I am just one man with
no staff. I have done all the writing, all the design, and all the programming for this website
without a sponsor. No one pays me for the thousands and tens of thousands
of dollars of labor I have put—and continue to put—into this website.
Furthermore, in all of this, I refuse to obscure simple truth with advertising.
Nevertheless, I am
willing to provide this website for your benefit and for the
benefit of anyone else in the whole world—but answering questions takes
an enormous amount of my personal time. Therefore, if you want me to answer your e-mail
question, I require that you pay for my time.
For about
the first 10 years of this website, I did not charge anything to answer
questions; I just asked for a donation of gratitude. Even though I rarely
received any donations, I still answered every question. Well, around 2006
I was getting about 20 questions a day, it was taking me several hours a
day to write answers, and I was receiving almost nothing in donations. I
had to stop. I couldn’t afford to give away so much time for
free.
So now
you’re looking at the fallout from all of this: an obstacle course to
separate the serious from the curious, and a requirement
that you make a donation to this website before I will respond to
your e-mail question.
Moreover,
for those who have ears to hear, there’s even a psychological lesson in
this: it’s about my setting boundaries, not
about my being rude. |
