Avatar thieves - boooo

LegacyUser

seamus wrote:

You think Rackspace is "free"? You think servers are "free"? You think software, tonnes of dedicated bandwidth, support, hours and hours of people's time configuring, troubleshooting and tweaking are "free"? Cop yourself on. I can't wait till DeV gets here. It's this kind of bull**** that really pisses him off.

For a long time, boards.ie was completely free to its users. Yes, custom avatars have *always* been turned off, and there was a thread at least once every three months moaning about the lack of custom avatars. People wanted to put whatever the hell they liked as their avatar. Ever been to an American BB system? You see massive avatars, huge ani gifs, big ugly mugs peering out at you. It looks ridiculous, and makes the site look tacky. So the admins always maintained that "not in a million years".

Then at some point last year, it was realised that there was no way in hell that boards.ie could continue as is, given its growth. So the admins cooked up a subscription system. Many people were already asking for some way to contribute to the site's upkeep. But people find it hard to just "donate", even when they want to. So then a package was put together whereby people who subscribe get certain bonuses.
It has always been perfectly clear that you were contributing for boards's upkeep, and these features were relatively free or cheap features that you got access to as a "Thank You". You're not paying for features, you're paying so that boards.ie doesn't collapse under its own weight.

This site is not a business enterprise (at the moment). It was, and always has been, a community site. If the server is struggling, we know why. If the admins are having trouble keeping the server from going "phut" and dying, we know all about it. I have absolutely no pretences about where and how my money is being spent. It's being spent on a new €3.5k server, on 300MB of transfer bandwidth last month (to give you an idea of growth, that's about 5 times the amount from the same time last year), on software upgrades, and many other things. If the admins manage to get a pint or two out of that each weekend, all the better. Though I doubt they do.

never said the above were free, just that the site paraded itself as being free while charging for what alot of ppl apparantly want, as for the point about US bb's, how about the incredibly difficult task of limiting them to 64*64 jpgs, and what if everybody subscribed so they were available to all, im sure the cash would put paid to concerns about tackiness. Anyway like I said before, I don't care about avatars, just the two faced notion that on the one hand this is some lovey dovey community spirit excercise while on the other hand trying to grab the cash through the back door. This site makes a profit, there is no way ppl are paying out their own money to keep it going, and to even suggest it is....

by the way 300mg a month ?
did u mean 300mg/second cause i can buy 10 gigs a month for 7.50 off whatever news server

seamus

bananayoghurt wrote:

never said the above were free, just that the site paraded itself as being free while charging for what alot of ppl apparantly want, as for the point about US bb's, how about the incredibly difficult task of limiting them to 64*64 jpgs, and what if everybody subscribed so they were available to all, im sure the cash would put paid to concerns about tackiness. Anyway like I said before, I don't care about avatars, just the two faced notion that on the one hand this is some lovey dovey community spirit excercise while on the other hand trying to grab the cash through the back door. This site makes a profit, there is no way ppl are paying out their own money to keep it going, and to even suggest it is....

*If* this site makes a profit (and that's a pretty ****ing big IF), it's absolute pittance. I was going to quote each bit of your post, but I'm not even going to bother explaining it to you again.

Giblet

bananayoghurt wrote:

This site makes a profit, there is no way ppl are paying out their own money to keep it going, and to even suggest it is....

Keeping it going and making a profit are different things.

People aren't being tricked into paying anything, you're just being a dickhead.

LegacyUser

seamus wrote:

*If* this site makes a profit (and that's a pretty ****ing big IF), it's absolute pittance. I was going to quote each bit of your post, but I'm not even going to bother explaining it to you again.

There is no If, don't believe the hype

gandalf

My god where do these ingrateful children come from. This site is free!!! You can post on it without putting your hand in your pocket period.

Subscriptions were put in place to give a mechanism to allow members of the community contribute funds towards its upkeep. Running this site ain't cheap. You have the equipment, bandwidth, software and then the unqualified one man hours. The Admins put in an extreme amount of time in and get no reward for it. These people are professionals and they command quite an amount in the IT world for their services. Stating that they are making money from this site just shows your not living in the real world.

If you want your free custom avatars please fuk off to those US sites your harping on about!!!!! Sheesh some people!

DapperGent

bananayoghurt wrote:

There is no If, don't believe the hype

Why don't you fúck off then. No really just fúck off. You won't be missed.

Well maybe you will be, at some stage in the future a conversation might run thus:

Person A: "Where the hell is that fúcking dickhead?"
Person B: "He fúcked off."
Person A: "Really? I didn't miss him."
Person B: "No? Nor did I."

amp

Hi Bubbles!

seamus

bollox.

GoneShootin

Amp - whats a "JAHBULON!" ?

DapperGent

GoneShootin wrote:

Amp - whats a "JAHBULON!" ?

Read From Hell. Or perhaps something else. It's in From Hell anyway and From Hell is fúcking great.

LegacyUser

DapperGent wrote:

Why don't you fúck off then. No really just fúck off. You won't be missed.

Well maybe you will be, at some stage in the future a conversation might run thus:

Person A: "Where the hell is that fúcking dickhead?"
Person B: "He fúcked off."
Person A: "Really? I didn't miss him."
Person B: "No? Nor did I."

uh did someone say something, or was that just the wind
ps whoever posted the above, check my sig

LegacyUser

gandalf wrote:

My god where do these ingrateful children come from. This site is free!!! You can post on it without putting your hand in your pocket period.

of course its free its a bb, who in gods name is gonna pay for a bulletin board, ppl pay for t&a not bb's, but whoever runs this site IS milking it for all its worth

ecksor

bananayoghurt wrote:

to avail of services apparantly purposefully withdrawn in order to achieve donations

**** sakes. The subscriber system was withdrawn by me because we were taking money for services we couldn't offer in any decent capacity (because they are currently broken) and I felt that was wrong. People were still keen to give us money because it is now more convenient than it was previously (thanks to the recent availability of paypal in Ireland) so the donation system was set up.

if they are in it for the money they should charge a small fee to all, rather than withdraw some parts that are obviously a major contention with some in order to get some money while at the same time playing the 'free service' card

Exactly how much have you ever been asked to give us for the use of this site?

ecksor

bananayoghurt wrote:

well for the people who do pay they get a very poor service, givin the very poor quality of the boards servers, I'll bet the money all ends up down the pub !

I can personally tell you that I've never spent one cent of boards cash on anything at all. I have twice had a very nice meal bought for me with boards cash. I have had pints bought for me by users every so often at boards events or by boards folks I meet in a pub, but I don't ask for it nor do I expect it and I'm very grateful for the generous gesture when I'm lucky enough to receive it.

Maybe at some point in the future I will earn money from boards.ie but it hasn't happened yet and it certainly won't happen for a long time to come I'd say. If I was in it for the money I'd have ****ed off a long time ago.

LegacyUser

ecksor wrote:

Exactly how much have you ever been asked to give us for the use of this site?

well every time i hit the bottom of the page i see a donate button, does that count as asking ?, while at the same time i see ads across the top of my screen, 70 dollars for 1000 tattos printed in full color, order on line

ecksor

bananayoghurt wrote:

im sure the site makes a profit, between advertising and subscriptions, ads by Goooooooogle

Really? I've never been paid. None of the other admins have ever been paid. Sure, technically the site would probably clear a few grand a year in profit if we didn't have to pay for pesky new hardware and licensing costs.

Google ads. I swear, if anyone ever saw the damn things I'd see your point. We're making enough to pay someone for about an hour's work a week at the moment with them. Everyone gets directed to the middle of threads most of the time. Some guy on IRC last night was asking me why we didn't have advertisements. I had to point out that we did and he'd just never noticed them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against making money on boards and if it ever happens I'll be perfectly straight with you about it, but don't claim that it's happening now because it isn't.

LegacyUser

ecksor wrote:

If I was in it for the money I'd have ****ed off a long time ago.

that is ridiculous, so you have a real job then, and i guess you are there because you love it and not for the money because if it was the money you were there for you would have (insert expletive here) off long ago, whatever you work at i have a similar position available, but much more fun, only thing is there is no pay, but you aren't in it for the money so that doesn't matter, pm me and ill send you the details

DapperGent

bananayoghurt wrote:

ps whoever posted the above, check my sig

I get it. Nice one. Zing!

ecksor

seamus wrote:

This site is not a business enterprise (at the moment). It was, and always has been, a community site. If the server is struggling, we know why. If the admins are having trouble keeping the server from going "phut" and dying, we know all about it. I have absolutely no pretences about where and how my money is being spent. It's being spent on a new €3.5k server, on 300MB of transfer bandwidth last month (to give you an idea of growth, that's about 5 times the amount from the same time last year), on software upgrades, and many other things. If the admins manage to get a pint or two out of that each weekend, all the better. Though I doubt they do.

Ok, I'm glad that there's a voice of accurate sanity here that isn't an admin.

Boards has been a community site in the past. It no longer is. It's now a facility that supports lots of little communities (although we still have what DeV calls the boardserati as a sort of mini community). We've seen the growing pains that result from community A having a row with community B and getting slapped because of it (and we'll probably continue to see this now and again). Now we have the problem that to continue to be a community service we also have to be a going concern or else we'll cease to be anything. Yesterday I argued to DeV that as he tried to make the site work as it scaled that we'd meet more and more ill feeling and bregrudgery and people trying to **** on us because we were doing something successful and basically people being less cooperative and forgiving. I think I see evidence of this here, although due to some misconceptions rather than maliciousness or illwill.

ecksor

bananayoghurt wrote:

This site makes a profit, there is no way ppl are paying out their own money to keep it going, and to even suggest it is....

This site covers its costs. How much money do you require per year to make a living exactly? This site makes not much more than enough in a year to pay me my month's wages before tax. It could make a lot more, but it doesn't yet because we all have day jobs (or in my case I had a day job until a while ago and now I'm off to do other things with my life).

ecksor

bananayoghurt wrote:

of course its free its a bb, who in gods name is gonna pay for a bulletin board, ppl pay for t&a not bb's, but whoever runs this site IS milking it for all its worth

Milking it for all its worth how exactly? BTW, I never did confirm if you were vader or not. I assumed not ...

ecksor

bananayoghurt wrote:

well every time i hit the bottom of the page i see a donate button, does that count as asking ?, while at the same time i see ads across the top of my screen, 70 dollars for 1000 tattos printed in full color, order on line

Wow. I'm going to quote a part of a conversation I had with DeVore recently here, I don't think he'll mind.

21:20 <ecksor> Seriously, if you don't want to give us anything, I'm fine with that, I really really am. But don't ****ing flaunt that fact that wouldn't give us the steam off of your ****ing piss.
21:20 <ecksor> Christ.
21:23 <DeVore> hahaha welcome to my righteous indignation

SantaHoe

Sweet Jesus, who hijacked my funny light-hearted thread with all this serious moany crap?
Take it to personal issues

LegacyUser

ecksor wrote:

Ok, I'm glad that there's a voice of accurate sanity here that isn't an admin..

no you have a sheep that follows the herd

ecksor wrote:

Now we have the problem that to continue to be a community service we also have to be a going concern or else we'll cease to be anything. Yesterday I argued to DeV that as he tried to make the site work as it scaled that we'd meet more and more ill feeling and bregrudgery and people trying to **** on us because we were doing something successful and basically people being less cooperative and forgiving. I think I see evidence of this here, although due to some misconceptions rather than maliciousness or illwill.

but you aren't successfull, this site is a joke right now, its performance is derisory, and you have taken money off well meaning people and done I know not what with it, boards.ie is a disgrace as a service, there is no two ways about it, if I had subscribed to this site, paid my money and found myself waiting 5 or 10 minutes for a page to load I would feel like I was robbed, I sincerely hope you have returned all money paid by subscribers untill you have sorted this mess out, because anything else is little short of theft

LegacyUser

ecksor wrote:

Milking it for all its worth how exactly? BTW, I never did confirm if you were vader or not. I assumed not ...

im not vader

ecksor

bananayoghurt wrote:

that is ridiculous, so you have a real job then, and i guess you are there because you love it and not for the money because if it was the money you were there for you would have (insert expletive here) off long ago, whatever you work at i have a similar position available, but much more fun, only thing is there is no pay, but you aren't in it for the money so that doesn't matter, pm me and ill send you the details

No. Let me explain how I got into this position. I have had a few "real" jobs over the last few years that I did mostly because I needed to the money, although twice I did move into different jobs for reasons that were concerned with how much I thought I'd enjoy the job rather than how much money they'd pay. Over the course of my career I did get into what I would consider a good standard of living and good earnings for my age and experience. Now I've packed my job in to go back to college because even though I didn't have any money problems thanks to my full time job, I felt that I didn't have enough time to concentrate on things that I loved, such as learning how to program interesting things, training for athletics and studying mathematics.

So, I gave up a job that was earning me nice living to go live on a campus in a room in student halls and share a shower with 10 other people and worry about how many pints I can afford in a week because it lets me concentrate on things I was interested in. I'll let you know how it works out if you give a damn, but the point is that I'm not really about the money. I like it, but I don't let my life revolve around it.

Anyway, while I was on that career path I was asked to join boards.ie by DeVore (who was one of my former employers about 4 years ago) and moderate the security forum. That was a mixed sort of experience, but over time I expanded into handling patching and configuration security issues for the website and server overall, and then into general server administration. After a year of behind the scenes stuff I decided to start to pull my weight with user support issues and slowly got sucked into posting on and reading more and more forums and getting more and more interested in developing the potential of the place.

I need money to live. After that, if I want to put time and effort into something with no monetary reward then that is my own business. I've also been working on a tool for unix system's administrators to audit their systems for security problems that I'll be releasing (along with a friend) under a BSD license that I won't get any money for either. Weird, huh?!?

LegacyUser

ecksor wrote:

No. Let me explain how I got into this position. I have had a few "real" jobs over the last few years that I did mostly because I needed to the money, although twice I did move into different jobs for reasons that were concerned with how much I thought I'd enjoy the job rather than how much money they'd pay. Over the course of my career I did get into what I would consider a good standard of living and good earnings for my age and experience. Now I've packed my job in to go back to college because even though I didn't have any money problems thanks to my full time job, I felt that I didn't have enough time to concentrate on things that I loved, such as learning how to program interesting things, training for athletics and studying mathematics.

So, I gave up a job that was making me approximately 60k a year to go live on a campus in a room in student halls and share a shower with 10 other people and worry about how many pints I can afford in a week because it lets me concentrate on things I was interested in. I'll let you know how it works out if you give a damn, but the point is that I'm not really about the money. I like it, but I don't let my life revolve around it.

Anyway, while I was on that career path I was asked to join boards.ie by DeVore (who was one of my former employers about 4 years ago) and moderate the security forum. That was a mixed sort of experience, but over time I expanded into handling patching and configuration security issues for the website and server overall, and then into general server administration. After a year of behind the scenes stuff I decided to start to pull my weight with user support issues and slowly got sucked into posting on and reading more and more forums and getting more and more interested in developing the potential of the place.

I need money to live. After that, if I want to put time and effort into something with no monetary reward then that is my own business. I've also been working on a tool for unix system's administrators to audit their systems for security problems that I'll be releasing (along with a friend) under a BSD license that I won't get any money for either. Weird, huh?!?

ok, so you don't care about money, but im sure alot of subscribers here do, and the site has gone to hell recently, so are you gonna return their money till you sort the mess out ?

DapperGent

I'm noting with perplexity that nana still hasn't fúcked off. I told him to and everything.

LegacyUser

DapperGent wrote:

I'm noting with perplexity that nana still hasn't fúcked off. I told him to and everything.

um still don't know who you are and couldnt care less child

ecksor

bananayoghurt wrote:

ok, so you don't care about money, but im sure alot of subscribers here do, and the site has gone to hell recently, so are you gonna return their money till you sort the mess out ?

You're sure about that? A few minutes ago you seemed to be sure that this place was a profit making business that we worked on for the purposes of making money.

Are the subscribers too shy to ask for their own money back that they need you to do it on their behalf? What I was actually planning to do with the subscriber features was to turn off new subscriptions (which I did) and add on the downtime of the features to the length of existing subscriptions so that they got the features for the same amount of time that they signed up for (for anyone who wanted me to do that; lots of subscribers have made no secret of the fact that they were just using it as a method of donation anyway). In the meantime I've been trying to accommodate problems by responding to requests on the Subscriber forum or via PM.

The only person who has asked us to return money was a commercial trader that I banned for repeatedly abusing the site and gave us 5 euro via the donation facility.