Here It Is
This will be a bit long, but here goes...
This came about in part due to complaints and in part I am frustrated with the fact that the forums have strayed so far from their original intent. This is why I sorta up and said to myself, hey. This isn't supposed to be a hassle. I'm not making enough money to go through all this hassle. I still have to find a 'home' - a dedicated server and will have that to go through.
It also came about as the moderators, admins and I have been discussing what was happening in the political and coffee break threads including post content for some time. Folks, I don't want to have to discuss post content or deal with complaints over post content. I have enough problems in my life to deal with and better things to do with my time.
Let's just say I decided to forcefully require a business / family forum without controversy. I'll address this aspect further below.
As I explained, a number of factors come into play here from bandwidth to content. No one factor alone was decisive. I'll start with bandwidth first. When the attachments option came into vBulletin, I enabled it. I like it. I also enabled 'thumbnails' where a little picture shows in the post its self when the attachment is a graphic file. This has to do with both bandwidth and it also significantly affects disk space. Top attachment people:
Name Number Size
1. Marc 185 21.241MB
2. energy 94 11.093MB
3. Randy Stewart 111 8.166MB
The 'main' database its self is about 72 megabytes. Attachments take up an additional 132MB of disk space. Considering the word 'scaleable', I had not envisioned (OK - poor planning on my part) the additional disk space requirements which have resulted from attachments. If I get a dedicated server with a large drive this will be less of a problem (pretty much a non-issue), but right now disk space is limited and the 'next' stage with Verio is about US$100 to US$150 a month more than I'm currently paying. And right now I'm paying over US$100 a month more than I did for the old server (pre-June 2003).
Now - before the issue comes up of how much I 'make' from the site, See: (broken link removed)
I don't expect even 1 'bitch' that I'm here making a fortune off this site. If someone does believe that about US$6K a year BEFORE expenses (not to mention my time) is one whole heck of a lot of money, please.... Buy me out so YOU TOO can become rich!
And do remember, the site is still advertisement free... That may change in the future.
I shouldn't have to show you that, but for what it's worth that is almost 3 years of income from the site. And for the first 4 years everything was entirely free of charge. I wrote to one person:
> As an FYI, attached is a financial report on the site income for 2001 to
> 2003 to date. This is not big money. Prior to starting to charge for
> attachment access, the income was from sales of ‘guide file sets’ and access
> to ‘members’ and ‘Premium’ restricted directories alone. Income now is
> combined income, but there are few sales outside the attachments access any more.
>
> One guy wrote me offering to professionally moderate the forums. Only wanted
> about US$60K a year... I sure would like to make that much money for
> ‘professionally moderating’ my own forums.
>
> The only obligation I have is to those who have contributed money to help
> pay for the site costs and to a slight degree for my time. Even there – it’s
> a personal obligation. Many companies and web sites have fallen over the
> years without notice. Those who invested lost their investment. I don’t see
> the Cove going away. My point is I can’t please everyone no matter which way
> I go. If I thought I could get someone else to take over the forums
> entirely, I probably would consider it, however. I would rather be a visitor
> than to continue to carry the responsibility of worrying whether the server
> was up, than to have to maintain software, than to have to go through all
> the motions in keeping a database backed up and verified, etc. It’s a lot of
> time much of which has to be done late at night.
There has been an increase in visitors - and spiders. So, bandwidth is somewhat of an issue which I cannot entirely blame on attachments.
Another serious aspect is the time I have to put in to keep the forums up and running. Someone mentioned this aspect in a post. From responding to e-mails from people who are having problems to receiving 'idiot' emails like the guy complaining that chargoing to access attachments was violating 'free speech' in some way. From backing up the database to trying to figure out bugs (Thanks to Atul for helping out some here).
Then there is the issue of maintenance of the server and all that entails. I'm 1/2 computer literate so I know enough to be dangerous. If I switch to a dedicated server, not only will I have an overlap where I'm paying for two servers, I will also have to pay about US$150 for a professional to set it up for me. Managed servers are expensive. Once I get someone to do things like install a hardened kernel and 'hack proof' the server, I can maintain it. But then again, I'm Mac OS X (a BSD variant) and the current server is FreeBSD. The dedicated will be Linux which I know absolutely nothing about. I know it's a unix variant, but never having used it I'm a bit afraid. The move in June was long and dramatic coupled with the problems (if you remember it was server 1 --> server 2 --> server 3).
I don't want to have to live here. The site used to pretty much run its self. Now it has become a real time drain. I'm going to have to move to a dedicated, but that alone will take a week by the time everything is done. It is not a fun process. Many scripts have to be reconfigured and such - remember the vB forums aren't the only thing running on this server. I'm also scared because I'll have to suck all the attachments back into the database its self for the transfer, if I'm reading the vB forums correctly, and the server I have now has enough troubles as it is. Which means I might even have to go up a notch in server size for a week (another charge) to get the attachments into the database and dump the database so I can FTP it to the new server. During that time no one will be able to access the forums.
Anyway, the bottom line is once I do get that done - Maybe in November - I expect things to stabilize. Disk size is typically 40+ gigs on dedicated which would take some time to fill up. And by then, in all honesty, I don't know where I would go. But we're looking a year to 2 years down the road. The point is once that is stabilized maintenance should be very low.
Other than in the forums...
With respect to the Coffee Break forum:
My first commment is that if you look at the 'Poll' thread, there are about 30 core users. Whilst many others do participate from time to time, you folks in this thread and in the poll thread are the people this forum has some importance to.
I've decided to leave the forum as is. However it has to be self policing and has to follow the guidelines in this thread. I am 'Sticking' this thread as the first thread in the forum.
I have
disabled access to attachments by those who have
not contributed. This was a sore point when I first started charging last March. For a while I left it 'open'. It is now closed.
I don't need the hassle of complaints over post content. You're all big boys and girls and can THINK for yourself. You have to police yourselves. And you will sometimes have to police others. If you're not a moderator, report the post. I have given you folks the chance to make the rules. You have done so. Now - ensure they're followed.
Some of you may now understand the banner this last week.
As soon as I axed the political forum, a political thread pops up in the Coffee Break forum.
I do NOT want politics or religious discussions here. See the last response in my post - to Mike S.
With respect to attachments, I ask you to
downsize them and keep them small. You can look at the size on your drive before you upload it. That's how much space it will take in the database. I know people want to attach pictures of their fish, their airplanes, their kids or what not. I think we all enjoy the pictures. A good size is less than 100KB. Remember, this is a data file size issue, not the literal size in inches or whatever. They do not necessarily correspond. Note that .gif files are typically small.
I do want to make clear that this is with respect to this, the 'Coffee Break' forum. File size in the 'business' forums can be up to 800KB and
I do NOT expect anyone to feel restriced with respect to posting attachments in the 'business' forums. That's what the original intent of the fee was aimed at.
I am remotely considering disabling attachments in the Coffee Break forum but let's see how things go for a while. I really would prefer that the focus of attachments be the business end of the forums. I may also turn off 'thumbnail' views for graphics in the Coffee Break forum, but I have to look yet and see if I can do that on a forum by forum basis. I may do it for all forums just to save the bandwidth and processor load. These are just a couple of thoughts.
I may 'prune' some threads, but I want to make sure that what I think will happen is what will happen. I've never pruned by date before. The only posts I have ever pruned were Jim Wade's posts.
RCBeyette said:
It's really not that difficult to ask yourself "Hey...would I show this to my Grandmother/Child/Boss/Customer/Religious Leader?"
I think this is the best condensed 'guideline'.
ddhartma said:
It does kinda bother me that one of the biggest offenders when it came to name calling and attaching bandwith hogging third-party acticles (Marc) is not participating in this creation of rules/guidelines.
I decided to give you folks a chance to hash things out, Dave. Heck, there's only about 30 'hard core', 'here every day' Coffee Break forum posters. I didn't want to jump in. The site logs show that the site sees between 2000 and 5000 different individual 'visitors' every day. Some of them are spyders and I would estimate 75% are 'one hitters' who reached the site through a search engine and it was not what they were searching for. About 8 to 12% stay on the site for 20 minutes or more - about 450 different people. Point is, there are a lot of people who visit but there is a relatively small core group who post in the Coffee Break forum.
I wanted you folks to do it because you are the users. I wanted to watch. I didn't want to taint the discussion with an opinion which might sway what someone might say.
Personally I'm not offended by much. I've been alive for just over 53 years and I've traveled enough, seen enough, experienced enough, and am tolerant enough that I doubt anyone could shock me in this medium. As I responded when the Nosmo post was removed - which I replaced - to me it wasn't any worse than underwear and Victoria's secret adverts on TV. In my opinion, it was much less 'harmful' because TV adds that clear picture and all the music and words necessary to 'sell' the product which is to present what is typically more an illusion than reality. Dancing around in panties and a bra and all that. A naked body isn't in the least offensive to me, and the underwear ads don't bother me, but as was said above, if my Grandmother was still alive - either one - I wouldn't have wanted to show her a number of posts and some attachments.
However, in retrospect the Nosmo picture didn't belong here and I should not have over ruled the moderator who removed it. A lot of this might have not even surfaced had I been more 'conservative' (for lack of a better word) back then.
Early on, energy asked me 'What's the rush?'. I figured that in a business week you folks could hash this all out amongst yourselves. I didn't want an over night wonder. I wanted people to read and think. That's where the week came from and why I have not participated. I will say I am impressed and it has provided me some time to think about options.
With respect to name calling: I don't quite think I'm one of the 'biggest offenders' unless you're speaking of the political threads. We all knew that was a free for all and I even put in the comment under the forum name in the main listing advising those easily offended to keep out.
In addition, the text files are not significant bandwith or server load issues. That's just ascii. It's the attachments - the data files - which are a size and band width issue. If I dump all the attachments, I have plenty of disk space back and other gains.
On the other hand I have used a lot of attachment space. Seeing as how I pay the lions share of/for this site in time and money, yes - I have the right. Not to mention that the majority of my attachments are either with respect to posts in the business threads or in troubleshooting. I don't have a lot of posts, not to mention attachments, in this forum. So - I'm not so sure your use of the descriptor 'offender' is accurate.
energy said:
We just have to think before we post. We're not walking on razor blades here. I mean, the mean old Moderator isn't going to be scrutinizing every post for violations. It's up to the members who visit and participate to be aware of the guidelines and act accordingly. The "report a post" feature should be used and we should not try to resolve it in an open forum. This could result in bickering and here we go again. Good point.
Just to clarify the "Quarantine" option. The thread would be temporarily deleted with the note "Under Review". The admin function allows restoration of the post/thread. It would also serve as a reminder that the questionable post/thread may contain something we agreed not to post on and the member knows that he/she is in the yellow zone.
I may change permissions to let users see deleted posts. I want to see how that works.
However, after this thread, it shouldn't be necessary to delete or edit posts! We know the rules, don't we?
Mike S. said:
A question for the moderators, just so everyone understands: Are blonde jokes or "hillbilly" jokes, etc. off limits now? I am a blonde, and some might say part hillbilly, and they don't bother me, and I would tell them to my pastor or Mom, and I see lots of them posted. Maybe a better question is, Do they offend anyone here"?
Being from Kentucky, 'hillbilly' jokes are OUT! No... just kidding...
I do not think most grandparents would take offence at this type of humour.
Mike S. said:
I wonder -- does anyone know of a decent forum where diverse political/religious/cultural discussions take place along the same lines as we had here, where the posters aren't just a bunch of idiots calling one another names and using profanity and forever stuck on one subject? I think Marc said he was going to continue to do this thing politically, but doit elsewhere. I wonder where there are any decent elsewheres for someone who wants to tune into that kinda thing from time to time.
There are
lots of politically oriented forums on the internet. As far as the threads here, they are still here. While I sorta like the idea somewhat - it did focus the 'politics' which at one time were being interjected into posts - I just decided it's not what I want here. As I said, there are lots of sites where politics are discussed. I don't visit any political forums as most all are extremist and/or there is a lot of anger and often a lot of cussing, etc. I read things from all over the world on the internet from the Guardian to Salon to CNN to MSNBC to ... etc. I have quite a bookmark list. I read stories from many sides and decide what I think. Most political discussion forums are just hot gas.
I simply don't want to think politics when I'm at the Cove and it's far removed from the site's purpose. So - I'll keep those threads isolated and as I've said, is someone wants to set up a server, buy the vB software and such, you're welcome to a copy of them.
That's all, folks! It took over 4 hours to write so you'll understand if I'm out of here for a bit.
Now, that was a joke. 
