I kind of got to the point where I've got to make a decision.

Should I keep running DeepFreeze as I am now—for free, in a best-I-can-do way? Or should I risk attempting to monetize it in the hope of having more time to work on it, and expand it?

I'll try to explain what I mean in detail.

DeepFreeze launched on May 5th, 2015, but it has been in development since February. I've been working on it for over a year now.

I got one or two things right with DeepFreeze. But there is one I got completely wrong: expectations.

What I had conceived and thought I had when the site launched was, basically, a reference resource. A somewhat larger, more interactive version of my "Ethic Fail" infographs. Despite how hyped /v/ was, I figured its popularity would've been very limited—but, after launch, it became probably the most recognized GG reference, got a load of coverage (mostly from Youtubers), got mentioned at the SPJ debate. It generated enough salt to build a second moon. I've seen so much positive feedback that I feel I'm settled for life.

Partially due to the its unexpected importance, the site turned out to be a lot more difficult to maintain than I had anticipated, eating up an absurd number of hours. DF entries may be short and its articles few, but they require loads of research. Furthermore, a lot of the effort went to the continued development of the site and, especially, to the structuring of the rules and the "framing" of content, which is DF's paculiarity and an untrodden path. One-line entries became basically short articles. At some point, work went from simply copying and pasting stuff from the GG wiki or already complete pastebins to receiving reports firsthand, researching stuff on my own. Had to make a lot of calls. I started occasionally contacting journos before filing stuff.

At some point in that process—much as I've been loathe to admit it—what I was doing became journalism.

I can't really understand how I managed to keep it going this long, since I was complaining that I was tired basically from day one. Looking back, it's probably due to the fact that I adapted to a much slower pace. I'm currently filing people from the Burch-Wiseman media blitz—which was in July—and for the Wu "leaving her house" thing, that was in October 2014. I'm not even up to speed with @BoogiePopRobin's pastebins, and he's filed 3 journos in the last six months.

This slowdown doesn't just mean the site updates less and that it's technically and graphically not as good as I wish. The real issue is that this glacier's pace causes a lot of unfairness on DeepFreeze—as a lot less emblems are filed, the ones that are there become much more selective, creating exceptions. I have less time to recheck and refile old stuff. I had to give up on research that I deemed important because it was taking too long—the review camp stuff that has been on the backburner for a while, and even the GG hitpieces, since without some more effort on other stuff the GG stuff would end up invading the site. Lots of sites, like Gamespot and IGN, are really under-represented since I can't put in time to do some better research, while Kotaku—which GG keeps a constant eye on—is more represented (yeah, deservedly, but it's not fair when the others are not scrutinized as much).

The big regret is still not having enough strength to tackle MSM. That was my goal since the start, and I feel that DF is not living up to its full potential until it does that—a resource that tells you game journalism isn't too reliable is fairly useless, since everyone aware enough to use it knows since at least Gerstmanngate.

Well, why has this became a point now? Mostly, due to the fact I put online a partially finished backend.

So far, we endured on the the hopeful "hold out until the backend is up, then your workload will go down a lot" strategy. The backend, allowing other people to finally access the site's DB without me being an essential part of the mechanism, was the milestone I was looking forward to. Its absence was the reason I couldn't accept the help of the many who offered. It was hard work to put it together for me (I'm more of a frontend developer), and I decided to do it on my own for redundant security, but I finally put it online just a short while ago.

While this change, on the long term, might finally come to reduce my workload, for now it's been worsening it. The backend is providing a nice selection of bugs to squash, and the bits that I thought I could safely do later are turning out to be quite essential, so development is still going strong. More importantly, several of the entries provided by the only contributor that for now has the house keys have required me to do more work than I saved by having him write them in the first place—contact the journalist, run into filing issue…

In addition to the system which was supposed to eventually ease my workload not working yet, I feel DF requires a pretty large amount of structural updates. Graphics are meh, fonts are too big, homepage should be completely overhauled, SEO sucks. Especially, I really feel the site needs to be revolutioned (after proper feedback) into an outlet-centric approach, rather than the current journo-centric system.

Hopeful strategy: not so successful.

Another issue are things that are happening in my private life. Without going into too much detail, I'm currently transitioning from a salaried job to freelance work due to the company that employs me substantially going under.

Now everytime I work on the site, I'm essentially shortening my freelance time and cutting my paycheck. That might draw the time for DF development even lower, although it's early to say. (There's the family farm, too, but my father takes the money for it).

So, now with at least a good part of GG slowing down significantly, I think I've got to the point where a decision must be taken. The way I see it, we have two scenarios. I don't see either one as better than the other, rather I feel that it's the GG people to decide what they would rather I do with DF.

1. DeepFreeze as a representation of the grievances from the GamerGate consumer revolt.

Basically, I keep doing what I'm doing, while slowing down if needed. File what I can, concentrate on less-controversial stuff to do as much stuff as possible while limiting effort. Try to perfect the backend, so it can reduce my workload, but work on no other time-consuming projects. Try to keep up as long as I can. When I can't anymore, handle the site to someone deserving, or, if no one comes up, slap a disclaimer explaining that updates have stopped on top of the pages, exit gracefully without the e-celeb spergout (I kinda can't think of a good spergout). This doesn't exclude anything—maybe, after a bit more tweaking, the backend actually ends up saving my ass after all, and after a few fixes the site becomes easy enough to maintain that I can keep it online indefinitely.

2. DeepFreeze as a media watchdog

Try to put at least a large amount of my time towards DF, making it at least partially my job. Try for the more time-consuming things, such as original research or site code improvement (the underoptimized SEO, the horrible hompage), and eventually MSM. Attempt to make it a site that you don't need to be GG to appreciate, but that people can actually visit to see if, say, the Washington Post or the AV Club are reliable outlets.

That, sadly, means monetizing DF.

Monetizing means donations. Yes, I also hate the idea of e-begging, but the ad-fueled model is phasing out, and even if it was still going strong it's a horrible fit for DF.

This quite likely would mean Patreon. Yeah, I hate it too, I call it "hipster welfare" as well, and I'm disgusted at the thought that the biased SJWs that screwed over Hotwheels would get a cut of the donations, but it's the de-facto standard.

This is actually pretty risky. Even a very small Patreon would be a nice solid weak point to attack (although hey, free publicity), but, especially, it would significantly increase my workload—need to check who's donating to disclose CoIs, need to start publishing my schedule so doners can see what I'm doing with their money, can no longer afford to half-ass certain things since I no longer have the 4free excuse… There's a very solid chance that the Patreon stays at a fairly low number (especially with GG slowing down like this), and we're basically struck at point 1 despite the extra effort.

So, that's where we're at. What do you think, should I try the Patreon (or another system) or not?

Keep in mind the question is not if I deserve support or not, or if you yourself would like to support the site. The question is if it would be *worthwhile* or not to pursue the watchdog thing. Think of it in a journalism/GG prospective, don't think about me—I'm fine with either one. If this was a "I've done so much, I deserve something back" thing, I'd have just started monetizing and spreading the donation link everywhere instead of asking and taking care that it doesn't sound like this.