A Modest Proposal

Ah ok, I understand better, thanks! It certainly does hinge on the state of the game(s) in question for sure.

It's assumed that the 820 is out of date, it is probably more expensive than that now.

A couple people have asked and jaerik hasn't given a direct answer, I don't think, even while posting in this thread. I just assume that he doesn't particularly want to respond to that question.

Clinpachi and Houppelande already made the best points:








One thing I find hilarious is the OP: Xueye is asking for money but is too scared to donate? Or can't afford to donate, or is too young to even pay for their own XI subscription? wtf..

lmao @ the paranoid mentality of "omg i don't want to buy something online" use some common sense and you won't get ripped off online it's not difficult to know where and where not you should use a credit card or post your bank account number. Even if you are paranoid there are so many different ways that you can be extra cautious with little to worry about. Paypal.com as one, setting up an additional checking account for strictly making online purchases that you move small amounts of money to as you need it, gift cards and countless other options. This is 2011 it amazes me that people act like this is 1995 and they're going to get phished so easily. Between setting up autopay for bills online, actually paying bills online, making purchases online from countless sources, online banking, online management of 401k, online management of stocks... shoot, it's kind of hard for me to come up with things I don't spend money online on.. Is it that difficult to believe that your bank will refund you money for unauthorized transactions?

Ok.. so besides my pet peeve about people either being completely oblivious to handing their info over to a phisher coupled with the opposite of the super paranoid, afraid to enter an e-mail address or their name online because of the commercial they just saw that told them about identity theft.

How many of the people here are actually going to donate? The funniest part is I bet a majority of the top tier posters who are constantly using this site won't be bothered to put up a donation. I have no problem putting my money where my interests are, so sure I'll donate but I want to make a few points first.

Where did this figure come from ~$800 a month to run this site? Seems high if you ask me given the cost of a db server, whether or not they are doing their own hosting after the initial cost of the server you're looking at marginal support costs or even if they were renting hosting, domains are super cheap now-a-days, if they're doing their own hosting the highest cost I could possibly think of is power, cooling and an ISP for a business (businesses always pay more for ISPs) just seems like a pretty high figure given the staff numbers that we know of it doesn't seem like they have a ton of overhead.

People need to understand ffxiah.com gets 30,000 unique visitors every month and although Google is one of the best click ads to work with there are other options.. the site still has ads on it today.

I'm not saying you should not donate based on the above info, I just wanted to comment and give my opinion. I'm going to donate I think you should do the same if you believe in the site and want to be a supporter of it.

Another thing I want to bring to peoples attention and I'm a bit surprised people hadn't mentioned it earlier, it's possible Google came across the site and saw the negative threads/posts etc and decided to revoke their ads with the site but I would think it's much more likely some angry user or ex-user or SOMEONE more than likely brought this to Google's attention. In either case the lack of policing on the forums made the site an easy target for such an attack.

For all I know though this whole Google ad thing could be a ruse and the admins could be using it as a crutch to why the site should become less lenient in how they operate without not only hurting the friendships/relationships of the main targets it will affect but also to get a majority of support behind them from the overall community without losing loyal users for the change. If this was the case (I'm not saying it is or that the admins are lying just saying it's potentially a possibility) I would still fully support it, I'm sure the complaints about the site internally were beginning to become over whelming on their own even without a fiscal impact from ads. Just look at the number of people who started to get banned within the past month and the number of threads about suggestions on how to help fix the site. Getting the targeted people to change (who's to say I'm not one of them) or simply removing them from the site I think will overall improve the website for a majority of the community.

I do like this site for the most part and I think if the admin/mods hadn't let the trolls/trouble makers get out of hand they wouldn't have ended up in this predicament. It's not a secret who the people are that constantly antagonizes, the trolls, the ones who feel the need to flame others in every single thread every chance they get. The ones who post the most and yet seem to have the least to contribute to the conversations other than destruction. I've been a part of countless online communities and have never seen these types of users roam as freely as they wish crapping essentially anywhere they feel the need 24/7.





tl;dr

Xueye stfu and/or donate yourself, get rid of the ridiculous users to improve the overall experience of the site and win back the partnership with Google ads or doubleclick etc

Quite frankly this is the most asinine thing I've read in quite some time. Yes, I did read your next sentence saying it's just a possibility, but to even question the admins who made this site on their own accord, have never pushed for donations, and have never asked anything of their users is ridiculous. Why would they suddenly pull some stupid ruse like that and change their ways after this site has been here for years? I have no doubts that this is not the case.

Tweeek - I agree 100% with this, and I'm very confident the admins are gonna make the necessary adjustments to make sure this site runs great for many years to come. I haven't been disappointed yet :)

Hey Tweek, read the topic and you'll see that I'm donating. I said I didn't have my own CC and am getting a prepaid one. Specifically I said I won't use my debit card, I think.

Learn to read, yo.

The figure came from the donation page and the admins said that's lower than the actual cost now.

So can it, bud.

Why is it a possibility? Do you have any idea how many internal complaints the admins have been getting since the XI servers went down? If they decided to "tighten up security" based on these complaints they would piss off a ton of users who visit the site.. my proof? Look at the users who are STILL pissed that the site is going to change because they will no longer be able to rally around with a group of people to belittle others for disagreeing with their opinion. People willing to pay a subscription to this site just to protect that right and protect people who constantly antagonize others or protect the trolls? Are you kidding me?


Hey Xueye,

Money talks... you felt the need to make this thread when you did not have the means to donate yourself. I didn't ask you to make this thread neither did the admins and neither did the other users. If you're going to donate, then stop talking about it and do it.

I'm too lazy to look back and check for sure but I think Xueye said s/he was waiting on getting paid to afford a decent sized donation? If not regardless it's nice that someone made this thread, I honestly never knew the donation page existed.

I don't know anything about programming but i'd immagine a program that constantly checks and updates the AH info would cost a bit, factor in maitenence, I assume some labor costs (?) and their overhead costs and it adds up so I doubt they are BSing us on their monthly costs.

Yes it is possible someone brought up the site to google but the thing it is google... I've googled random stuff that had nothing to do with FF and had a page from the forums of this website show up. It could easily have been the same crazy mom that freaked out on sessame street for bert and erni(been so long i don't know how its spell it). Having her kid google something and end up in the pics that make you lol thread and lets face it theres been some things in there that shouldn't be.

Jaerik has made posts that may have pissed people off before when they got out of hand, so why would he tip-toe around with it this time? Why should the admins walk on eggshells on their own site? They've never before, they're not going to start now.

And who are you to judge other people's situation about whether or not they can donate to the site?

No where did I ever even suggest that they would have made this up to encourage others to donate, you made that up in your head. I didn't give any information that would have lead anyone to believing that. I know perfectly well that they are not asking for donations and that they did not encourage OP to make this topic. Choose to believe me or choose to not believe me, it doesn't take away from the fact that the admins admitted fault in letting the forums get out of hand and that they need to enforce more strict rules. This is AFTER other users have been asking for them to do so, ignoring all these factors makes it easy to think it's a asinine theory.




If you believe in a cause enough to make a post and ask others to rally around then in my opinion you should be able to back it up and donate yourself. If the OP is going to donate then cool it's becomes a moot point.

As for people who are on this website 24/7 and have a ridiculous amount of posts but are not willing to donate I just find it funny is all.

Tweek. Honestly sit and think how much traffic goes through this site and what that does to bandwidth use. Do you honestly have to question everything? You are being overly dramatic for no reason and to be honest it's annoying, shut up.

You sound like an expert on hosting, we should believe you.

It's simple logic honestly.
I feel as though we should trust the guy who just comes out with the off the wall idea accusing the Admins of faking this entire thing. I have to say though you are about as dumb as your friend Starr to go out making accusations like that.

Edit: I also have to ask. You say theirs certain trolls who go into threads and seem to cause issues. Something you yourself do at times...a fair share of threads that go south you yourself are involved....so how can you sit on a high horse when you are no better than anyone else?

InB4IDontGoIntoThreadsToTroll

Read your post In here...

Now read My InB4

Now shut up.

I'm not leading some revolt against the admins I simply wrote down my thoughts and left them up for discussion, if people disagree with them then fine, that's cool I never said any of them were right. I'm not saying you have to believe them I even stated that I was just throwing some stuff out there as a possibility, some of what I wrote contradicted itself so it would be impossible to believe the entire thing.

Sorry I was not taught questioning something is a bad thing just because I'm told something doesn't mean I have to believe every word of it. It also doesn't mean that if someone fudged some truth that it would make them a bad person. There are plenty of times that people in power need to skew the truth, depending on the motive it certainly doesn't mean what they're doing is wrong or bad. Sometimes it's the best way to resolve a situation.

Reverting back to calling me dumb or fillintheblank without the ability to have a conversation is the exact behavior that left the site open for a fiscal attack like this.

I'm sorry if dumb is a fitting word, and your logic of "if you call someone dumb, you're dumb." is pointless. Dumb is a word used to describe either lacking intelligence or lacking in good judgement. Which I would say your post lacked good judgement. But I prefer the sound of dumb over that.

It's so much easier to just not read someones post, when replying correct? That way you can just apply any label that was ever associated with the person. In this case "omgTweekissoarrogant!" everything he ever says will forever be associated with being arrogant!1!1!!!

If you call yourself one at all then why bother to make the post.

Then again I'm not much better I just have to question why you would even put that in a post that was more or less just trolling.

Also, as a taru, it's impossible for him to mount a high horse.
He rides "my little ponies"... like a boss.
(I said "mount" teeehehehehehehehehehe)

I feel like a admin or mod is watching this, thinking about what google said about "nastyness" and facepalming at this very instant...

Every single time you post towards me you try and attack my opinions Urial, why do you bother even reading my posts? I don't even know who you are or what I ever did to you, lol. You don't need to go out of your way to respond to me just because we're both posting in the same thread. If you don't like any of my opinions or anything I have to say then just block me. I've never engaged in conversation with you but you seem to respond to me multiple times.

How am I trolling? I'm just expressing my opinion that the site should ban a bunch of people or get them to change their behavior, if I'm in the wrong then the admins should contact me and let me know. I've never received a warning other than language in one post and having an image removed they didn't feel was appropriate. I've never been shy about my opinion on making the rules more strict and banning specific members, it's how I feel now it's how I've felt for the past few months. If I need to be banned then I should be banned, life will go on.

It is a shame that this foum has just turned into a place for people to argue with each other and call each other dirty names. I mean, seriously, almost every thread posted on this site turns into a girl-fight.

Because you sit yourself on a highorse and have a tone towards talking down to everyone else, when you are no better than anyone.