Trying to set more realistic expectations for able2know

One of the community dynamics that I'd like to improve is that there are often unrealistic expectations about the resources that this community has to work with. That makes people unhappy with what they see as recalcitrant administration when in reality we are just hampered by severe constraints on our resources.

Almost every bit of discontent with the state of the technology or community management (other than fundamental differences of opinion on approach and philosophy for a community) is ascribable to the simple fact that a2k is an enormous undertaking being done by people largely volunteering our time as A2K is more of a cost center than a profit center. Sure, we could do a whole lot better but that means having more resources (time and money) when this has been, so far, a costly hobby. And because we are a small startup that makes our money from other products (like a nursing job board) if we make bad choices in our resource allocation and what we work on sometimes we don't get to take home a paycheck for that month (anyone who has started a business knows how brutal it can be).

The technological projects are daunting. Writing this version of a2k took me blowing all my savings multiple times to be able to have us spend 6-12 months working full time on this project before we could get it out the door. Just finishing the monumental task of writing a forum from scratch is enough of a challenge. We didn't always do that and a few of the attempts were lost because we couldn't progress fast enough to get it out the door (being agile in they key to starting a successful tech product).

So we are facing another rewrite and are going to have to make tough sacrifices. One of the main ones is the very important question of what we say no to. Like not improving this version while working on the next version because just finishing the next version is daunting enough without trying to do the work twice (any improvements on this version is just going to have to be rewritten in months anyway for the next version).

And when it comes to the community management and vitality we are also limited by how many people are willing to volunteer to help the community.

So if you want to make this place better please be patient with us on the tech front, and if anyone is wiling to help out with community management this is a tough job that we can always use more people with (contact us if you are interested in helping out).

We have very big ambitious plans for the next platform and will want as much of the community's support to try to make this a much more vibrant community. If you want to help out in any way let us know.