Server Upgrade discussion

[renegade-a]

well i quite dont know where to start with this one (seeing that i feel i will be tarred and feathered for even bringing some of this stuff up, and well this is why i usually stay out of the administration threads but here goes nothing)

Originally Posted by avery

actually, if you've been paying attention you'll note that the site has reached or exceeded its goal of $60 a month donations ever since the option to donate was introduced. and unless you're going to tell me they all did it because they want a pink name, they did it because they care about the site and not because of incentives.

we wouldn't need more than $60 a month donation if we didn't require a server upgrade, and we wouldn't require a server upgrade if we weren't trying to lure more and more people onto the site with google ads, etc. if you have to entice people to sign up with ADISC then you have to entice them to donate to keep the site running with all the new people, and you fall into a self-perpetuating cycle. pretty soon it's more about marketing than it is about helping people.

i think that as long as the site is reasonably visible on the internet people will join up here if they want to, and they'll willingly donate enough money to keep the place running. i think the whole system of rewards and lures is puerile and idiotic. only silly childish people can be motivated to do something by little toys and gimmicks. the only thing i care about is the respect and trust of the community and the friends i've made here. that's the only meaningful kind of status you can have here, and it's not something you can give to someone as a reward for donating.



obviously it's not that simple. my money is no different from anyone else's money once it's in your pocket. if you're spending money to advertise the site, then all donations go toward financing those ads.

as far as telling someone that their money wont go towards something like advertising, well theres no way you can not use their mony for advertising

for example
avery donates 10 dollars this month, he pm's u to tell you that he would appreciate it if you didnt use it for advertising on google and u pm him back and tell him that you wont use it for advertising. well now everything is all fine and dandy right?... Wrong! his money may not have been used to directly pay for advertising but his money went to pay a different cost, so now that that expense is paid you still have the rest of the money from the donations left in an account so u can pay for other expenses (such as advertising) so even though his money didnt directly go to advertising he indirectly made sure that someones $$$ did. because if donations were short im sure you would make sure that the server cost get paid first before advertising because we need to have a website with a dedicated server running if we wish to advertise anything (right?!)

Originally Posted by Darkfinn

I'm gonna be perfectly honest here.

If I donate $20/mo... I expect to be a Mod.

I only think it is fair that if I am paying a regular percentage of this sites operating costs that I be allowed some say in daily operations.

Persons donating $10/mo or more should be put on some kind of "executive council" or "board of governors" and be given sway over how this place runs.

Don't get me wrong... I am happy with the way this place is being run now... but if I am going to put $100+ a year into this place (and I don't have a problem doing it) I do expect some return of investment.

now this one is one i agree on (not for everyone but in darkfinns case i do agreeon it)

i dont really know darkfinn that much but i do know that he has answered some of my questions, as im sure he has for most of us here, however some people say that members should only be able to get mod status for their contributions... well darkfinn does contribute a lot and quite frankly i dont see to many people becomming mods.. as a matter of fact i dont think that there are even any new mods here besides the members who have been mods since forever!!!
there are a few people i think shoud be mods, (however im afraid that i guess i dont do my part by voiceing my opinion that much, but hey sometimes i feel like most of the people here will chew my ass off for even opening my mouth)

i do think that we should have a way to nominate people for mod(ship) and i dont think this site could have to many mods seeing that this is a forum about particular lifestyles so people here could be easily offended (wheather they be *b, do, fur, incon, gay, stright, bi, black, white, blue, brown) so there shoud be an abundance of moderators to even make sure that this site stays fun and appropriate, and hey adisc is being advertised on google and advertising anything on google is risky business so an abundance of mods wouldnt unnecessarily be a bad thing

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those are just my opinions on those post, my opinions on this site and all the upgrades and everything will be stated today (and hey im a lil pissed off because of things going on in my personal life, so everything i say might come out a lil harsh but this is all stuff i mean)

first of all i need to say i left this site for a while because i have started a company of my own in january and we have just went public in march, we had our first interview on youtube, we have grown pretty big and were still growing, there is a lot that i have to do and im really by myself because i cant count on anyone to do anything with out me having to be up their ass about it, so ive been a lil busy. ive also have not been living at home for the last couple of weeks, ive been out of town (nothin bad) i was just offered a great opportunity and i needed to take it (for health and personal reasons) so ive really been working double because not only am i not in my target area for my business, but ive been busy dealing with personal things that have to do with my health so ive been extremely busy and have not have had time for anything including this site, on top of that my company has had some international affairs that have had to be dealt with (we were supposed to remain local but some (few) people in europe saw us and really like what we were doing so they requested some stuff so ive been dealing with that)

now like i said i havent been too active on this site and when i come back what do i see? my regulars status has been revoked because of inactivity

well thats one way to piss me off, also even though i was never a vip (i think) i dont like the fact that some people were removed as vips either

to me both of those send the message of "u know u used to have what it take to be "someone" on this site but screw off bitch because you just dont cut it anymore, your just another newbie now. However, u can bust your ass off some more and we might consider u "somebody" again"

im sorry but thats what it felt like to me!

i also think that even though moo dose have this website for us free of charge
i feel that if im going to bust my ass to walk to the nearest drugstore (now i have one thats close but once i go back home i wont) to buy a F**ing prepaid gift card for $5= what ever im going to donate, i better be treated like everyone else (ya theres the execption of vips) but i would really appreciate the name titles (or whatever they are called) not only that but my inbox used to have the capacity of 200 pm's now i can only fit 10 and i have 21 in there that i would really like to keep. (you know thats a lil bit F***ed up) also i cant stress enough that i left for a lil while because of extreme busyness and now i have to jump through f***ing hoops just be be a regular again (thats a big slap in the face) and honestly its those things that piss me off, not only that but there have been many times that i havent logged in because i was busy and just wanted to check something, and im told "hey guess what u dont visit the site enough u f***ing slacker" thats really messed up! now u migh say, hey just check the box that says remember me

well.... i do but i also read this website and i am also computer literate so i know that if im reading somthing about a topic i dont really want people other than my self to know i will probly be using firefox and u know theres this nice thing about firefox and that is, when i close it i get this pop up that says delete personal data
all i do is click enter and EVERYTHING is erased
so the remember me dont work in my scenario

im pretty sure that i recieved my regular status back but it still pissed me off

this is just a piece of my mind i am busy right now and just recieved an important phone call, so ill save the rest of my opinion for some other time
and yes its 3:14 am and im recieving a F****ing phone call, welcome to my life!

[Moo]

niet3sche:
(1) We just upgraded our dedicated server with 1GB (rather than 256MB) RAM.
(2) Apache tuning (like moving mod_rewrite rules from .htaccess to httpd.conf, re-examining issues like worker threads, etc) mysqld (cache size, etc) tuning is on my to-do list. I did it a few weeks ago before the server upgrade but now I need to do it again.
(3) Already done, but I'm gradually turning off features for guests (and spiders) to reduce load as well.

I have the source for vB, so I can modify it if really needed. I try hard to avoid this though, as modifying files that need to be overwritten causes your changes (and the features they bring) to be lost whenever you upgrade.

I am not going to sell VIP or moderator status, no matter how much people donate. I am aware that this community depends on integrity and selling those things would destroy that integrity.

I am currently accepting one-shot donations. I'm against advertising (smart people bypass it with adblock plus, and everyone else just gets annoyed by it). I rely on donations and meet any shortfall out of my own pocket.

Physical merchandise (like t-shirts) are an interesting idea but I suspect they wouldn't sell much. Plus it is far easier to give people long sigs for donating than it is to give them a t-shirt! So I am hesitant about selling physical merchandise.

Currently, I'm actually tempted to go back to the old model of 'donors get a pink name, and title, but nothing else'... unless we get quite a bit more in donations because of our current system than we did before. I'm not sure how we're going to handle past donors, but I'm thinking about it.

Thanks for your feedback... and yes, I did a mysqldump.