stevenkesslar

I'm getting different results today than I did when I posted that, as well. It depends on how I type the words. If I type in "Daddysreviews" I get links. It's a moot point because as @RadioRob said the site is back up. In the short term, it's better for escorts if the site is up. In the long term, I go back to what what @mature_guy said about some probate judge or staff administrator in Nevada poking around things. Whatever the short term or intermediate term solution is, the long term solution should involve a community plan around the legal and political risks involved. And the options vary. We could say we should be 100 % defensive since we can't do a thing. That lends itself to the idea that the reviews actually say as little as possible. That will make a lot of people here unhappy I suspect. Bill might say, "So what?" There's a 100 % offense strategy that says that we can use a revitalized website to gradually drive the debate and move toward a goal of not having to worry about 100 % defense. My perception is Bill tried to do some of both. But, like Jeffrey, he was politically isolated. That's a bad place to be in a situation like this. Short term, it does have an immediate and direct impact in terms of what people can actually say in those reviews. Long term, there's this huge decriminalization coalition and it doesn't make sense that this big community built around the largest escort review site in the US, I think, doesn't have a clue what they are up to. Or where our interests intersect.

I said this on a different thread but let me repeat it here as an issue to think about. Right now Google "Daddy's Reviews" and see what you get. You'll see a bunch of dead links to individual escort review pages, if you get what I get. Google any of those names and you'll get websites for escorts. This process took me about 60 seconds. We don't know when or even if this goes through probate. There is a small estate exemption in Nevada, so that may or may not apply. Another member pointed out, correctly I think, that the more time a probate judge or staff administrator looks into this, the more possible trouble. So all of this falls into the "we don't know" wild card category, but we should include it in our planning. I'll make a simple pro and con case, both of which make some sense to me. The con case is that we don't want that site easily available when it goes through probate. I think what @mature_guy said is right. The site had not been updated since Bill fell ill. So whatever short-term hit it's taken is done. The pro side is the sooner we get it back up the better. The site is how a community of escorts make their income. It's also something people can get involved in now. Here's another thing to factor in, to vastly oversimply it. This site runs itself. The escort review website doesn't. The idea that this site runs itself has been stated a lot. I think it's basically true - if you factor in that the site has very capable moderators who've been around a long time. It's even more true today because I note several new moderators have been added to the list. Congrats and thanks!!!!! The escort website was a one man show. So basically just to keep it exactly the same we need to do a lot of things Bill did solo. I'm guessing we won't ever know exactly what Bill did in terms of his processes. Beyond that, I'm pretty sure from what lots of clients told me over a period of years they weren't particularly pleased with the process, regardless. A few people have stated that in posts already. I personally think it would make sense to start by asking for input, which @mike carey got the ball rolling on, on what we would like the site to be in the future. Escorts who use it to make their income would probably have a lot of input to offer as well.

There was a funny interview about this in The Celluloid Closet with Daniel Melnick, one of the film's producers. I can't find the scene on YouTube, but it's at 1:17:00 in the film. I have a copy, so I'll transcribe his hilarious diss of a Straight studio exec at 20th Century Fox at the time. In The Celluloid Closet, you hear this monologue from Melnick while they show the scene of Ontkean and Hamlin undressing each other and kissing: While I was searching to see if I could find the film clip, I ran into this interview of one of the film's writers, Barry Sandler, in The Advocate How Making Love Changed Us

Lucky you. And here's more. You are a good one on this topic, @Lucky, since you've spent a lot of time over there in Oz. The basic questions are these: Why did some things work better there and some things not? And how does that influence what happens moving forward? I read @Lookin's posts, too. My main reaction was this. Why would Oz bother to or need to buy or merge this website and Gay Guides? In terms of the forums, they both more or less do the same thing. Lots of people go back and forth. I haven't signed up or posted over there since its transition. But eventually I will when what is happening over here settles down. My view is it's the same community, and it's a community I've been part of for 20 years now. Oz and Bill seem to have at least been pleasant with each other. I only met Oz once, years ago, at one of @Oliver's parties. I think I spent about half an hour or so talking to Bill and Oz together. As owners of somewhat rival websites, I thought they were pleasant and courteous to each other. Even if they weren't best friends. So if this forum had melted down the day @RadioRob saved it, speaking only for myself it would have been incredibly easy to move over to the party at Oz's house. That said, why bother? For whatever reason, a lot of people like it here. I'm going to answer @Orin's question about the review site separately but the main point I'll make probably 5 times, which to me is a really key point, is that my escort career worked as well as it did because the escort review site attracted the type of individuals I wanted to be hired by. There is something about the kind of guys who like to write reviews and debate reviews and read reviews before they hire people that made them great clients. So some of the relationships lasted 10 or 15 or 20 years. And in some cases moved from business relationships into friendships. In an environment like that the escorts that thrived were similarly thoughtful people. So some of them became my close friends. All the same things are what make the forums on both websites work. It's kind of amusing, because while there is some bitching about "why do we need a community planning process?" what we've actually been doing here since Bill died is a sloppy version of that. And it's working pretty well. People are donating and volunteering. New leaders are emerging. Lots of thoughtful people are saying lots of thoughtful things. And a sort of consensus is maybe starting to form. It all validates what I thought I knew about "the community" I've been a part of for 20 years. If the same thing had happened over at Oz's website, I think it would have gone down pretty much the same way. Oz is more of a "we're all adults, and we can figure it out" kind of guy. Bill was actually more of a benevolent dictator. Somebody you and I both know already weighed in and said sometimes not overly benevolent. My perception is the driver is the community, not who runs the website. So even though Oz and Bill were very different people and leaders, in my mind it hasn't really created two different communities. Because the community is, in effect, the driver. And the two communities that each website attracts, to my knowledge, are basically the same. The short way to say all that, in terms of the forums, is that it all pretty much works and nothing big really needs to change. I take what most people are saying as a reaffirmation of that. Whether @Coolwave35 or a corporation owns it is important. But what we've been reinforcing in various ways is this is really the community's website. @Coolwave35 actually suggested it is kind of ours legally, and got some thoughtful pushback. @RadioRob is now in my pantheon of Gay heroes because he did some really good shit. And he's been really explicit about how he wants to set this up to make it the community's, not his, in a way Bill didn't. I think that's very wise, and I am grateful. With the escort reviews, it is pretty much the opposite. It all sucks, and it has kind of sucked. Some of the endless bitching and moaning I've heard in private for years is being reflected here. @Epigonos was being too kind. There was one time when he was relating a very negative discussion he had about the review site with someone else I know well. Honestly, I was just laughing my ass off for about 20 minutes. I don't think I've given away any private confidence because he already posted the core of what he thinks. My point is that this is not a new problem. The escort review thing never really worked at Oz's Male Escort Review before it became BoyToy and now Gay Guides. I'm not sure why. Do you have a perspective on that? I had some reviews over there. But in terms of my business it was nothing compared to Daddy's Revews and this site, where I ultimately had about 90 reviews. I think some of that was random fate. Bill had the server, so he had the advantage. It's a bit like what's happening now. People are used to being here, so they stay here. My point is that if there were something Oz could buy and do some good with, it would be the male escort review website. I'm not really sure if @Coolwave35 wants to buy it or not, because he's said kind of no and kind of maybe. The main problem with the escort review site is it does stuff that is considered to be criminal, or could be criminal, by some people. Just to be clear, I didn't say it does anything criminal. I don't think it does. People can think whatever they want to think. But when the people thinking it is criminal work for DOJ or DHS or the FBI or ths US Congress, that's a potential problem. (See Rentboy and Backpage and FOSTA/SESTA.) That drives a "keep your head down and be careful" mentality, which is completely understandable. So people might want to be able to write about how they got together with this great top and he came all over their face and it was fabulous. If you are talking about what you did with your husband on your birthday, I think that's free speech. But if the context is you were writing that in a male escort review, which people did write about when Michael ran it and I first started getting reviews, that would now be a big problem. Sensibly, Bill didn't particularly care to go to jail, or more likely just live with the risk that might happen, just so somebody could say what they want to say. That said, I'll keep repeating. Take the Rentboy complaint and edit it a bit and that could have been the case against Bill, had they wanted to try. To summarize my rant, my simple bumper sticker view is this forum works best when people can be themselves and say what they want to say. Life in Oz is good, for the same reason. It's a big problem with the escort review site, because what I hear, and have heard for years, is that people can't say what they want to say. If the people I knew mostly enjoyed having sex with kids or animals, this would be a problem. But they don't. So in the world I actually live in, it's not a real problem. Other than that it is perceived as criminal, or potentially criminal, by people with power. Which is a big problem. This is not totally unlike the idea that it is not legal to be Gay. Or it is not legal to be a Gay man who wants to marry a Gay man. We have dealt with those problems, as a community, with remarkable and historic success. I'm faithful that we could do the same with this problem, if we chose. But this is the big problem we face, I think. So far, neither Oz nor Bill were able to solve it. As an objective fact, we are worse off than when Michael started the review website.

Why would you read what that idiot say? He's so god damn verbose!

As you said, hopefully they move on to bigger fish. I'm reacting in part to posts by @Lucky and @mature_guy essentially saying this can take forever, especially if there are no kin involved. In the abstract, I could see how HHS and a huge Medicaid bill could either slow things down or speed things up. In reality, we'll know how it impacts things when we know.

Thanks to Deb! Since you mentioned domain names, here's a few things that struck me reading what @mature_guy said above. I emphatically agree with him. The more a judge or a public administrator on staff looks into this, the more likely that it falls apart for the reason @mature_guy stated at the end of his post. A site called "m4m-forum.org" on any form describing assets sounds like a website where Gay guys talk about stuff. If for any reason they pull up the site and start browsing around, who knows? All of this is why flying under the small estate exemption seems best if possible. A website called "daddysreviews.com" could invite curiosity. Hmmm. What kind of reviews? As you know if you try to pull up the website you just get the Daddy icon and an error message. If you Google "Daddys Reviews" you get all kinds of links to escort review pages that also give you error messages. As an example, I noticed that on the first search page there was an escort in Las Vegas listed. So I Googled his name and "Las Vegas" and immediately came up with a link to the website of a "VIP International Gay Escort." I can't think of a good reason we'd want anyone curious going down this rabbit hole based on a website name on an asset form. If there is an option others than "daddysreviews.com" to list on estate forms that could be something to consider. Just so it doesn't sound like I'm writing a spy novel, I subscribe to the theory that this may be how Rentboy went down. We know they sent DHS an application for a visa. I can visualize some DHS staff typing in rentboy.com and going, "WTF?" I'm not offering ignorant legal advice. Like @mature_guy I'm just flagging this as a detail to consider when the time comes to be filling out any forms. What @mature_guy wrote really nailed why Deb or you having some sort of standing to administer the estate or make a claim on assets is likely the quickest and best outcome. And while I was Googling based on what @mature_guy wrote and poking around about Nevada probate, I kept reading about Medicaid. Do you know whether Bill will or may have claims by Medicaid/HHS? It seems like that could have a significant impact on how this plays out. If HHS has a claim, Item 6 on the state's Small Affidavit Claim Form seems descriptive of how this may go, whether the small estate exemption applies or not. Unless you know otherwise it seems like there's a very good chance HHS will be wanting a slice of whatever pie there is. In a much earlier post @Charlie referred to Medicaid wanting any life insurance after his Mom died. I've had that happen when tenants made Medicaid claims. Medicaid then tried to see if my property insurer would reimburse tenant medical expenses - which they won't. In this situation, HHS could have a valid claim - assuming there is anything to be had. If HHS makes a claim, alongside Bill's friends for funeral expenses, there's likely nothing left. It could play out in several ways. But hopefully it would mitigate against the court dragging things out forever looking for kin since they're not going to get anything anyways.

So let me ask a view questions spring boarding off this. I think its actually quite important to understand these things in order to develop some plan for the review website's survival, let alone restoration to happier times under either Michael or Bill. First, is it correct that most people, or many people, got here via the reviews? I know I did. When I was raising money for Bill he showed me some websites that either are the ones I've linked to, or are similar, showing monthly traffic and also showing which other websites people come from and go to. So at that time, like five years ago, I know there was a lot of traffic between the two websites. My assumption, pretty much based on what I just said, is that the inevitable result of that website going away is that this website will shrink. In fact, the traffic has shrunk since Bill died. I have no idea whether that's seasonal, or an omen of things to come. And I don't know that people really care whether we get 100,000 or 200,000 or 20,000 visitors a month. Second, do most or many people feel the reviews in the last few years "contain very little useful information." I barely looked at the site for years. But when those changes happened I heard a chorus of "this sucks" from clients. That said, as someone well reviewed who connected with almost all my best clients on that site, I don't know that it would have worked different if the reviews had been skimpier. I still would have had a lot of reviews with some type of positive ratings. Again, that's what Rentmen does. And in the past there's been much discussion about how Rentmen reviews can be gamed. Third, how do people feel about the risk/reward continuum? The risk of that website is a lot higher. That was certainly true for Bill, since he wuld have been the target of any action. I know at least one former Escort of the Year who is worried about whether pictures of his face are on some server the State of Nevada might get. So in theory you could argue anyone who had any participation in that website in any way had some theoretical risk. (It should be noted the same concern was felt with Rentboy, and nothing ever came of the Feds seizing the servers to my knowledge.) There's a simple logic problem here everyone can get. The further that Bill went in the direction of things that could be perceived as crossing the line with FOSTA/SESTA, the more likely the entire website went away. So in some situations something is better than nothing. Especially when you are playing defense rather than offense. That said, give me a pen and I could take the Rentboy complaint and change the vocabulary to describe the review site. Arguably, the entire site crossed the line with SESTA/FOSTA. I always felt one thing that protected that website was Bill himself. Why would anyone go after an elderly Gay man who had no assets and made no money off the site? All this is fodder for how I would strategize around the future of that website, if there is to be one. But I think it would be helpful to articulate perceptions about how that site worked and whether it is in fact worth saving.

You inspired me to do something, Mike. There is a quote I thought I heard or read from Jeb that in my mind is the kind of thing I want on my gravestone. It really said something to me about how you move from "fanciful" (i.e., wishful thinking, stupid dream) to "aspirational" (could we really have a Black President in our lifetime?) to reality. So I've checked for this quote before and could never find it. Yesterday I spent an hour searching, and I found it. Here's the quote, which is how Jeb viewed same sex marriage in 2015: I took out the names of the politicians, which you can see if you read the whole article. My point is not about politics. My point is that Gay men know a shitload about what is fanciful and what is not. Because Jeb was right. Gay men (and lots of other people) changed human history, recently. And I helped! In fact, millions of people helped. That's why it happened. Culture changed. Law changed. Religion changed. History changed. In some ways the part I liked the most was the last part. Jeb is right. He does not get it. He does not have a clue how people power works. This does impact our discussions. Some people are lawyers, so they are bringing their perspectives as guys who worked on M & A's. I'm bringing perspectives based on lots of experiences both as a paid community organizer and an unpaid volunteer. This debate about forming a steering committee or non-profit board or corporate board for this website is not rocket science. I don't disagree with what @Epigonos said about benevolent dictators. It can be an efficient way to run things. That model worked well enough in the past, if you view it that way. That said, we did just have a near death experience. And we don't know if this website survived yet - legally, at least. The phrase I've planted in my mind is "fun hobby." Is it okay to view this website as a "fun hobby?" First, it's not my call. Second, it probably is. I think that's actually a pretty good bumper sticker for how most people view what they do here. That said, even with this website I know Bill wasn't cavalier about whether a fun hobby could somehow turn into a jail cell. That's not the only risk. But it is the biggest one that could have the most unpleasant consequences. Like you, Mike, my gut reaction is that the ownership model @Coolwave35 is proposing is a workable model to deal with the new legal, technical, political, and other challenges it will inevitably face, just like Bill did. Is it the best model? That's not for me to decide. Like you, I'm a realist. The escort review site is a whole different matter. Right now it is functionally dead. So the immediate challenges are technical and legal. Can it be brought back to life? Can "we" - whatever that means - own it? Do we want to own it? At least in my mind, I can't ponder that without pondering this formula: same sex marriage = decriminalization What I mean is that the "fanciful" or "aspirational" notion is that what actually worked on same sex marriage - gradually, over a long period of time - could work on decriminalization. I had these discussions with Bill, and he had a point of view. He used the escort review site to editorialize in favor of decriminalization. Including articles I wrote that were published in LGBTQ publications he helped me edit. (What a job, right?) Somebody might be wondering what this all has to do with whether I can write or read an escort review? The one word answer is: "Everything." Someone posted above that the review website isn't worth saving unless it can go back to what it used to be. I'd turn that into a question, or - wait for it - an "aspirational" goal. What would it take to restore it to what it used to be? Ironically, @Epigonos actually mentioned one thing. You might want more community involvement. Both within our community, and with allies. You might want to know some good lawyers. By the way, HRC and the ACLU have a lot of them. Bottom line, if it were Bill and we're being blunt a question might be: and how does this help me keep my ass out of jail? I'll tell a story that to me cuts to the heart of our problem with the review website. If you click on that link at the bottom of my posts it's a story from Gay Star News I wrote on decriminalization. The editor at the time was a nice guy, and he wanted me to write more stories like that. I'm quite sure I could have gradually become a known writer on the topic, much like I was a know organizer or activist or escort. That would have been a fun hobby for me. I'm also pretty sure a bunch of both organized and disorganized efforts pushing back on FOSTA/SESTA have had an impact. Shortly after that article came out a client and friend of about 15 years called me and absolutely reamed my ass. His first point was that I was putting my ass on the line - duh! I took that as helpful advice from a friend. His second point was that I was putting his ass on the line. I asked him if he really believed the FBI was going to show up at his door and arrest him based on his association with me. He mentioned he wouldn't want to give money to the legal defense or Jeffrey, which I guess he knew I was raising money for. I made a point of saying I hadn't asked him, and wouldn't. There's two ironies I saw, neither of which I expressed to him. First, were it not for Bill and Michael and that website, we wouldn't have had a "professional" relationship and friendship for what is now 20 years. So it's not clear to me how you conduct escort businesses if you have no idea or will or plan to defend escort websites that allow that business to happen. Second, not that long before this call I was in PV with him and he told me how he had been publicly reamed, front page, in a major newspaper. The paper thought he was an overpaid CEO. I assumed he expected my empathy and support, which he got. I did not point out that if he was worried about being front page news, it might be more useful to look in the mirror rather than go after my willingness to defend my community. I've never felt it made sense to fight a battle I couldn't win. My read at the time was the decriminalization thing wasn't going to happen. So I checked out. Bill wasn't wrong, in my view, to play defense and strip reviews of a lot of their content. If you look at the Rentmen reviews, they are pretty much devoid of content. Yesterday I paid $5000 to a contractor who redid the floors in one of my rental homes. A Rentmen review is so vague it could have been describing his work. That's no doubt what their lawyers suggested. I think this is where we are. If I understand @Coolwave35 right, he is thinking about maybe a shell corporation and maybe a steering committee that would deal with reviews. There's a post in that covers two MOC's that did have, or allegedly did have, sex with an underage escort, one of whom allegedly advertised on some website even though she was underage. So the first thing before one review goes up is we need a process to avoid that. I have no clue how Bill did that, or how much time it took. On the other side of the continuum there needs to be a strategy about how far "we" are willing to go. I can't begin to logically think about that without knowing who's behind the website and who will defend the website if some agency somewhere decides the review goes "too far." Ironically, the client and friend I described above happened to be on a board with Jeb, who he thought was a swell guy. Needless to say, neither would want to be on the board of a male escort review site. I think my client and friend's recommendation would be that it's a massive legal and political albatross. Take the server and break it into bits. Then burn it. Then bury it. I go back to that formula above. If we are going to save it, and consider bringing it back to where was under Michael or Bill pre-Rentboy, it is going to take a group of people really working it through. Not necessarily here, although it should be discussed here. I think owning that website as a "fun hobby" would be inviting danger. If Jeffrey was to blame for his downfall, which I'm not sure is fair, it was based on his own cavalier attitude. the review website should be viewed as both a serious risk and a serious opportunity to move the interests of our community forward. I think we have to decide which one it is.

I agree with you about patience, Sam. In particular, we have no idea how long it will take for the probate process to work out. That said, it feels like it is appropriate to focus on what is happening on our end. The message I'm getting from Team Washington to us is not "hurry up and wait." It's that now is the time to decide who will own and run both websites. My view is that whether Team Washington ends up being administrator or not, it make enormous sense to do just that. @RadioRob's post right below yours helpfully spells out changes in management and how this place is run that are happening as we speak. So at least as far as who will "run" this website goes, that's actually happening. It also spells out ideas for gradually increasing community involvement, primarily by assisting Cooper in the moderation of the various forums. So it's clear a team of people is working hard to figure out how to run the website on a day-to-day basis. There's a few minor miracles that have happened here worth noting. We are lucky that even though Bill left no will, this ended up in the hands of people he'd built friendships with and exchanged kindnesses with decades ago. That's a minor miracle. My biggest fear was that along the way some technical thing would go wrong and the lights would go out. Like somebody pulling an electric cord out of a wall. Some version of that happened, and somehow @RadioRob rode to the rescue and had the site back up on a different server within less than 24 hours. That's a minor miracle. So it's not like we're being passive. We're also not being passive in terms of weighing in on who should be the administrator. We set a goal of $10,000 in part to help pay for that process, which is likely to be primarily legal. @JEC did an awesome job leading the effort. We exceeded the goal, with @mike carey being the latest person to pull us up to just about $11,000. Thanks, Mike. So my view is that things are going well with one of Bill's two websites. I think we've jumped the gun a bit on the day-to-day management of the place. But even if you view it that way, that's a compliment. But for @RadioRob, we probably wouldn't exist right now. Where we seem to be stuck is that Team Washington has been saying they'd like guidance on who we think should "own" the two websites. The word "own" is an important and precise word. So I'm talking about who will legally "own" the websites. Not moderate a forum as a volunteer, or fact check an escort review. Team Washington also proposed that in their view community ownership might be a good model to consider. Several people here have weighed in about considering a non-profit, an LLC, a corporation. This is where there seems to be an impasse. What some people believe is worthy of consideration, is that we - the community - should explore becoming the owners of either or both websites through some form of community ownership. Others are saying we can't begin to consider such a decision until there is a new owner. This just logically makes no sense to me. Even though it's clear, I'll spell it out. The community can't be the new owner if the community can't decide what to do about the ownership of the site until there is a new owner. Since you brought up corporate M & A, I'll say something a bit biased that isn't meant as an insult to my corporate friends. I know a little bit about corporate bureaucracy. At some point I got the bright idea that Fannie Mae and the private mortgage insurance companies needed to change how they did homeownership. It took about three years and taking over the Fannie Mae headquarters and lots of Congressional hearings under Bill Proxmire's leadership and lots of work with CEOs and EVPS and corporate lawyers. But we ended up with a $1 billion Community Home Buyer's Program. I could give several other examples, but I want to make clear I'm not saying this out of inexperience or ignorance. Corporations can be big ass bureaucracies. In part because as you said people's jobs are on the line if they screw up some process - even when there is not a merger. I'm not sure how much that applies here. We're not talking about an asset worth $1 billion. As @BnaC suggested, it may be worth $1. I'm guessing it will fall under the small estate exemption in Nevada. The individuals chosen as Bill's administrators will determine the value, I believe. The options of ownership are very limited. Facebook won't be buying this website. At this point it seems like the options for this website are @Coolwave35, probably through a corporation, or the community. I personally think both are good options and worthy of exploration. That said, I'll keep repeating what I always said to Bill. "It's your website, so it's your rules." @Charlie is right that it isn't necessarily smart to build enthusiasm around a plan only to find out the new owner has different ideas. In fact, @Coolwave35 has weighed in he doesn't see a need for a steering committee to come up with a plan. So somehow this idea that we, the community, could come up with a plan to own this website as an LLC or non-profit or corporation is stuck in some sort of limbo. Much like the escort review website itself. Speaking of which, do we have any idea who will own that website? And do we care? I'm curious if there are people who think it is better to let it die? I'll make the best argument for that. It probably reduces the political risk that some politician or some law enforcement agency will come up with the bright idea of attacking both websites as "escort-related." As long as Bill owned both sites, that risk was always there. And he knew it. If we do want the review website to continue, which I do, that should be front burner, too. My sense until yesterday was that there was no plan for ownership. I took what @Coolwave35 said repeatedly to mean he didn't want to fund it, or own it. I think he may have changed his mind, but I'm really not sure. At one point he said maybe this is something a group of people here willing to donate money to run it could work on. My impression is he may be thinking of taking this steering committee idea and moving it over to the escort review website side. Whatever the solution for the escort review website is, I think we all know it is way more complicated and involves more risk. Which is why I agree with Team Washington that now is a good time to be planning for how it will be owned and run.

That's actually not true. I've been talking to escorts I know about what would happen if I end up owning a male escort review website. Do I want to own a male escort review website? No, I don't. Not as an individual, at least. But the picture that was forming is that nobody actually wants to own this website. Now it sounds like somebody does. My own opinion is that whatever form ownership takes it is better for the two websites to have joint ownership, and work hand in hand, like they have up until now. So we could get into definitions of "conjecture" or "dream." In my vocabulary, it's not conjecture to say that if I could buy a home in probate, which is something I wanted to do, I could buy a male escort review site in probate, which is something I don't want to do. In 2021 I actually am going to figure out how to gift a $130,000 condo to a friend. So I suppose if needed I could buy a male escort review website and gift it to "the community" and let "the community" figure out what that means. If I did that, I would have a few conditions. It would be dedicated to Bill. It would celebrate the fact that this was a good-hearted Gay man who took risks for his community and as an escort or drag queen or operator of a escort website tried to advance the interests and safety of his community. One good reason to do that is I have no interest in owning it, or managing it. But I would like to see it survive. It did a lot of good for me, so my vocabulary would be "pay it forward." So if the only choice was buy it or it dies, I would buy it and figure out how to have it run as a non-profit with a board. That's not a "dream" either, at least by my definition, since I've been involved in the development of various non-profits. I could give you a list of some people here I think would be great board members. But like you I don't like to speculate. I do know that if I did in fact want to buy the male escort review website, which I don't, I would be actively planning to make that happen. Just like I planned to buy a house in probate or I will plan to gift a condo to a friend. So I'm quite glad you are saying you want to buy it. And I hope you are not dreaming.

This is why I am confused. For what it's worth, the reaction to that post by Orin got was 31 likes, 21 applause, 1 happy, and 1 love. It was the post about what happened when @RadioRob brought the message center back from the dead by moving the message forum to a different server. So people were mostly reacting to that, rather than @Orin wanting us to decide who will own and run this place. The part about running the place - not owning it - is a bit confusing in itself. It seems like a life-saving decision about how this place is run was made. And we're all grateful for what @RadioRob did. Let me edit what Orin said and see if it makes more sense: "All of this means that it is time to decide who you would like to own and run this place." Is that more precise? Orin's statement is a bit confusing in itself because him and Deb and Team Washington are actually who will decide will own this place. But that is true only if they are selected as administrators. "We" could decide we want to own it through a non-profit. But that doesn't make it so. @Coolwave35 just wrote he would like to own it through a corporation. But that doesn't make it so. So the one thing we know for sure is that "we" will NOT decide who owns either website. What we can decide is that we want to own it, and how. To me that makes a lots of sense. Particularly because @Orin is asking us to do just that. Many of us have gone through probate and/or a trustee process. I've gone through both. So let me give an example which is not totally apples to apples but close enough to make the point. Now I will use my landlord experience. "There is a process. You have to be patient. An executor will be named. The executor will determine the new owner. Once the new owner is determined we will see where he or she wants to go." That's meant to be an accurate summary of a lot of vocabulary I am reading. It all makes sense on the face of it. Now let's take a specific example. I wanted to own a house in probate. This actually happened in 2012. If I had waited until an administrator had been selected and a new owner was determined, I would have failed. Because I wanted to be the new owner. So what I in fact did is everything I reasonably could to steer the outcome to what I wanted. Which seems to be the position we are in now. In fact, my understanding of the $10,000 we raised is that it is mostly for that purpose: steering the ownership of these websites to where we want, legally, whatever that ends up taking. So instead of saying "A court will appoint an administrator" and we'll wait to see who that is, we're being pro-active and paying for legal support to steer the outcome. Which makes enormous sense to me. I'll add another point that dovetails with my buying a home example. @Coolwave35 actually went further than I asked him to, which I appreciate, and basically made a public offer. That is essentially what I did when I bought a house through probate. It could have been accepted or rejected. But I obviously designed it in the hopes it would be accepted, which it was. As far as I'm concerned, "the community" could decide we want to form a non-profit and become the owner. It seems like that would be a legitimate thing to do, if we choose. And that is in fact what the prospective administrators are saying potentially makes sense to them. So while some of the language is confusing, what we are actually doing all makes sense to me. I'm factoring in that the worst thing that can happen is Long Lost Aunt Bertha shows up and says really the assets belong to her. Then the question is does she want to manage a Gay website with verbose assholes like me? How about a Gay website that posts reviews of male escorts? We can deal with that when Long Lost Aunt Bertha shows up, which sounds pretty unlikely. But my strong hunch is that even if she does show up, Aunt Bertha might decide that she really doesn't want to own a Gay website. So it would make absolute sense to me to prepare. I'd like us to be in a position so "the community" or @Coolwave35 or some individual or collective version of "us" is ready to help Long Lost Aunt Bertha dispose of this asset, which we actually want to own. This sounds very much like a train in motion. My understanding until today is that there was no prospective owner for the male escort review website. So if @Coolwave35 is now saying that he's interested in some form of corporate ownership with some kind of community steering process, that's a very different thing. One way or the other, my own opinion is that it is in our interest to somehow take ownership of that escort review website rather than let it die. To again go back to my landlord experience, let me quote one other thing I've heard a lot. "Now it's time for you to hurry up and wait." I have no clue how many mortgages I've gotten in my life, counting refi's. I only heard that exact line once, decades ago. But I've heard a variation of it pretty much every time. I take it to mean that at this point there is nothing you can do to influence the process. So just go watch some porn or something. The final thing I would note is that at least half the time that something like that is said, it's not true. My pet peeve was that I tell a mortgage lender I am going to Mexico for a week. And so if you need something figure it out before I leave, because what you need is in a file here. They say we have everything we need. Then the first day I'm in Mexico they urgently need documents that are 1000 miles away. The picture @Lucky painted of judges sounds right to me. Which is to say they are pretty much like banks and mortgage lenders. They will get to it when they get to it. And when they get to it you better be prepared because they want it now. My great hope, which I think @Orin already confirmed is possible, is that if our legal strategy works Team Washington becomes administrator. And the lawyer they hire figures out how to get this to fly under the radar, which is to say the small estate exemption. Then whatever a judge thinks about the disposition of the assets doesn't matter because he or she has nothing to do with it. I think that should be our goal. I can't think of a good reason why we'd want a judge in Nevada or anywhere to be pondering what to do with a male escort review website. So I feel like we should keep doing what @Orin said above. We should keep figuring out who we want to manage both websites, and how. I'm glad @Coolwave35 is thinking about some form of community management, particularly for the escort review website. I think it is obvious it needs a lot more help than this one. Am I being an ignorant whore and miscalculating something?

And now, just to prove I can always beat you when it comes to the biggest .................... word salad. So I think you are talking about being owner of the escort review site now. Is that right? Although legally it would take the form a corporation with a board. I mostly agree with you that this site manages itself. That's if you assume the people who manage it like @Cooper and @Daverwr and now @RadioRob keep managing it. That's also based on a vision, which you have clearly articulated, that everything is pretty much as it should be and nothing much needs to change. The more you move in the direction of wanting to expand or improve the website, the less sense it makes to say nothing much needs to change. The most immediate thing I think is staring us in the face - other than this website goes away - is what happens if the escort review website goes away. The review website is a whole different story. Whatever one thinks about "community control" as a philosophical issue, on a very pragmatic and urgent level if there's a need for "community planning" right now it's with the escort review website, not this one. I agree with you that some community management model makes sense. Ironically, what you're proposing sounds even more bureaucratic than what Bill figured out. The thing that is weird about me is I've been successful as both an activist and an escort. And landlord, too, but that's not relevant. So the box that escort review site goes into in my mind deals directly with decriminalization. I don't separate them. And while that may be long-term and aspirational thinking, it's also a day-to-day pragmatic issue. Bill leaned really, really, really heavily into defense, I think. My own view is the government basically won without even having to put Bill in jail. They castrated the site. That's my opinion. But even if you agree with me I feel Bill's ass was on the line so he got to do it how he wanted. So if it were my call, I can tell you some of the extremes I'd think about. 100 % defense means let the site die. That's the safest thing. 90 % defense means there is no narrative in the reviews at all. It's thumbs up or thumbs down, or 1 to 5 stars. Nobody has to edit anything, because nothing risky is communicated. Rentmen.com basically chose that model. And it is useful information, if it is true. It helps to know if someone is recommended, if their pictures are accurate, etc. I could have built a successful escort career off that, instead of Hooboy and Daddy's reviews. Again, the escorts I know pretty much don't give a shit about Daddysreviews anymore. They care about Rentmen more than anything. The 100 % offense strategy is that both sites actively are promoting decriminalization as part of a Gay community that has every right to free speech and our own agenda and goals. We are in bed with HRC and the ACLU, openly. They will say we don't want to be part of anything that has to do with pedophilia or sex with animals or human trafficking. We will say, "Geez. How funny. We completely agree." The reviews follow from there. They allow narrative descriptions. Is it really a problem to say some guy pissed on me and I really enjoyed it? I don't know. That's a complicated question. It depends on a legal and political strategy that hasn't been thought through at all. At least not by anyone here. I'm pretty sure HRC and the ACLU, among other, have been thinking about it. The key point is that if there was ever any risk of the review site running into problems based on something said in some review, it makes a huge difference if you have HRC and the ACLU on your side. I'd take what Bill put in the TOS about escort health and safety and harm prevention and blow it up on both websites. What does that mean on a review website? Should there be a forum on decriminalization and escort health and safety here? Does that protect us, or add risk? I obviously think the former. I've worked with enough Senators and MOCs to know they are not stupid people. So these cute word games about what a "rentboy" or "escort" is don't pass the smell test with trained lawyers who managed to win very expensive elections. I think it would be better to politely throw in their face that it makes no sense to have this running off servers in Amsterdam. Isn't it better to promote doing this in ways that are safe, healthy and decriminalized? These days if I asked that of Kamala Harris, seems like her answer would be yes. Jeffrey's biggest problem is that his arrest ignited a very interesting discussion about this. But for him it all happened too late. In one day he was arrested and his assets were seized. From then on it was game over. So what I do think is that if the escort review website doesn't die, and there is going to be "community" discussion and planning about this, now is the time to start. I'm reading whatever I can find about HRC or the ACLU. And I'm just in ignorant whore mode. But my superficial impression is that the position they are forming is "Hands off!" If true, and we want to know if it is true, that's good news for us. Let me say again. I don't know that the escort review site faces any real danger. If it dies, it's due to Bill's lack of planning, not law enforcement. But in the situation we are in I see no reason to either let the site die, or assume we have to take an extremely defensive position if it continues to operate.

Yes, and so can an old gal. I guess that's the difference between you and me. So this sounds like a significant change. You are considering a corporation comprised of individuals, rather than individual ownership. Personally, I think that's a good idea. Either a corporation or an LLC or a non-profit. All would have pluses and minuses. In my mind the chief advantage of a non-profit is it insulated everything from the idea that anybody is making money here off escorting. In fact, the opposite. I'd make it about spending money to promote health and safety and harm prevention. But what that really means needs to be thought through. More on that below. At least in my experience you're dead right that serving in an "official capacity" is going to be an issue for lots of people. On this topic, Bill was part stoic and part cowboy. The context of several conversations I had with him were right in the middle of SESTA/FOSTA or Rentboy. The throwaway line he used was that a prison cell would be bigger than his apartment. If you're talking about liability from a lawsuit from Bill's long lost heir or competitor, I think you're right that "your team's" ability to protect you is what matters. If you're talking about liability from prosecution, what your team does isn't what matters the most. In fact, the whole issue of prosecution risk is one reason why they may not want to serve in any "official capacity." If I had to guess, on a scale from 0 to 100 with 0 being risk-free, the risk of prosecution based on owning this website is in the teens. I could make a good case it's a single digit number, just by starting and stopping at "freedom of speech." The escort review site would be less than 50, probably way less. But higher than in the teens. So that's a harder problem both in terms of how you manage it, and how you manage it relating to FOSTA/SESTA. @Epigonos is hardly unique in thinking the reviews got changed without any input. The blunt way a number of clients I know expressed it is they got watered down to the point of uselessness. Which is one reason why people like The Deli so much. And why excellent hall monitors like @Cooper are both needed and appreciated. If I were in your shoes, I'd want HRC and the ACLU behind me. In fact, I might want them on the board. This is very simplistic thinking. But if you have them on a corporate board or in some type of affiliation, I think you just moved the needle on risk way down. It will never be at zero. But my view is you want to move it to zero. If I were in your shoes, that is what I would want. If I were in my shoes, that is what I would want for you. That is, in fact, why I am saying this. I can pretty much tell you how that plays out, using Bill as the poster child. I'll paint the picture of both the smooth Atlantis cruise and the possible Titanic tragic ending. The smooth Atlantic cruise is pretty much everything. If you choose to come to a pool party in Palm Springs, you'll be welcomed heartily. People who paid for Bill's hotel rooms or meals probably won't have to worry about paying yours. (Hint: one year Oz brought a beautiful bouquet of flowers you couldn't help notice. It was a very nice touch.) If people have anything bad to say about you, you know how that works. It will be said behind your back. The Titanic tragic ending is prosecution. It could be that Long Lost Aunt Bertha shows up and decides she always wanted to run a Gay male escort review site and sues your ass. That sounds more like a plot for a dark comedy or a really bad porn movie than reality. So the more likely worst case scenario is that you end up, for reasons that can't even be anticipated or understood, on the wrong end of FOSTA/SESTA or any other number of laws. (let's not forget The Travel Act.) Some of that does relate to how you structure "the community." I have no idea how Rentboy or Backpage or other Straight sites that met the same fate were structured. At the end of the day, the KISS bumper sticker for being a good target is that you're a White male predator with assets. Read the Congressional Record and it's pages and pages and pages on FOSTA/SESTA of how some White male predators made a shitload of money on activities that resulted in the abuse and death of a Black female prostitute. Needless to say, you don't want to be that guy. If any agency ever actually looked seriously into going after Bill, anyone with a brain would conclude that going after an elderly Gay man who was low-income and a former drag queen could be a problem, unless you actually wanted to ignite a massive backlash. Which is partly why I think we want to talk to HRC. And we would want this to be about some prosecutor going after "the Gay community," rather than going after a White male predator with assets, like they painted Jeffrey. I know some people are shaking their heads and saying this is all tangential because really the only reason I'm here is talk about some hot new muscle stud who advertises on Rentboy. Oh, wait. Rentboy is gone. But I do want to write a review about the hot muscle stud I "had coffee" with last week. Such a nice young man. Oh, wait. I can only mention the size and depth of his coffee cup. Back in the day, somebody actually wrote a review about my eggs. Seriously. And it wasn't about what I ate for breakfast. So at least in my mind all this ranges from the mundane, like what gets posted in The Deli, to what Mike appropriately calls the "aspirational" or "fanciful." To reinforce my point, I think we decide what's aspirational, and fanciful. If I were to base it off what happened with Rentboy, I can tell you how you end up being villified. For whatever reason, which we may never understand, this site or the review site suddenly disappears. (The sad irony I of course shouldn't state is that Bill, through lack of planning, figured out a way to make it disappear all on its own.) And you have some big legal problems. Again, I think that's unlikely, anyway. But my view as a landlord or activist or escort is always: how can I lower the risk? And when I take risks (spoiler alert: owning escort-related websites is risky) how do I reduce the risk? All I can say is that the rule of thumb I noticed when I was asked to be part of an effort to raise money for Jeffrey's defense is that the people I knew who relied on Rentboy the most were also the most uncomfortable when I asked them to help defend Jeffrey, whose assets were seized. By the way, I never met Jeffrey, and his site was absolutely worthless to me as a business proposition. Whatever I did was based on my own moral compass about defending "the community," as opposed to anything that helped me. Like you said, I know who I am. I know my heart.

Absolutely. 'm going to use the word "ecumenical" like a broken record. It's nice to think about community ownership versus individual ownership. But the even more basic point is that some type of ownership is a prerequisite to survival. Which is why I also agree with your point, Mike, that even if we think we have an individual owner, having a community ownership contingency plan is a good idea. @Orin took that one step further, I believe, and said even if we do have a new owner and technological hero we should have backs ups to them. I get @Charlie's point that people can be too enthusiastic. Generally, though, I've always viewed enthusiasm and new ideas and community involvement as a good thing. So I have no interest in turning this into The Matrix. But it doesn't seem like this is well thought through. One indication of that is your statement, like most here, seems to implicitly acknowledge that the review website is dead, or going to die. To be clear, you didn't say that verbatim. But the direction this is headed, if it works, is that Team Washington will become administrator of two websites, for which it will be seeking owners. And there is only a prospective owner for one of them. It's even weirder than that, because the review website is in some weird cyber-purgatory where it is still Bill's property but it may or may not be on Bill's server. So while everyone is saying we should do this precisely and just right, that's not my impression of what's happening in the real world. My life experience is that the difference between "aspirational" and "fanciful" is what you make it. As an organizer, my mantra was that if you are organizing people who are used to losing, you better have a well thought through plan to win and you better be dead serious about it. The experience that most directly relates to this community is same sex marriage. For a long time, that was a "fanciful" idea, too. It surprised me that I had clients who'd been in long term relationships for decades that thought it was a waste of time. But I understood, because that was their lived experience. A lot of the same sentiment drives how Gay men feel about decriminalization. Keep your head down. Don't look left. Don't look right. Don't make waves. Don't cause problems. If you ignore this and get caught, it's basically your fault. That's my read, at least, from direct conversations with lots of clients and friends. In any community effort won, there's always people who say it's fanciful. At best. I won't post it again, but one of my favorite articles ever is The Economist piece that essentially says the LGBTQ community is top of class for figuring out how to turn all this around. We turned something that was "fanciful" for pretty much all of human history into reality. Some of my funnest years as an escort were when my paid job was being an escort and my volunteer job was phone banks and training teams of volunteers going door to door and organizing house meetings on same sex marriage. In addition to taking a trip down memory lane, I'm saying all this because it's relevant to the excellent point you are making about a management model that involves the community as opposed to an ownership model that involves the community. I see both as desirable. But they are not the same. This is a slight stretch and a vast oversimplification, but I'll say it this way. The ownership model of the same sex marriage fight was that it was owned by the Gay mafia. They hired a bunch of people, some of whom are or were my friends and colleagues, to run statewide or other efforts. Most of which lost in the short term. The management model was essentially to make it big, then bigger, then huge, then huger. Get every fucking Gay man and lesbian and their dog and their neighbor involved. Make it really fucking big. Blow it up. I could be very verbose about "community based solution" I've organized that seemed fanciful at best. Then two or three years later we'd completely kicked Enron's ass in Oregon or developed a $1 billion national Community Home Buyers Program with Fannie Mae and GE. On those ones, I was the paid staff who built the coalitions, in some cases from scratch. But by far the funnest effort of my life, in terms of my identity, was as a Gay man volunteering on same sex marriage. And while lawyers played a massive role and many people credit the victory to them, Anthony Kennedy himself credited it to the way public opinion moved. So for us, Gay men, it's a life lesson in the difference between "aspirational" and "fanciful." To spell it out, you better have funding and you better have a plan and you better think it through and you better be adaptive when shit goes wrong. So I'm not against the idea of an individual owner. As you said, it's what has always been done before. It's obviously the easiest solution. And on this particular topic, the pragmatic starting point is that a lot of people don't want to be in any way publicly or formally or financially associated with a website they may rely on every day. Given my life experiences and biases, it's not a particularly good omen that the prospective new owner is saying community efforts to steer its own future kind of get in the way of a fun hobby. But you and I both know @Epigonos. And he is the poster child for Hardened Realist. There's something to be said for the Benevolent (Well, Maybe) Dictator model he proposes. You're looking for ways to have our escort and eat him, too. (Or cake, I guess,) Which is why I said you'd be a great person to help steer a pragmatic future. I'll note a few conversations I had with Bill that relate to both what is aspirational, but would in reality be more likely fanciful and failure. This goes back to Rentboy and FOSTA/SESTA. My own read of reality is that it's very unlikely this website would be shut down. It's probably unlikely that the escort review website would be shut down, as well, assuming it's brought back from the dead. But you can reread the Rentboy complaints and fill in the blanks. The content of any future complaint would be about "escort" reviews, endless posts in The Deli about "Rentmen" ads, etc. The cynical and realistic way to look at it is it doesn't matter whether they have a case or not. Because once you're in jail and have no assets, you're fucked. In our conversations, Bill reached the conclusion that the key to avoiding another Rentboy, including either or both of his sites, is the Gay mafia. I think he was right, although that's in part because I was suggesting that. This is wild ass speculation, but I'm guessing that's one reason HRC is moving on decriminalization. Turns out the Gay mafia hires escorts. One Gay Mafia member who co-founded HRC has had years of legal trouble on an issue related to this. So it makes a lot of sense that now that same sex marriage is won HRC would be moving in that direction. My guess is that if there were a poll, a majority of people here would say this is not a priority. That said, if those Rentmen ads, or this website, suddenly went away, that would really fuck things up. In fact, people here are now used to the idea that this is exactly what happens. This is why we keep our heads down, and don't make waves. Bill had one interesting and extremely fucked up solution. The most respectful way to say it was he was about as good at community organizing as I am at computer programming. So he created The Guardhouse. I think that was the name, but in my mind I thought of it as The Doghouse. If you did five back flips and recited three secret codes, or something like that, you could get in - by invitation only. This is speculation, but I think part of that was because there wasn't really any "community" consensus or plan about what to do about Rentboy or FOSTA/SESTA. As I said, my mantra is if you're going to try to win, you better have a really good plan and a lot of people organized around it. So the whole thing was dead on arrival, in my view. So I do think this is a problem. I'm intentionally talking about what I consider the most "fanciful" of goals, like moving toward decriminalization. But I could post a list of people, including myself, that made what they thought were helpful suggestions about much easier and doable things to Bill that they feel he simply ignored. My easiest solution now is simple. Don't worry about it. Bill and I also talked about how we both covered our asses as people who provided escort services, or paid for them. So it's not my problem anymore. I basically see it as an opportunity cost of continuing to do things the same way. To be clear, Mike, I'm not criticizing you for your choice of words. I think you're exactly right. Now is a very good time to be thinking and planning about what's aspirational, and what's fanciful.

Thanks for the clear answer. In theory it's possible that any human being on the planet could end up owning the site. But as a practical matter it seems like the options are really either "we" own it as a community, which is the language @Orin keeps using and some of us view as a desirable option, or it is owned by some individual. You didn't answer the second part of my question. Are there conditions in which you would change your mind, and not want to be the owner? You have already named one, I think. I'll use the phrase "community planning" to describe that. But I can't read your mind so it's better for you to articulate what you are thinking. I think Palm Springs has kind of spoken, albeit in code. I know some of the players, so I can read the like buttons and get a sense of where people are at. I assume @Epigonos is probably speaking for himself, but he's been the clearest. I'll call it the Benevolent (Maybe, Sometimes) Dictator theory of leadership. Several of the Palm Springs people hit the "like" button on what @Charlie said, about waiting for "the new owner." Since some of them have been following the conversation, that implicitly says to me that the options for who is "the new owner" do not include "us." My own opinion, and I don't speak for them at all, is that you're actually a good fit for them. If some individual takes over the site and sets his rules and goes from where Hooboy and Guy left off, they'll be good. Like you, they view this as a "fun hobby." Probably more to the point a "private hobby." That's not a universal statement, but that's pretty accurate I'd say. So the idea of making this complicated, or having some steering committee, or doing anything much different than we do right now, probably doesn't have much appeal. So it's clear, I'm basing these observations off extended conversations I had with real people maybe five years ago. The idea of being on a steering committee or part of an LLC or non-profit would probably have no appeal to most of them. They want this to be a fun and private hobby. Period. Again, I don't speak for them, and they are not a uniform group. Like you, I was curious to know what they think. Anyone who wants to do a better job than me of characterizing where many of the people who regularly attend the party are coming from ios of course welcome to do so. One perspective that is not captured by that group is that for escorts this is a business. I'm not even in a good position to judge this now in a way I would have been a decade ago, and I'm being transparent about that. But my guess is that this website has gradually become increasingly irrelevant. That's a fact for the escorts I know, who make all their money of Rentmen or other sites. At least among the escorts I've known and know who were reviewed a lot on Daddy's or named Escort Of The Year there was a lot more involvement over here as well. So there's a "community planning" question in there, which is a direction you're stating you're not much interested in. One really key community planning question is whether the dormant or dead review website is ever going to be brought back to life. As of now, there's no prospective owner of that. And if there's no owner, there's no website. For the entire run of Hooboy and then Daddy, the two websites were joined at the hip. That's certainly how I experienced them. One helped grow the other. I know that for a fact, from my involvement with Bill. I don't know whether Hooboy designed it that way. But it wouldn't surprise me if he did. That did start to change when Bill became more defensive as a result of Rentboy and FOSTA/SESTA. Formalizing the divorce by separating the ownership and management would be another giant leap in that direction. More likely, my guess is that the review website just dies. So I don't think we really know what happens if, or when, the review website is officially dead. One of the things that isn't clear to me is whether some steering effort would actually address what it takes to keep that website alive. But if the idea is that we don't need a steering effort, that solves the problem. As a practical matter, I take it as another nail in the coffin of the escort review website. My view is this is a strategy for hopefully surviving and maintaining, but not growing. The result will likely be shrinking. But that's obviously just a guess. Regardless, this is a website that in the last six months has had 100,000 to 200,000 visits a month. So if you are the owner, and it's funded out of your pocket, even if I'm right and that number stabilizes around 100,000 or even 50,000, I'm not sure that anyone really cares. As for the review site, if you want to get comparable numbers you now get this. It literally has no pulse, which was not the case three months ago. So maybe it can and will be brought back to life. But the way to do that is not by saying let's not plan anything. If there is some strategy to save that website, I'm not hearing it. And I don't mean save the data, which it sounds like our resident technology hero is in the process of doing. I mean transfer the ownership to some new legal entity that can run it moving forward.

Thanks. I appreciate that. And I look forward to reading your plan for the future of this website. Including the piece I'm personally interested in the most, which is probably one of the most significant issues for the long term. What role we play, if any, in whether sites like Rentmen get obliterated like Rentboy did, or if the fun hobby people come here enjoy is decriminalized. I get the sense your plan will be a quick read.

You're a star, @Cooper. Especially right now, you are a godsend. There. Is that short enough?

So I'd like to do some reality check questions. Like @Charlie I see no reason to spin our wheels. My view of the goal is simple: to save both websites from extinction. Period. Full stop. Orin, you keep referring to "the sites." To me, the escort review site already has one foot in the grave. That's not stating an aspiration. That's stating a view of reality. There's been no discussion about who would own or manage that site. Other than that the prospective owner of this site doesn't want to own or manage it. There's also been no discussion of how it might be funded. And as of right now, the website doesn't even functionally exist. So there seems to be a disconnect here. If the State of Nevada inherits both sites, I guess that solves the problem. But if Team Washington (and I think you said perhaps a Nevada co-administrator) are named administrator, then there's two assets to be disposed of that are of concern to us. So how does that play out for the escort website? @Coolwave35 is not interested in that site, based on what he's said repeatedly. I'm guessing you won't be sending out RFPs to Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, @Orin. If that website is going to survive, I'm assuming - perhaps incorrectly - that the ownership gets figured out here. If we do want that website to continue, it seems like that's one thing we could use this time to work on. Am I wrong? I posted that first quote in part to confirm that you are being loud and clear that you are not the guy for the review site, @Coolwave35. I'm also taking you to mean that you are the guy for this website. But the word "owner" is not in your comments above. So are you planning to be the new legal owner of this website? Or are you instead saying you will pay the bills of the website's expenses? If it's the latter, we still are at square one. Because we do need a legal owner. I was taken aback by the last statement in that quote. It suggests that there may be conditions under which you don't want to become the owner, or financier, or either. I think it's fair to ask, how certain of this are you? Are there specific things you know of that for you would lead you to say, "That isn't something I'd want to be a part of"? And let me be super clear why I am asking A line I used a lot with Bill was, "It's your website, so it's your rules." If you own the site, I'll say exactly the same thing. Especially if I go with @Epigonos' Benevolent Dictator Theory. So I appreciate the fact you're speaking up now. If the formation of a steering committee on running the site would lead you to say, "I'm out," that is important for us to know. I'll close repeating what Mike said, which to me is a minimum common sense thing. Let's stop beating around the bush about the word "own." It seems like a prospective single owner has emerged. Am I right, or wrong, @Coolwave35? It also seems prudent to at least plan for the contingency that the community ends up owning one or both sites, as a community. In fact, for some of us that may be a contingency. For others, it is a preference. With the review site, in particular, it seems like it's the only way it may survive. And it's not like we have to guess who the likely administrator who selects "the new owner" will be. In fact, we donated over $10,000 in part so that Team Washington had the resources to become the administrator. I hope we all agree that is in our interest. It seems like we do. @Orin hit the "like" button on what Mike said. So even if I agree with Charlie's logic, which I largely do, it's not like we don't know or can't influence what the court decides about who the administrator is. And it's not like we don't have a clue what the likely administrator will say about who ends up owning this site. He is saying it, repeatedly, loud and clear. I also agree with Charlie's point that it won't help matters to dig into particular positions about this. I plan to be ecumenical. I can live with a benevolent dictator, or with community ownership. I hope we'd all celebrate either outcome. I'll end by repeating my basic goal, which I'm also hoping the vast majority of us share: to save both websites from extinction. Period. Full stop.

And the reason this is the model we want is? I can take a joke, and so could Bill. Not too long after he banned me for a week because of the JD psychodrama he was sitting on my back porch, as my guest, during the pool party. I can't recall if you paid his hotel bill, or I did, or we split it. At one point he made some wise ass comment to me and I said, "Fine. You're banned. Now you get your ass at out my house." We both laughed. I remember that moment with affection. To your point, he wasn't necessarily the best manager. But you could write the textbook on how to manage Bill. So I am ecumenical about this. I'm more for having a choice than I am against a benevolent dictator. But if we wrote a job description for a new owner of the two websites, is that what we would want it to be?

Can I nominate you for the job? I'm too old. Seriously, thank you for weighing in. The silence was deafening.

Since that's my language, let me respond. There's no chance of you creating a train wreck. All you and @RadioRob did is create a choice. Had you not created what I'll call an alias site, we wouldn't even have the choice of having this discussion. So thank you. The stuff going on about this in the other forum is, to quote one poster there, "bullshit" in my view. But it is where we are at. I've thought the same thing you have. Which is that getting our shit together could help matters, not hurt them. That's true whether the new owner is a community ownership entity, or an individual. Not being a lawyer, the most realistic scenario in my mind is that somebody has to explain something to a judge who is very busy and wants a succinct answer. Right out of the gate, as @ArVaGuy thoughtfully pointed out, we know we don't want me doing it. That said, a girl can always dream. So my dream is that if any of this comes up at all what's said is that Bill operated a few "Gay websites" for a community of "Gay men" and these "Gay men" would like to continue operating the "Gay website." And, yes, judge they have a plan to do so, if you'd like a summary. If Long Lost Aunt Bertha shows up that complicates matters. But if we're talking reality this is somewhere in the ballpark, I think. It's a version of what happened the one time a realtor represented me when I was buying a house through probate. I didn't even need to be in a court room. The even better scenario, which may be possible, is that none of this has to be discussed with a judge because it all falls under a small estate exemption. While it was not in Nevada, I also know from personal experience that is a legal possibility. This is speculation rather than fact, but I think the issue of who is the administrator and then whether this falls under a small estate exemption are two legally separate issues. Meaning if Deb or you and/or some local individual are appointed administrator there is at least reason to hope all this falls under the small estate exemption. I think my point still applies. I'll call this the Sleeping Beauty scenario. Bill's website is in a deep sleep, but we are keeping it temporarily alive. If we succeed, we get to kiss it, and it wakes up and we have a happy ending. If we do not succeed, legally we have to kiss Sleeping Beauty goodbye, forever. Somewhere there is a plug, and a server. It will have to be pulled. In real life, as in fairy tales, this one seems like a no brainer to me. It is better to get our shit together. The train wreck is that we can't get our shit together. Or we do it in a way that conflicts with what the new owner wants. If the new owner is us, I'm not even sure what it means for us to conflict with what we want. If the new owner is an individual, it is possible to conflict with what he wants. But to get to any new owner, community or otherwise, we have to deal with the presumed administrator. And that administrator is saying this, to quote directly so I don't mischaracterize anyone again:

I hit the "like" button on both of your posts which boil down to the idea above, @Charlie. (Hate to say it, but you were a bit verbose.) I've now seemingly contradicted myself, so let me explain why I think I'm being consistent. If you simply add the word "prospective" to your sentence, we are not getting too far ahead of ourselves. It is where we are at right now. So if the new owner is "us" it means we have to hash this out, which is what a steering committee is for. If the new owner is an individual, it is possible and in fact likely that some "enthusiastic" member could propose something the new owner doesn't like. I have no idea who such an "enthusiastic" member might be. But if such a person exists, let me offer some advice. While Daddy was a kind and compassionate man, it was never a good thing to get on Daddy's bad side. Good boys (Daddy liked to call us his boys) are just that. So most of the time I tried to be a very good boy and do what Daddy told me to do. If a "prospective" new owner, to speak hypothetically, were to say we don't need a steering committee, then creating a steering committee would essentially be creating a train wreck. Just like it would have been when Bill was alive, since I don't think he would have favored the idea based on a number of conversations I had with him. Some "enthusiastic" member might not see it that way. But sober realists like you and me might say we're just building a train wreck. Why do that? So I agree with you. If we're all waiting to find out who the new owner is, because it's not us, it just makes no sense. Let's just wait and see.

So Charlie, help me connect the dots. I'm reading the statements above and they don't quite add up. As far as I can see, last week there was a Plan A and a Plan B. Plan A was the new owner is somebody working with us. Aka Team Washington. Plan B was the site dies for any number of reasons. Now we have a different Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is the new owner, after probate, is somebody working with us. Aka Team Washington. Plan B is we move the website to a new server and just continue it. That's actually not really Plan B. It's reality. So Rock Hard over at GayGuides says this is intellectual property theft. I'm not a lawyer, but I think that puts us in a different box than thinking about a hypothetical new owner. It's a little bit like what some guy said this week about "We The People." It's not some abstract thing out there. It's us. Somehow, legally or not, we are the new owner. If that were not the case, the website would be down instead of being on some new server which I'm guessing is in somebody's house. Maybe I'm missing something. Please explain it to me. I've said this twice but I'll be broken record. This rescue from near death is commendable, and I deeply appreciate it. Many of us have said that. In my mind, it underscores the urgency of figuring shit out. In effect, the community took ownership of at least one of these two websites. Were that not the case, you wouldn't be reading this. In my mind, the simple explanation is that this has always been the community's website, anyway. We can't steal our own data. Especially somebody verbose like me. To me, this underscores reasons why a new formal ownership structure should be a community ownership structure. What am I missing? Are we thinking Mark Zuckerberg might be the new owner? If we don't create a form of community ownership, which will take some time, the alternative goes like this. Team Washington becomes the legal executor of Bill's estate. If there is any owner now, other than Bill, it seems like it's @RadioRob. I mischaracterized something someone else said, so I won't try to speak for him. But my understanding is he said he doesn't want to "own" it. Take him out, and I think that leaves @Coolwave35 as the new legal owner. With all due respect to Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or any other potential new owners, I think we have a few options. And we did jump the gun on one of them already by moving the data to a new server. I'll say this very bluntly and clearly so I am not mischaracterized. I am deeply grateful for what a few people did that saved this website from possible extinction. I was watching the drama over at Gay Guides without saying a word, believe it or not. A bunch of pessimists were speculating about how it has all very sadly come undone. And in my mind, being an optimist, I had faith that we were going to find a way. And gosh darn it, we did. So I am not criticizing anyone. The opposite. I am deeply grateful. The interesting legal question now is what if Team Washington fails to become Bill's executors, and his estate ends up with the State of Nevada? I'm not a lawyer. But if I follow the legal logic proposed here that means there is no owner, and therefore no website. So somebody better be ready to pull the plug on whatever it is that is allowing me to type this. Because it's not legally ours. To boil it down to its bare essence, either "we" somehow own the site, or it dies. It's that simple. What am I missing?

Jesus Fucking Christ! Do I have to spell everything out? Long posts are a form of overcompensation for a small dick. In between Bel Ami porn films you might want to buy a psychology book.