks? No idea what that will cost.
The costs we had were incredibly low, given that this site is massive and every page is a dynamically generated page for the signed-in users (cached for the guests). LFGSS makes up 80% of the usage of the Microcosm platform, then comes PignoleFixe with less than 15% usage, Espruino with 3%, Islington with < 2%... and all of the other sites, on the instances I run, account for less than 1% of usage. Costs follow "active users", a site where no-one is active costs nothing at all (just a row in the database)... so LFGSS carries everyone, and either it works for LFGSS, or it works for no-one.
This all sounds negative, it's not... just reality. It can be done, but needs a strong leadership to do it.
Velocio-
Think there's another page that goes into what's needed to keep the place running - won't throw everything out the window just yet, think it's worth getting heads together of anyone keen to pitch in and keep things running in January (shall we actually try get a date in for that - anyone good with using the events organisation function can do that?) and having a sit-down with Dee to understand what's been needed thus far and what we might need going forward before we can work out if it's something we might be able to take forward or not.
youClown
to me, this is the essence of the issue.
having a number of people with a moderate degree of motivation to help out is not the same as having one or two people with a really big degree of motivation to actually make the whole thing happen.
whilst the collective efforts of people here are heartening, it's hard to see where the person with the big enough motivation to take on the wherewithal of the whole gig is going to come from.
not wanting to be pessimistic and far less to minimise everyone's efforts and intentions, it's just how i see it.