Technology news aggregate and online message board Reddit is in trouble. Recent site slowdownsand, in some cases, outright outageshave prompted programmer Mike Schiraldi to issue a call for help: He's asked users to become Reddit subscribers for a donation of "whatever you want" in an effort to raise money to hire more resources to fix the site's issues.

Technology news aggregate and online message board Reddit is in trouble.

The community, purchased by magazine giant Conde Nast in October 2006, is running on the backs of four engineers. Recent site slowdownsand, in some cases, outright outageshave prompted programmer Mike Schiraldi to issue a call for help: He's asked users to become Reddit subscribers for a donation of "whatever you want" in an effort to raise money to hire more resources to fix the site's issues.

So what's the problem? Why doesn't Reddit just turn to parent company Conde Nast for the cash? That's one of the first things users inquire about, says Schiraldi, when the subject of supporting the site comes up.

"But here's the thing: corporations aren't run like charities. They keep separate budgets for each business line, and usually allocate resources proportionate to revenue. And reddit's revenue isn't great," he writes.

According to Schiraldi, the site's traffic numbers around 280 million monthly pageviews. However, there's no indication that a wide swath of users are participating in the site's more revenue-generating elements: clicking on ads, sponsored links, et cetera.

These, and more, are all elements that have been built into Reddit by the site's four aforementioned engineers. And before Reddit can begin to work on some of the technological issues that are affecting the site to an adverse degree, they simply need more resources in the form of new hires and new servers.

As for Reddit's user base, however, not all are as enthused about the prospect of donations as othersnot strictly from a monetary sense, but a philosophical one.

"I'm a bit torn," writes Reddit user scaryberry. "You are owned by a corporate entity, and a big one at that. If people donate, it's win-win for CN: hey, look, we don't have to put any money into reddit, the users are doing it for us."

Other user suggestions for funding strategies include selling @reddit.com email addresses, allowing "subscribed" users to block all advertising on the site, and dumping a whole host of customized features for those that pony upcolored user tags, the ability to run customized CSS templates, and graphical analyses for tracking Reddit's "Karma" voting system.