i always regret having to ask for donations– it’s a method of last resort to keep things running. i’ve been running FFS for ~11 years now, and in that whole time we’ve only had to ask for donations about half a dozen times. unfortunately a decent number of those were in more recent history as we lost a major advertiser about a year or so ago that’s hit us rather hard. my goal is for this to be the last time we’ll ever need to ask for emergency donations.
after the donation rewards are taken care of, i’ll be working behind the scenes to both find ways to reduce our overhead costs and find other ways to bring in more revenue. i have a few leads on new advertisers which should hopefully make things much smoother in the future.
thank everyone so much for helping out, the site wouldn’t be here without you <3
PS: if you donated and the email for your forum account doesn’t match your paypal email, send me a DM on here listing the amount donated and what email you donated from.
I just took a look at the last "thank you for the donations" thread from the previous emergency donation drive in October, and the people who asked this question were totally ignored. What’s the deal?
I just took a look at the last "thank you for the donations" thread from the previous emergency donation drive in October, and the people who asked this question were totally ignored. What’s the deal?
Related to this…are a large portion of the costs stemming from GH? Because as stated, most of the links there no longer work so honestly it might be better to just take it down to save on cost…
Original message written by bobobo1618 [#source] (http://np.reddit.com/r/gamemusic/comments/30m1z7/offtopic_ffshrine_a_useful_resource_for_rare_game/cpu2no1)
What are their server costs though? That’s what I’m dubious about. My feeling is that they’re doing it wrong and spending a ton more money than they should on either a shitty provider that’s overcharging them or a great provider that’s overkill.
I had a look into it and it looks like they get around 430000 visitors a month (http://www.trafficestimate.com/ffshrine.org). Assuming a generous 10 page views per user, that’s 4.3m views per month, which works out to around 2 views per second and assuming an average page size of around 1MB which is an estimate way above what I really expect, they’re looking at about 4TB of traffic a month or an average of 2MB/s.
To serve a site like that, they can bring bandwidth down to a point where it’s negligible by using a service like CloudFlare which will cache all their static assets for them and has the handy side effect of mitigating DDoS.
As well as that, they can stick the site on a dedicated server like this one (http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-md) for a relatively small amount of money. 64GB of RAM and a quad core CPU should be far, far more than they need to serve that site well. That server also happens to come with 300Mbit/s of unmetered bandwidth.
As for how they’re currently working, they appear to be using Apache still, which is a bad idea (http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Web_Server_Performance_Comparison). They should be able to drastically reduce their server load/cost by swapping that out for a more modern setup like NGINX with PHP-FPM.
Aaaand for the server they’re currently on, according to the BGP announcement for their IP address (which is exposed, why are they not using a CDN?), they’re currently using Hivelocity (https://www.hivelocity.net/dedicated-servers/) which looks like a fairly reputable bunch but their prices are hardly budget considering their $129 server is roughly equivalent to a 40 EUR server (http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-lt).
Anyhow. They don’t need nearly as much money as they’re asking for to run a site like this. They just need that much money to run it the way they are now, which I’m not sure is the optimal way to do it. If I were them I’d be asking for around $900 which is enough to run one of these (http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-md) for a year. And I think even that is overkill.
EDIT: Now that the link is back up I can see a bit more about their setup. 30TB of bandwidth has me WTFing a bit but I imagine it’s a result of Galbadia Hotel. That can still be reduced by using a host that doesn’t charge for bandwidth. Their ‘3 servers’ thing has me a little WTF as well. My guess is Apache is eating the web server and they need to step up the caching on vBulletin to ease up on the database server.
And on the subject of Galbadia Hotel, they could really do a lot better by moving it to a P2P based system. Serving Magnet links and using their server as a seed would reduce a ton of bandwidth without reducing performance for clients.
EDIT 2: There are a ton of optimizations they can make without even moving. A quick test shows (http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150329_RD_3W4/) that they haven’t turned on even the most basic performance optimizations for their web server, with no client side caching headers for static assets, no keep-alive connections to get requests through faster and no compression on many of their assets. Hell, just throwing mod_pagespeed (https://code.google.com/p/modpagespeed/) into Apache could do wonders.
EDIT 3: I’m not saying their claims in the donation plea are false. It’s entirely possible that it costs as much as they’re saying.
What I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to cost as much as they’re currently paying. They can get cheaper, faster servers elsewhere and set their software up a little better.
EDIT 4: So I’ve heard that GH has been down for at least a year. That means they don’t need the ‘file server’ they’re requesting donations for. That leaves ~2 request/s average MySQL and web which should easily be handled by a single dedicated server like this (http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-md).
EDIT 5: P.S. if they’re running 3 servers at Hivelocity, they’re paying an absolute minimum of $300, for which they could easily attain unlimited bandwidth, which they seem to be advertising as expensive.
And, as I’ve stated elsewhere, the perks which are being offered to those who donate are currently useless; the Galbadiia Hotel portion of the domain has been deader than dead for a long time. There aren’t that many reasons to help keep this place online, not in the state it is now, at least.
For the first posting here, would like to say I am very glad that I somehow helped this community…
PS: Did not know my e-mail address was not matching with the e-mail used for donation and changed my e-mail in FFShrine. Could you kindly have a look once more?
Are you ever going to get Galbadia Hotel working again?
hm, this is my fuckup– i hadn’t realized that part of the donation message wasn’t updated. the plan is to get GH’s downloads working again but that’s next in line after the advertising; my time needs to be spent on that first, then i can work on the GH problems.
if anyone donated on the GH level and would like the forum perks instead let me know and i’ll gladly swap them for you, even though the forum perks are supposed to be the higher level. otherwise i’ll add the GH perks to your account and they’ll be there when we get things sorted out.
like i said, things have been a huge mess since we lost that advertiser, most of my time related to FFS has been trying to sort that out first. GH will come right after that. i really apologize to everyone it’s taken so long.
I’ll just quote a small research here, because it seems to offer a few tips:
And, as I’ve stated elsewhere, the perks which are being offered to those who donate are currently useless; the Galbadiia Hotel portion of the domain has been deader than dead for a long time. There aren’t that many reasons to help keep this place online, not in the state it is now, at least.
that post is a combination of good advice and really bizarre misinformation. the "traffic estimator" they’re using is not even REMOTELY close to accurate, the only way to get accurate traffic stats is directly from the servers, anything else is just that– estimates. they’re usually based on toolbar installations and are off by a ton. the estimates they have are lowballed by an absurd amount. as a consequence, the kind of hardware they’re thinking we could run on isn’t viable at all– we use much beefier servers than that. they also don’t seem to understand "unlimited bandwidth" isn’t really a thing… hosting providers advertise that, but you don’t ever actually get "unlimited bandwidth."
a lot of the other things they mentioned (some backend software changes, possibly using cloudflare, etc) are the things i was alluding to in the backend changes above to try to reduce costs– it’s true we can optimize some things and bring costs down a bit, but nowhere near as low as the level they’re claiming is possible
i’m working on adding the perks in but they have to be done manually– my estimate is they should all be finished within the next three or four days at the most, since i need to do this in between some other obligations 🙂
thanks again everyone <3
IMO your running this site out of member integrity, when you lose that, you’ll lose the site. Why not make it comfortable for us?
IMO your running this site out of member integrity, when you lose that, you’ll lose the site. Why not make it comfortable for us?
What he’s saying is fuck GH, drop that shit.. if we are going to donate to help keep this shit running.. drop the useless shit that only 5% of the traffic goes to.
$2400 for 3 months is fucking ridiculous.
I mean how much space is actually used for all those mp3s?
$2400 for 3 months is fucking ridiculous.
I mean how much space is actually used for all those mp3s?
I agree. Galbadia Hotel is a relic and everybody here is scratching their heads about the current significance of it. You expect us to keep donating to run something that doesnt even work, whose content is ancient and outdated, and whose users are probably random web hits who dont even use the forums like the actual posters who provide new and lossless rips?
You can try and reduce overhead costs, run on better software, and get new sponsors, but it still sounds like youre trying to tug the Titanic with banana boat.
Edit: Oh. How interesting. Their name is actually censored. The mystery deepens.
In case you didn’t know, folks, FFShrine has been around for years, same goes for Galbadia Hotel. Think about what it means for a moment: years hosting that quantity of sheet music and MP3 files. That being said, I believe the server dl1.ffshrine.org/ died "definitely" around 2013; while there were hiccups prior to that year, issues got fixed and everything returned working. Why do I say this? Because I’ve used Galbadia Hotel, I’ve successfully downloaded stuff off it in 2012.
‘GH is in desperate need of donations right now; it costs almost $2,000$ a month to run. If we don’t recieve the donations to keep afloat, Galbadia Hotel will no longer exist.’
Yeah that was 3 years ago. There is a lot better and cheaper alternatives than spending that much in 3 months. So in short term.. Sarah’s getting ripped off. And I’ll say it again. Hosting copyrighted files on its own server is a very bad idea.
I’d like to chime in with the rest and ask directly for some solid information about why the hosting costs are $2400 per quarter to run a web forum of this scale.
‘GH is in desperate need of donations right now; it costs almost $2,000$ a month to run. If we don’t recieve the donations to keep afloat, Galbadia Hotel will no longer exist.’
Some obviously dubious shit going on here. Hm…
Just like politics, promises and hope are crushed by greed
At any rate, I’m going to take a few wild guesses: one of the advertisers pulled out because of some kind of report to Google Adsense and the likes (the sections of this place gaining most activity/attention are those swarmed with illegality… It could have always dawned on those advertisers that it wasn’t really looking good for them).
How are resources for GH and the forums pooled together? Given what others have already stated (GH’s MP3 pretty much being mirrored over at KH+The website’s ongoing malfunctioning), wouldn’t it be better to drop the corpse, somehow?
It’s obvious the community would like some actual answers, some transparency. FFS may be a good place to get the most recent soundtrack, but it is hardly the only one this good; folks will leave this, to quote the words of a friend, sinking ship. I don’t know what kind of crap you’re going through, but I wish you the best. One last thing: if keeping the Shrine online has become too much of a problem, maybe you should consider closing it.
Yes, I donated $50. on Mar 29th from a different email address than you have on record for me. It was from [email protected]
Thanks,
g’per
As most of us know, we’ve got three donation~drives with such short amounts of time "in-between them," that lead me to have a few suspicions; so, ever since the board got closed again I’ve been dedicating some time to a little research of mine, and I think I’ve come up with enough stuff to disclose, make what you want of it:
– First things first, let’s see to who ffshrine[dot]org belongs: if we can trust MYIP.MS, a person called ****** Nicholas (http://myip.ms/info/whois/96.31.69.127/k/3099856207/website/ffshrine.org). Let’s take note of that address.
– WI stands for Wisconsin, am I right? Sarah stated she’s been having financial troubles, that’s okay: we have a general location, I think we can all agree also on just how much FFS is an illegal source of revenue, so let’s check if she shows up among the delinquent tax payers (http://www.revenue.wi.gov/delqlist/nmallN.htm)… Oh?
******, NICHOLAS | 2809 UNION ST MADISON WI 53704-4513 USA | I | $41,505.70
Nicholas ****** is indeed there. Let’s move on. I’ve come to discover you have a Twitter-handler, too, and you’ve been rather active as some, what is it called, Anti-GamerGate icon. Months spent tweeting about that stuff, and I should believe you didn’t have a fucking minute to bother answering some legitimate questions brought up here, over time? Sigh. Useless to think about it now. I Went on with the digging (won’t bore you with the details, folks don’t worry) and I’ve discovered my assumption about advertisers pulling out of FFS because of illegal activity wasn’t that far off (http://8archive.moe/gamergate/thread/189853), still, I’ve got to say you’re clever: you did all you could to bring troubles to a website, citing violations of TOS (http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2ly73c/8chan_is_asking_for_donations_via_paypal_its_a/), yet, you are guilty of violating another point of the very same TOS with the Shrine and according to the link I’ve posted previously, you’ve got to taste your own medicine. Served you right.
– You seem to have some trouble with the Dept. of Revenue (http://wcca.wicourts.gov) and I know myself, because of family-related stuff, that things with the court may become very expensive.
So… Where does the money coming from donations go? Some of it will indeed go toward server-costs, but I hardly believe this place now needs that much to stay afloat.
a forum, even as big as this one, doesn’t blow 30tb of data in a month.
i highly recommend to drop dead money grabbers like gh. move to a better and cheaper server. use different filehost, e.g. mega pro, mediafire pro or even drop them all together and let the users take care if things in that matter. works so far pretty good.
and answer the bloody questions. people gave you their hard earned cash and have a right to know.
Lol I literally just got done reading the 8chan thread and ED article….surprised I’d never heard of this before.
Gosh me too O____________________________O
In case you didn’t know, folks, FFShrine has been around for years, same goes for Galbadia Hotel. Think about what it means for a moment: years hosting that quantity of sheet music and MP3 files. That being said, I believe the server dl1.ffshrine.org/ died "definitely" around 2013; while there were hiccups prior to that year, issues got fixed and everything returned working. Why do I say this? Because I’ve used Galbadia Hotel, I’ve successfully downloaded stuff off it in 2012.
In 2005-7 I used Galbadia Hotel alot to get my first taste of many OSTs. However that time has passed. As you said the server imploded. Most of us moved on to lossless. I think we need a consensus about where our money is going…
I just glanced at the articles everyone posted about Tranny Sarah Butts and her fantastical private life. Starting to regret I donated money to this place.
Does anyone really think we are going to get satisfactory answers about this any time soon? Since the place will undoubtedly go down again in the not so distant future, in order to pay for His/Her delinquent taxes, we need some serious discussions about FFshrine alternatives, since even though Im sure we all already visit other sites, this one was something special.
I don’t care so much about Sarah/Nicholas’s personal life and "quirks" (to put it mildly)… but if s/he extorted money for the reasons s/he seems to have….
Then shame.
I don’t know what to think about the whole situation myself, honestly; I’d like to think "innocent until proven guilty," but evidence is out there. It is my understanding Sarah tried to delete some "nasty threads" from the Shrine, in the past, but the Internet hardly forgets. This thread will probably end up deleted, I’ll get banned/doxxed by her twitter accolades (not that I care), or… God forbid… Sarah will actually spill the beans, for once. Truth, that’s all I’d like to hear.
My bad, didn’t read it well. Please, all those who want to stay in touch, PM me. I’m feeling like these are the last days of Pompeii.
I mean, I like turtles…
I mean, I’m just gonna come back later to see what what will become of this.
Join me in oblivion. We shall dissipate into the void together.
I also play World of Warcraft if anyone ever wants to go fishing. I like fishing, it’s relaxing.
I also play World of Warcraft if anyone ever wants to go fishing. I like fishing, it’s relaxing.
I’ve never played WOW and mark my words I never will
Didn’t I call that shit or what!!!
serious shit, but I will do like Milo…..
For most people buying soundtracks is not feasible due to the part of the world they live in. Buying most physical releases would be a pricy endeavor (or simply because you don’t own a credit card). It would really be a shame if there no longer is a place people share these things. One doesn’t have the luxury to choose one’s musical predilections nor the place you were born in.
EDIT: Perhaps there could even be a forum where people have to register with some requisites. I mean my MEGA account was recently compromised resulting in all my uploads being deleted. It would be splendid if such things could be circumvented with someone somehow regulating the members.
Regards.
I would be happy to throw donate my money on this approach. There’s even a free trial to experiment why not give it a shot?
If you want something more of a forum where you can get points, then this is not for you.
This is just a temp board while someone else makes a forum.
It’s currently empty as of now.
Also, I turned on the archive so the threads you made in the past don’t die forever, I know it’s not the same but eh, It’ll grow, eventually.
I’ll start uploading my music there, as in pasting the MEGA links I’ve uploaded while here and new ones to comes while I look for a new cyber home, you are free to join, this entire drama thing basically killed my boner for ffshrine, especially the anti GG thing the leader had, so that’s pretty much an incentive for you to come here- It’s Gluten Free people!
Peace.
http://www.vbulletin.com/en/checkout/cart/configure/id/785034/
Shopping Cart (http://www.vbulletin.com/en/checkout/cart/configure/id/785034/)
Hmmmm not bad at all :B
I just made it in a hurry, if you’re not talking to me then my mistake.
I’ve just been busy as hell and I made it in a hurry, It would be cool if users made their own designated threads, I want to upload heartgold/soulsilver and just get the heck out of here, there’s like one guy really wanted me to do it and I feel like a jerk because I haven’t uploaded yet.
Neochip, DO IT. <3
Give me a day or 2 and will consider it, although from my current standpoint its a clear go.
I don’t wanna re-upload everything in case my MEGA account gets nuked….while having others people’s link downed as well, it would be extremely infuriating, should I hide it and only have people with the link enter it? Sure it’ll be smaller but also safer, someone would spread it and we’ll see how it goes.
Also, Neo_Chip, just do what makes you comfortable man, you should have a big donate button on the website and just pay what it tells you what you owe, and stockpile the extra money in case you don’t get enough funds for a certain months, at least- that’s what I would do.
So when you factor in purchasing a domain name and monthly hosting you’re looking at probably $300 in startup costs.
I’m also in favour of a whole new site under our full control, but a full suite like vBulletin is not a good solution IMHO. I’d suggest we go for a more generic webhost so we can choose and tailor our software more freely on top of it.
Again I’m an IT guy so feel free to count me in if you need a site admin or other tech-related role.
ED will be most interested.
They see me postin’, they hatin’
Besides traditional forums, I’m also thinking about going blog/SNS style, which could be more convenient managing posts, subjects and user groups, etc.
Posting links in the open might indeed be a bad idea, so in case there’s a crisis or forum boards are unavailable for whatever reason, then people can share links with each other through e-mail or other means of contact.
Also just for discussion as well until a dedicated board is made.
Also, folks this has been the third donation drive, someone was bound to do some research "behind the scenes".
Will she have a moment of comeuppance, or will it just get worse?
Nobody knows, and that’s only half the fun!
Inb4 she bans me, I see it coming miles away.
Though I neutrally respects every user and I’m honoured to say I do think of some as actual friends, the biggest bulk of users is for me only an amount of John and Jane Doe(s). That being said, I’m not gonna lose sleep if I no longer have any kind of contact with the Shriners; I didn’t register here to make friends, I came for the downloads.
I don’t even care if FFS gets closed down, it wouldn’t be the first board of its kind I see "die" and it won’t be the last, plus:
– As far as illegally sharing is concerned, there are alternatives which are just as good.
– What made this place great are the users: take those away. Shares which have been going on here could also be elsewhere; try not to have some kind of "attachment" cloud you, folks: ultimately, it is just a board.
Well duh. I feel hardly FF or Shrine about this place itself. It’s the people that matters indeed.
I’m a web designer ( and game designer too ) and for the last couple of month I’m working on a sharing/forum site.
So, if the idea of migrating to another website still continue to grow, I will be able to help.
( I precise that, this site will be about everything ( anime , music etc…..))
(Also, for those who know me in the Lossless thread, this is why Metropolis Street Racer is not uploaded yet, this release will be the first OST to be shared on this new site :p )
Comparing costs openly would be wise to get the best deal.
My method for vBulletin costs me just $40 a month for 75GB of bandwidth hosted with them, which includes a blog and bunch available features as a standalone purchase which costs a single $249 purchase plus a webhoster costs.
Also, I wanted to say thank you to the community for sharing your audio rips, albums, game rips, etc.
Maybe a new thread would be a good start if the community wishes to look for other alternatives? Perhaps we can use an IRC hub/channel to discuss these things as well if this thread is scrapped or we’re all suddenly banned. Looks like Morbidcrab’s board on 8ch also works too.
If anything, we need another forum that’s a backup but always online in case another donation drive happens. Obviously a permanent solution would be preferred. Much appreciation to whoever decides to fund another forum for this faithful community. I’ll definitely re-contribute again if it happens.
Echoing what zaizaizai and GoldfishX have said in the lossless thread, I wouldn’t recommend the vgmcentral DC++ hub anymore, the new admin that took over a few years ago is barely online to moderate users and it’s practically dead, half of the active users moved to their own IRC hub. I wouldn’t object to starting our own DC++ hub with an active moderation team and encrypted connections though…
A friend of mine owns SeraphimLabs (http://www.seraphimlabs.net/) which seems cheaper than vBulletin. Not really advertising for him but just taking him as an example, as I figure there should be even better deals out there. I can’t estimate how much storage and bandwidth we just need, though.
As for software features, I’d consider GNU social (aka StatusNet) or Friendica. Even though I’ve never ever been on big SNSes like Twitter or Facebook, but they’re more organizable than plain forum boards.
Honestly. This place was my second home, or part of my own home. Although Leon is right, and I do agree that we can migrate to some place else, I still feel that will not be exactly the same. A lot of people in here were almost like "family". Talking about bad days, good days, sharing experiences, a new manga I/him/her wanted so much for nostalgia.
I actually don’t have any place else to go besides this "home" where I thank so much since 2007 for all the beautiful people I know today, and all the shares we got to each other in here.
being it rare or not, fun thing is, someone would buy something and share with everyone. Illegal as it may keep saying, I don’t feel like it, because it’s shared between friends, right? :/
My income is so bad, that I hardly can contribute with anything, besides my existence. :/
Well as for me they are nothing to pay now, since I have already bought my site. ( ~60€ [65$] / year )
Here what I have for now: (but don’t forget if the traffic go very high, I can add boost to this server with low fees)
HDD : 100go
Traffic : unlimited
SQL : 200mo (a bit light)
+
PHPbb : free (not need Vbulletin, since I’m working on my own forum, phpbb will be temporary)
————————————————————————————————–
Cost for 1 year : ~60€ [65$]
Cost for 1 year if traffic go higher than 2000 per day : ~90€ [97$]
Cost for 1 year if traffic is the same of FFshrine, ~11 000 per day : ~190€ [206$]
While I do hold out a tiny modicum of hope that this isn’t what it appears, I do agree with others who’ve had growing suspicions with each passing donation drive. I’ve been on my message boards and forums in my time, and I’m pretty sure this is the only place I’ve ever seen completely shut down while begging for donations. (Sure I’ve seen others go down for other reasons, but not for fundraising!)
Also, a note: Regardless of whatever wrong Sarah may have done, can we please not use transphobic language (e.g. "tranny") in calling her out? Call her out because of her willful misuse of funds and tactics in unfairly seeking more. But that has nothing to do with her trans gender and is a slur against trans individuals as a whole–and it’s simply not cool. We’re better than that after all. 🙂
-the new site should have nothing to do with FFShrine, in the name or implied… maybe name it like Video Game Music Downloads or something
-seeing that Sarah tried to take down sites in the past (eg. on that Gamer Gate board, leading to the retaliation of people reporting FFShrine to the advertisers), we have to make sure it’s super secure and not easy to report
-I don’t think HCS or a Chan-type site is any good for this type of thing…. a standard forum like vBulletin would be best IMO
-Once we have a site open we should redirect people there through our download links, like in the lossless thread, to make sure the migration is successful and no one’s left behind.
zaykho: so you’re saying you have a site ready to go? :O
Well I’m all for moving somewhere else if anyone has any suggestions. I have Skype, multiple e-mails.
I prefer however not to be sent direct files through Skype… it is a slug. So normal hosting sites like mediafire, mega, and such should still be used for speed.
As for a website, if anyone has any suggestions I’m listening.
What are you guys talking about now???
What are you guys talking about now???
Page 03:
Page 04:
Regards.
being it rare or not, fun thing is, someone would buy something and share with everyone. Illegal as it may keep saying, I don’t feel like it, because it’s shared between friends, right? :/
My income is so bad, that I hardly can contribute with anything, besides my existence. :/
Mine is too, that’s why I try to at least do some gamerips nobody else has done, no matter how slow- hell, you guys are the entire reason I began dedicating time for these things, and there are still more to come- just, not here, If everything goes smoothly, I’m gonna migrate to zaykho’s website.
I don’t have much nostalgia for this place, but I do understand how crappy that can be and I’m real sorry to hear that, just when I was getting reeeaaal settled.
/going_fishing
i’m… horrified at what i came back to here. i’ll make every attempt to be as transparent with all of you as i always have been, i’ll answer any questions you have.
this misinformation is coming from a group that’s harassed, stalked, doxxed, sent myself and my family death threats. you can read about what happened to me here: http://tinyurl.com/mmdseet
Every piece of information they uncovered was used to harass. I was sent those pre-transition photos and told I would never be a woman. My dox and deadname were repeated loudly and repeatedly, even by the biggest figureheads of their movement. One them openly encouraged people to harass me with said photos; even before that encouragement, it had already happened hundreds of times. Photos of my immediate family members that had passed away were sent to me with vile messages—some blaming me for their deaths. I was tweeted pictures of my house, along with messages asking if I would rather be shot or stabbed. Threatening emails were sent to my friends, some of which were severe enough to require contact with the police.
My websites were taken down from distributed denial of service attacks. GamerGate websites openly posted instructions on how to illegally gain access to my servers via SQL injection exploits; this was used to leak chat logs between a small group of friends from almost a decade ago. Campaigns were launched to bombard advertisers on my sites with lies in an attempt to get them to pull out.
Boards that encouraged SWATs posted my information, including my address and that of my family’s. Numerous critics of GamerGate had already been victims of SWATs, one of which resulted in over twenty police being deployed. The board responsible bragged frequently about a woman’s dog being killed by the police in one incident.
My brother passed away six years ago; he left me Sadie, his pitbull. For weeks after my information appeared on that board I would wake up in cold sweats fearing I would lose her.
these are the people this information is coming from. they’re harassing me and making up lies about me. yes, i am in debt, which is why i can’t cover the costs myself anymore– that does NOT mean the money for donations goes to that, it never has. not a penny of it goes to my debt.
the very people harassing me are the reason the donations situation is as it is now. i had to pay for additional server security, DDoS mitigation, frequent security audits, additional backup services and much more. they’ve also bombarded our advertisers with lies trying to get them to pull out.
i’ve run this site for over a decade now. i’ve put thousands upon thousands of my own dollars into this site as well as thousands of hours of time. i know i haven’t been around as much lately, and i feel very guilty for that– running a site for this long takes a huge toll emotionally. it’s kind of heartbreaking to see after this much time and everything i’ve put into it, people are going to believe a group of trolls and villainize me over their lies instead of standing by me.
i’m going to make sure ffs survives, and as i said earlier, i plan for this to be the last time we’ll ever need donations.
i’ll answer any questions you all have, and i’ll be transparent as possible. but please, before you believe any of that bullshit, know that you’re believing people who have tried to had me swatted, have sent death and rape threats to myself and my family, and have grossly and repeatedly violated my privacy, and have overall made a game out of trying to destroy my life. i’ve had to contact the police multiple times because of what’s been going on.
i’m going to stick by FFS no matter what. i hope you all do, too. i promise to be around more and answer any questions you have. please, read the above article. look at who you’re choosing to believe. these are people that aren’t doing everything they can do harass and terrorize me.
this misinformation is coming from a group that’s harassed, stalked, doxxed, sent myself and my family death threats. you can read about what happened to me here: http://www.ravishly.com/2015/03/02/sarah-******-hate-movement-gaming-threats-abuse-bullying
…
Link does not work.
You done fucked up bra…
Last name is getting censored here on the board:
n y b e r g
I thank you for posting that, Sarah, going to read now.
try now. it should work.
http://www.ravishly.com/2015/03/02/sarah-******-hate-movement-gaming-threats-abuse-bullying
I Set Out To Expose A Hate Movement In Gaming — So They Set Out To Destroy My Life*|*Ravishly (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ravishly/i-set-out-to-expose-a-hate-movement-in-gaming—-so-they-set-out-to-destroy-my-life_b_6894418.html)
All I’m saying is, think things through, deeply, lay-low a little, be like a mirage or something, come out when the tide has calmed, of course it isn’t easy, bullying is a shitty thing, but accusing the wrong people of these things is nearly as bad, just try to refresh yourself and try to start new in your own terms.
Also, where are the server costs? Do you have a screenshot or a bill by any chance?
Posting this .gif in case I get shot down.
Going to read article, too.
You done fucked up bra…
i’ve run this site for over a decade. yes, at various times i’ve been less present on the forums as i was previously. i always was handling things behind the scenes, always. from FFS’s finances to the server administration to the security to backups. yes, i view my not being here as much as a failure. but no, that isn’t the same as abandoning the place. read that article. look at what’s happened to me in the past 8 months– that’s a big part of why i haven’t been around.
FFS will stay up, and i’m dedicated to getting more advertisers so we don’t need to ask for donations ever again. i’m going to try to be around on the forums more.
What this website needs right now is an administrator that is active, competent and stable. And that isn’t you.
All I’m saying is, think things through, deeply, lay-low a little, be like a mirage or something, come out when the tide has calmed, of course it isn’t easy, bullying is a shitty thing, but accusing the wrong people of these things is nearly as bad, just try to refresh yourself and try to start new in your own terms.
Also, where are the server costs? Do you have a screenshot or a bill by any chance?
Posting this .gif in case I get shot down.
Dude, that was so….deep.
😉
———- Post added at 05:44 PM ———- Previous post was at 05:43 PM ———-
Sarah:
1. Youre in debt. Even if you say that the money wont go there, that doesnt make things any different
2. Youre not all that active even though you want to be
3. Youre emotionally troubled thanks to this drama
4. What the hell is Galbadia Hotel doing and how much Donations is it draining?
5. Just saying you hope we wont need donations if we get more advertisers doesnt meant youve solved anything.
6. The situation isnt getting better just because of telling us about the GamerGate drama, which frankly isnt the issue here.
Sarah, can you just provide an explanation of why FFShrine needs $2400 almost quarterly? Without GH functioning, both the traffic and bill seem very exaggerated. Even at say, generous 10K visitors and 10 daily page views at 1MB each, it doesn’t add up. Not to mention the donation thing going on at GH right now…
The detractors is us, who paid the donations. GameGate can go fasturbate muriously in the ether of irrelevancy where it belongs.
Gamergate is another side, reading the story she said about the people from there DDoS’ing the website THUS building up the costs. Of course it’s a shit show, but it’s still related to this ordeal like it or not- my sarcasm didn’t really show this time, did it?
It’s sort of surprising, at least if I were in your shoes, you didn’t just "give up" on the community and closed the site down while all this was happening, it would’ve saved you a lot in terms of your finances. I can understand if it’s the community you’ve created this past decade is something you don’t want to lose, which would give you a valid reason to further protect us with the additional server security and backups. If you really cared about us though, you should be supporting us as we look for an alternative place, not to keep us here and continue to pay you these exorbitant prices for additional services to the server we never knew existed until now.
Can you also talk about how the GH portion of the site influences these server costs? You haven’t updated GH in the past 8+ years and many others, including myself, would suggest removing it if you can’t find advertisers. (EDIT: disregard, looks like GH has been down since 2013!)
Where are the server costs coming from now?
– You couldn’t come to the board because you were out of town with your partner, how come you had time to argue with folks over at Twitter in these days?
– "GamerGate websites openly posted instructions on how to illegally gain access to my servers via SQL injection exploits;" – This right here is a pile of bullshit, that was done by a group named NotGoatseSec, a group not affiliated with GamerGate (tweet got posted same night of the hijack) (http://tweetsave.com/notgoatsesec/status/552023805905100800), video here (http://a.pomf.se/uywpgz.webm).
– ""Boards that encouraged SWATs posted my information, including my address and that of my family’s…." – Boards? Board. What you are trying to pass off as an attack from multiple sides came from "/baphomet/" alone, a board on 8chan which doesn’t have any affiliation with GamerGate, either. They also just happened to be angry at you because you went after 8chan’s funding. I won’t doubt that there were scummy human beings which crossed the line with threats, our species "caused" two World Wars, for fuck sake, but there was no proper campaign to bombard advertisers with lies, there was a thread (which I’ve linked to) where people who got pissed off at you going after 8chan’s funding decided it was payback time.
I’ve not only looked at your article on Ravishly.com, looked at the website as a whole, seems rather strongly feminist and Anti-GamerGatish, I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t think that is a valuable source.
The way I read the thread, it was merely people calmly and politely asking questions until a couple of posters with obvious GG bias came into the thread and starting making wild unsubstantiated claims, posting totally inappropriate crap (it’s 2015, can we please stop using the word "tranny" already?) about the admin’s personal life in an incredibly impolite way, and only then did people start stirring up s*** about misappropriation of donations and starting a new competing website. This thread has been being manipulated by people with an agenda and it’s not even very subtle.
Sure, Sarah could be more transparent with how she runs the website but if I were adminnning a forum of this size I sure as hell wouldn’t want my character held responsible for replying to every little question about the site in every little thread.
———- Post added at 06:10 PM ———- Previous post was at 06:07 PM ———-
seems rather strongly feminist and Anti-GamerGatish, I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t think that is a valuable source.
Yes, instead we should only trust information from people who believe certain genders and orientations are more worthy of being treated respectfully and humanely than others and have the staggering audacity to identify with such pre-1800s-style mindsets as if it were a matter of pride.
While we’re at it, the KKK should be the only source of news about inner-city issues. Just so there is no pro-compassion bias. Can’t have that.
Sure, Sarah could be more transparent with how she runs the website but if I were adminnning a forum of this size I sure as hell wouldn’t want my character held responsible for replying to every little question about the site in every little thread.
———- Post added at 06:10 PM ———- Previous post was at 06:07 PM ———-
Yes, instead we should only trust information from people who believe certain genders and orientations are more worthy of being treated respectfully and humanely than others and have the staggering audacity to identify with such pre-1800s-style mindsets as if it were a matter of pride.
While we’re at it, the KKK should be the only source of news about inner-city issues. Just so there is no pro-compassion bias. Can’t have that.
This is BS. The people like LSK who started to snoop into Sarahs background did so because we werent getting answers about what was going on with the site. We are kind of starting to now, but not at a satisfactory level.
All the GamerGate BS is a sideshow to this ongoing, grand-stand carnival act called Donation Theatre. As LSK explained, Sarah is skirting responsibility and apparently falling back on sympathy that may not entirely be due.
I’ve not only looked at your article on Ravishly.com, looked at the website as a whole, seems rather strongly feminist and Anti-GamerGatish, I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t think that is a valuable source.
Bingo Baby, there we go- GG isn’t related after all, on her side it apparently is, as I said on my original post, GG peeps won’t do this kind of thing because that’s not what they stand for, but Sarah says otherwise, but we all know that’s bull- nothing but a distraction.
———- Post added at 06:47 PM ———- Previous post was at 06:45 PM ———-
Yes, instead we should only trust information from people who believe certain genders and orientations are more worthy of being treated respectfully and humanely than others and have the staggering audacity to identify with such pre-1800s-style mindsets as if it were a matter of pride.
While we’re at it, the KKK should be the only source of news about inner-city issues. Just so there is no pro-compassion bias. Can’t have that.
What the /hell/ are you going on about?
Sure, Sarah could be more transparent with how she runs the website but if I were adminnning a forum of this size I sure as hell wouldn’t want my character held responsible for replying to every little question about the site in every little thread.
Any "GG bias" began when problems were a result of Sarah’s own GG bias. Much like how Benji kept running his mouth about how he ran /baphomet/, he became a target as a result. Sarah’s personal bias with GG inadvertently led to problems here. That is the only bias here. Considering the facts, it is wild speculation that the donations could be going anywhere besides the forums. But seeing as she hasn’t bothered to explain the cost to us, despite mounting tensions and questions, this raises many red flags.
The fact stands that the donations have become more frequent. Whether that’s because GH is a sinking ship, or because the Sarah’s personal drama has drawn negative attention here (thus the need for funding better security measures? Could this also be why advertisers have withdrawn their ads?), it doesn’t matter. There’s a damned liability here and an explanation is not forthcoming, though she’s probably typing one as I speak.
My point is: we’re being asked to pay, and frequently at that. There should be 0 question of where that money goes and how it’s used. There should also we complete transparency as to why the costs are so high. If that’s because of GH, then I feel the donators at the very least should have the right to decide its fate. If it’s because of personal problems with Sarah, then that makes her a detriment to the state of this forum. Perhaps taking a step back would be in order, either from the forum or removing herself from the problem. Either way, the situation has been placed in much doubt for the users, and considering the murky depths are only getting deeper, with no clear, concise answers, it’s no wonder people want to jump ship.
Oh and "every little question" has been "Why does this cost so much?" It is the most frequent and persistent question, and a true answer is never given.
2/10 for making me reply.
Look around for 5 minutes if you don’t understand why it costs so much. GH downloads are unsecure annd available to every leacher, DDOSer, bot and spider in the world. That’s a bandwidth nightmare and should be taken down ASAP, otherwise anyone who hates the shrine is free to spam GH downloads all day and night and saddle them with skyrocketing costs. If you want to demand change, focus on that, not these BS intrusions into the admin’s personal life from people who’s agenda is so obvious they have to keep repeating that they have no agenda.
While we’re at it, the KKK should be the only source of news about inner-city issues. Just so there is no pro-compassion bias. Can’t have that.
I didn’t say that, but frankly speaking as a 27 years old adult which is nearing 28, I’m rather wary of trusting claims provided by someone which conveniently side-steps what fucking started this mess around here:
The deal with amount of money implied to be needed by servers.
The graphs posted in that reddit research I’ve quoted in the first page might very well be wrong, I don’t know, but at least they’re there. Sarah, on the other hand, what has oh-so-graciously gave us up to now? Her word. That’s it. I’d like to have some fucking prove. dl1.ffshrine.org is dead, bandwidth nightmare my ass.
While we’re at it, the KKK should be the only source of news about inner-city issues. Just so there is no pro-compassion bias. Can’t have that.
The deal with amount of money implied to be needed by servers.
The graphs posted in that reddit research I’ve quoted in the first page might very well be wrong, I don’t know, but at least they’re there. Sarah, on the other hand, what has oh-so-graciously gave us up to now? Her word. That’s it. I’d like to have some fucking prove. dl1.ffshrine.org is dead, bandwidth nightmare my ass.
We the same age bro. 😉 I turn in July.
She’s given you a functional, massive soundtrack sharing paradise for an entire decade, whilst miraculously navigating the minefield of music copyright legality. If you have a problem with the way she is doing it, go try to do it better yourself.
Sarah, don’t you have people in here you trust? The other Admins are what to you?
My point is, why did you not let those admins know about all this issue in the first place, and evade this "uprising"? Maybe I am being an ass and assuming something I don’t know, but maybe if you had shared those infos with the admins only, you all might had a found a way or discuss between you what to do?
I know personal life and all, do not want to give too much show about it, but don’t get me wrong, the articles does sound like a show to me, although I also feel that you wrote it with all your guts.
Galbadia Hotel should not be there anymore, is not doing anything at all at this point. Taking it down would save some more money.
Are you rally talking from your heart that you want to keep FFS alive? If so, I commend you for that, because, many want a new website, and I am not against it; maybe I am too fond of this place or maybe my own psychologically issue of "moving to a new house again" does not let me accept it and go to a new "home".
I swear I am trying to understand Leon’s points and yours….. But the only thing I can do right now Is give you the benefit of doubt. Please…. Don’t be "courage the cowardly dog" and "make me look bad". :/
http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqzm8svYL31r2x6cpo1_r1_500.gif
Leon Scott Kennendy and Vyse Legend are late 20s?
That’s the least surprising thing I’ve read all week.
It’s not "every little question" in "every little thread".
We’ve had 3 donation drives asking for thousands of dollars to support the site in a rather short period of time. For a while now people have been asking "Why does the site cost so much? Is it because of Galbadia Hotel? Why can’t we get rid of that part of the site? Where does all this money we’re giving you go in terms of the site?"
Can you tell me where she’s given the answers to any of these questions?
Sarah is very good at giving very vague blanket answers to any and all concerns.
Like saying that she was out of town, coming back, and saying that she is shocked to see all this hubbub about the financial situation of the forums. That’s all she’s really said that has any substance or relevance to what is important to us. She has focused instead on telling us how everything we’ve read about her is a lie, and that GamerGate has a lot to do with this situation.
Except that it really doesn’t. That debacle has a lot to do with her own life, not to the ours or the forums’s.
If Sarah wants to show she has strong character, she doesn’t have to refute the claims that have been made about her. All she has to do is tell us the truth about where the money is going… for better or for worse.
Yes, instead we should only trust information from people who believe certain genders and orientations are more worthy of being treated respectfully and humanely than others and have the staggering audacity to identify with such pre-1800s-style mindsets as if it were a matter of pride.
Leon never said that. He’s trying to say that it seemed a little convenient for Sarah to link to a website with that sort of background to support her claims.
I don’t know when this just happened, but that has to raise some eyebrows. (EDIT- Looks like they have been down since 2013!)
I’ll ask again: where are the server costs coming from now?
Oh Sarah, where would be be?!!….
Fair enough. I will withhold final judgement pending clarification on this matter. And maybe in the meantime, anyone who has a problem with the way ffshrine is being funded should just stop giving money, instead of posting personal, bigoted attacks against the admin.
i’m… horrified at what i came back to here. i’ll make every attempt to be as transparent with all of you as i always have been, i’ll answer any questions you have.
this misinformation is coming from a group that’s harassed, stalked, doxxed, sent myself and my family death threats. you can read about what happened to me here: I Set Out To Expose A Hate Movement In Gaming?So They Set Out To Destroy My Life | Ravishly (http://tinyurl.com/mmdseet)
these are the people this information is coming from. they’re harassing me and making up lies about me. yes, i am in debt, which is why i can’t cover the costs myself anymore– that does NOT mean the money for donations goes to that, it never has. not a penny of it goes to my debt.
the very people harassing me are the reason the donations situation is as it is now. i had to pay for additional server security, DDoS mitigation, frequent security audits, additional backup services and much more. they’ve also bombarded our advertisers with lies trying to get them to pull out.
i’ve run this site for over a decade now. i’ve put thousands upon thousands of my own dollars into this site as well as thousands of hours of time. i know i haven’t been around as much lately, and i feel very guilty for that– running a site for this long takes a huge toll emotionally. it’s kind of heartbreaking to see after this much time and everything i’ve put into it, people are going to believe a group of trolls and villainize me over their lies instead of standing by me.
i’m going to make sure ffs survives, and as i said earlier, i plan for this to be the last time we’ll ever need donations.
i’ll answer any questions you all have, and i’ll be transparent as possible. but please, before you believe any of that bullshit, know that you’re believing people who have tried to had me swatted, have sent death and rape threats to myself and my family, and have grossly and repeatedly violated my privacy, and have overall made a game out of trying to destroy my life. i’ve had to contact the police multiple times because of what’s been going on.
i’m going to stick by FFS no matter what. i hope you all do, too. i promise to be around more and answer any questions you have. please, read the above article. look at who you’re choosing to believe. these are people that aren’t doing everything they can do harass and terrorize me.
I honestly think you should just stick with the forums. Like everyone else said, GH is not really worth holding onto anymore. You could move the files over to a MEGA account and pay a lot less. I don’t think you are using 4TB of MP3 content, so it would be more than enough, worse case You can always open a 2nd account. I pay like $28/mo for 2 TB.
the very people harassing me are the reason the donations situation is as it is now. i had to pay for additional server security, DDoS mitigation, frequent security audits, additional backup services and much more. they’ve also bombarded our advertisers with lies trying to get them to pull out. First of all, it ought to be rather simple to post the invoices for those services to back up your claims. You pretty much owe that to your donors at this point.
Second, Leon Scott Kennedy linked to the thread where they organized to report you to Paypal and Google AdSense. There were no lies in it. You also conveniently left out the fact that you went after their site’s funding first using the exact same tactics. That seems to be what motivated them to report you.
look at what’s happened to me in the past 8 months– that’s a big part of why i haven’t been around.The identity of "srhbutts" was unknown before January of this year, so "8 months" is an exaggeration. You completely ignored the people who asked you questions about the donation drive back in October when no one knew who you were, but you had more than enough free time (hours each day, in fact) to hunt for GamerGate nonsense to screencap and tweet and to argue with people on twitter. You can’t blame GamerGate for that; that was entirely your decision. What you’re saying now comes off as an attempt to blame GamerGate for everything, but these problems existed months before your identity was known.
Look around for 5 minutes if you don’t understand why it costs so much. GH downloads are unsecure annd available to every leacher, DDOSer, bot and spider in the world. That’s a bandwidth nightmare and should be taken down ASAP, otherwise anyone who hates the shrine is free to spam GH downloads all day and night and saddle them with skyrocketing costs. If you want to demand change, focus on that, not these BS intrusions into the admin’s personal life from people who’s agenda is so obvious they have to keep repeating that they have no agenda.Galbadia Hotel’s download links haven’t worked since 2013. The server where the mp3’s were hosted is completely offline and has been for a long time.
I’ll ask again: where are the server costs coming from now?
This is exactly what I’m waiting for.
I won’t argue that, I’ll be more specific:
Donation drives occasionally happened back when Galbadia Hotel’s downloads were working, at the time I had no troubles believing the site needed that much to stay up. Thing is, Galbadia Hotel has been dead at least since 2013, amount of money asked by those donations drives never changed, for once, and Galbadia Hotel is still not working.
Am I to believe she plans to fix stuff, seriously? I don’t give a shit about GamerGate+Anti-GamerGate movements, that’s simply stuff which came up on my research… And whatever’s going on with that crap seems to be keeping her away from this place, a place which, in case you’ve forgot, she’s supposed to administer.
And just a side note, I never gave a cent to this place, I really wanted to back when Galbadia Hotel was working, but I had to provide for my family first. I’m not doing this because I am worried about where my money went, I’m a Moderator of the Shrine, the role requires me to at least try and look after the community’s best interest. This whole deal qualifies as community’s best interest.
Unless I missed something, the site is still going strong, and is the only HTTP source of aggregation and downloads for a vast majority of the content posted in the forum. I’d say she’s doing more than a good enough job. If she is asking for money and people are giving it, where is the problem? Unless the site stops working, which it hasn’t (aside from the GH issue, which I hope is adressed, as there have been many different claims about it in this thread alone). Even if some of the donation money were going to personal expenses, which I don’t believe it is, there are many people here who would be more than willing to help her out, considering the safe haven she’s kept alive all these years for so many people. There is simply no problem here unless people want there to be one.
Again, if people are unsatisfied with the ratio between the amount of money ffshrine is asking for and the service they are providing, the rational, non-GG-bias thing to do would be to simply start a better website for a lower cost. Personally I don’t think that’s very feasible considering the amount of negative attention a music sharing site will inevitably attract, but if this is really about believing the money is being misdirected for personal use, then it should be relatively simple to prove it by starting a better site.
I can see both sides here….I was massively scammed by a fantasy football website last year which made off with almost a million dollars of players’ entry fees, the admin riding off into the sunset after claiming a web developer took the money and filing for bankrupcy. So I know both from obvious reality and from recent personal experience that everyone asking for money on the internet is not on the up-and-up, and I have plenty of reason to be paranoid. As I stated in the beginning, I was dubious about the supposed costs of running ffshrine at first also. But I’m also dubious about the motives of anyone who would publicly side with GG principles and be okay with calling someone a "pedophile tranny" as was stated earlier in the thread and was what got me riled up. I am not talking about anyone in particular (except whoever said that, I don’t feel like going back and reading it). It’s just really rude to come into someone’s own "house", (even if you have partially funded that house with donations, you sure didn’t do the hard work to build it and keep it going) and insult them like that.
Again, if people are unsatisfied with the ratio between the amount of money ffshrine is asking for and the service they are providing, the rational, non-GG-bias thing to do would be to simply start a better website for a lower cost. Personally I don’t think that’s very feasible considering the amount of negative attention a music sharing site will inevitably attract, but if this is really about believing the money is being misdirected for personal use, then it should be relatively simple to prove it by starting a better site.
I can see both sides here….I was massively scammed by a fantasy football website last year which made off with almost a million dollars of players’ entry fees, the admin riding off into the sunset after claiming a web developer took the money and filing for bankrupcy. So I know both from obvious reality and from recent personal experience that everyone asking for money on the internet is not on the up-and-up, and I have plenty of reason to be paranoid. As I stated in the beginning, I was dubious about the supposed costs of running ffshrine at first also. But I’m also dubious about the motives of anyone who would publicly side with GG principles and be okay with calling someone a "pedophile tranny" as was stated earlier in the thread and was what got me riled up. I am not talking about anyone in particular (except whoever said that, I don’t feel like going back and reading it). It’s just really rude to come into someone’s own "house", (even if you have partially funded that house with donations, you sure didn’t do the hard work to build it and keep it going) and insult them like that.
Maybe we did a bit overboard with the snooping about Sarah and her sexuality. But in order to fully support the site, and to get a sense of confidence (and Im convinced) about the operation of the site – which frankly shouldnt be all that far fetched because many of us donate – we wanted more openness about the costs. Its still forthcoming.
If she is asking for money and people are giving it, where is the problem?
You know, this hasn’t happened in a few years, but humanity seems to have reached a new low for me, just now. Where is the problem with that? Perhaps it’s because of the way I’ve been raised, but if I think something is fishy and money is "part of the picture", I’m at least going to share my doubts with the very same folks which are sending money off frequently to who-knows-where. Am I to believe FFS still costs this much? Prove it, word alone won’t be enough, any more, what I’ve found changed the opinion I had of the individual behind the Sarah alias… For worse.
Even if users here were just as willing to help Sarah out as they are the Shrine… there’s the paradox of sorts that’s been created by the lack of communication between Sarah and the Shrine: how much money does she ask for, yet how much money does she need?
Sarah hasn’t done much to support herself in her own words. She’s just linked us to an article about how she’s harassed, and she let that article do the talking without saying much herself.
Because Sarah dodges the basic question of costs for this site time and time again… it’s making her very untrustworthy, and if she’d come out and tell us what’s happening to the money – be it for the servers or for her own use – we’d all feel a lot better about her as a person.
Is Sarah a bad person? Is she a good person? I don’t know, and we can’t know because despite her 13000+ posts here, she’s done very little lately to give us a reason to trust her about anything she is asking of us – including trusting her.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if Sarah wants a good relationship with the people of the Shrine, all she has to do is tell the truth. Wouldn’t that be easier for everyone? The truth might hurt, yes, but… any words about the matter are a lot more powerful coming from her than from any article she can link to.
After the evidence that Leon and others have presented, I have a low opinion of Sarah right now. But if she can just say something that she can prove is the truth, I’d respect her that much more, no matter what.
You know, this hasn’t happened in a few years, but humanity seems to have reached a new low for me, just now. Where is the problem with that? Perhaps it’s because of the way I’ve been raised, but if I think something is fishy and money is "part of the picture", I’m at least going to share my doubts with the very same folks which are sending money off frequently to who-knows-where. Am I to believe FFS still costs this much? Prove it, word alone won’t be enough, any more, what I’ve found changed the opinion I had of the individual behind the Sarah alias… For worse.
But people still donate to the Catholic Church. 😉
Followers will sign over %10 of every pay check to this church.
AA/NA members will always sign over percentiles of their pay checks, too.
1.- Where the funds have been spend on?
2.- The lossless thread new home.
Anything besides this has been sort of said or shown already and I think there is no need to raise more concern from it.
We have no need to take part on matters that are outside our current interests… which is to keep going on, not to become fragmented.
Sarah hasn’t done much to support herself in her own words. She’s just linked us to an article about how she’s harassed, and she let that article do the talking without saying much herself.
Because Sarah dodges the basic question of costs for this site time and time again… it’s making her very untrustworthy, and if she’d come out and tell us what’s happening to the money – be it for the servers or for her own use – we’d all feel a lot better about her as a person.
Is Sarah a bad person? Is she a good person? I don’t know, and we can’t know because despite her 13000+ posts here, she’s done very little lately to give us a reason to trust her about anything she is asking of us – including trusting her.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if Sarah wants a good relationship with the people of the Shrine, all she has to do is tell the truth. Wouldn’t that be easier for everyone? The truth might hurt, yes, but… any words about the matter are a lot more powerful coming from her than from any article she can link to.
After the evidence that Leon and others have presented, I have a low opinion of Sarah right now. But if she can just say something that she can prove is the truth, I’d respect her that much more, no matter what.
Socran’s Razor: "Never attribute to massive stupidity by someone else, what could be explained by a tiny bit of stupidity on your own part."
"Doc, I’m from the future. I came here in a time machine that you invented. Now I need your help to get back to the year 1985."
Because Sarah dodges the basic question of costs for this site time and time again… it’s making her very untrustworthy, and if she’d come out and tell us what’s happening to the money – be it for the servers or for her own use – we’d all feel a lot better about her as a person.
If you had been involved in harassment wars like that, you would want to avoid talking about it as much has possible. This I also know from personal experience as my father is a paranoid schizophrenic who made my upbringing hellishly dramatic in a similar way to what Sarah has been through, albeit for completely different reasons. Just linking to such an article in a large public forum like this, is more than we have any reasonable right to expect and I applaud her for that level of transparency.
As far as "the basic question", perhaps the problem is that she doesn’t know. Web providers don’t exactly love to be transparent with their customers if they believe they stand to make a buck. I’m sure whoever is hosting this site knows what a traffic gold mine this is and they’re going to milk it for all its worth. If huge corporations like Comcast and the big 4 wireless providers still routinely get away with bill-inflating bogus charges and phantom bandwidth metering to their customers despite tight regulations, who knows what kind of deception the provider of this website is foisting upon Sarah and whoever else is helping run the website, especially given the security concerns Sarah has mentioned today. I’d put my money on the host inflating charges before I’d believe the prevailing suspicions in this thread. If Sarah were this con artist some of you seem to believe, I think she could do a whole lot better job extracting money from the numerous users of this website than what she is doing…in fact I think there would be more (fake) transparency in the form of doctored charts and fudged stats, if she was trying to lead people on. What I’m seeing are not the actions of a con artist, they’re the actions of a busy, overwhelmed person who deserves patience, respect, and, at the most, gentle inquiries into where the money is going.
The problem is that she’s lying about it instead of being upfront about it, while making it mandatory to donate to god knows what to be able to access the website, furthering the point, to access the work that other people have done, that’s why some are moving out, she’s only keeping it for sharing, she isn’t uploading everything to these servers, she isn’t tagging all of the music, she isn’t ripping, she is only housing this website which shouldn’t be more than a couple of hundred a month, which makes it clear of one thing, it’s going somewhere else because she has yet to post solid information about the costs.
Again, if people are unsatisfied with the ratio between the amount of money ffshrine is asking for and the service they are providing, the rational, non-GG-bias thing to do would be to simply start a better website for a lower cost. Personally I don’t think that’s very feasible considering the amount of negative attention a music sharing site will inevitably attract, but if this is really about believing the money is being misdirected for personal use, then it should be relatively simple to prove it by starting a better site.
Exactly what users are doing as I type this, including myself, thank you zaykho- you will save us all.
I can see both sides here….I was massively scammed by a fantasy football website last year which made off with almost a million dollars of players’ entry fees, the admin riding off into the sunset after claiming a web developer took the money and filing for bankrupcy. So I know both from obvious reality and from recent personal experience that everyone asking for money on the internet is not on the up-and-up, and I have plenty of reason to be paranoid. As I stated in the beginning, I was dubious about the supposed costs of running ffshrine at first
That’s nice dear, sucks brah, do you know where the money is going then? If no, what you’re saying is basically filler, we don’t yet know where exactly the money is going, what we DO know is that it’s not going towards ffshrine so we can’t justify (or at least lessen) the motives of butts.
I’m also dubious about the motives of anyone who would publicly side with GG principles and be okay with calling someone a "pedophile tranny" as was stated earlier in the thread and was what got me riled up. I am not talking about anyone in particular (except whoever said that, I don’t feel like going back and reading it). It’s just really rude to come into someone’s own "house", (even if you have partially funded that house with donations, you sure didn’t do the hard work to build it and keep it going) and insult them like that.
It’s derogative and rude, I do agree, but as rude as it may be, it’s factual information, she is a transgender and she /is/ into children, BUT that’s not what this thread is about, take it to twitter, also, stop bringing up GamerGate for god’s sakes, that has nothing to do with this, from what I’m reading, you know very little to nothing about them and you’re just piggybacking on what some "feminists" are saying, if you’re getting angry at that then take it up with him, not us, stop venting out where said person can’t see it, also, do not get offended on her behalf, if she doesn’t care about it you are going to look like a damn fool.
———- Post added at 08:00 PM ———- Previous post was at 07:59 PM ———-
Okay guys, lets keep this civil. The only two concerns at the moment should be two things:
1.- Where the funds have been spend on?
2.- The lossless thread new home.
Anything besides this has been sort of said or shown already and I think there is no need to raise more concern from it.
We have no need to take part on matters that are outside our current interests… which is to keep going on, not to become fragmented.
This, This, This, THIS.
My childhood of being flogged by nuns is acting up right now, because of that.
I’m not referring to any involvement she may have with GamerGate and its unfortunate repercussions for her. I don’t care about that. None of us ought to. It’s her life and she’s doing what she will with it.
What I’m referring to is her consistent evasion of answering the question of where does the money go? Instead she links us to an article and has that tell the story with little connection to our interests.
And if she honestly doesn’t know where it goes (though I would hope she has some inkling of an idea of why the site would cost so much)… then she can say something like, "I don’t know why it costs this much, and where this much goes and where this much goes… but I can tell you that your money is going to the wellbeing of the site, and if you want a more detailed answer I can do some digging." At least then she would have something to say for herself, and we’d all feel a lot better, wouldn’t we?
My childhood of being flogged by nuns is acting up right now, because of that.
I…can’t believe that’s a real, word. If you’re being honest about it, I’ll change it.
And it’s actually negative man.
Negative Man – EarthBound Wiki – This wiki stinks! (http://earthbound.wikia.com/wiki/Negative_Man)
There is no proof that the money is not going exactly where we have been told it is going or that any lying has occurred.
And it’s utterly hilarious that you say I’m bringing up Gamergate when the first person to mention it in this thread was a detractor of Sarah’s actions calling her anti-Gamergate as if that was some sort of insult…
Now unfortunately I must depart because I don’t need any more brain melting stupidity in my life today. Fortunately, I have already fulfilled my daily Ess Jay Double Yew Forum Post Quota and can rest in peace… 😉
And it’s actually negative man.
Negative Man – EarthBound Wiki – This wiki stinks! (http://earthbound.wikia.com/wiki/Negative_Man)
No I was being sarcastic, because of Kaylani mentioning her father and her past….for some reason.
pederasty is often used to describe the sexual behaviors of the church and its victims….and ancient Greek philosophers and their happy fun times.
But seriously it does look like two Spongebobs are going at it in your sig.
No proof… but lots of suggestive evidence.
And it’s utterly hilarious that you say I’m bringing up Gamergate when the first person to mention it in this thread was a detractor of Sarah’s actions calling her anti-Gamergate as if that was some sort of insult…
Now unfortunately I must depart because I don’t need any more brain melting stupidity in my life today. Fortunately, I have already fulfilled my daily Ess Jay Double Yew Forum Post Quota and can rest in peace… 😉
Feminist Logic, Everybody.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrlfchWJPA1qeakgbo1_500.gif
When there are personal attacks the first thing you’re going to do is respond to the personal attacks, that’s obviously why she posted that article, in response to the goons "accusing" her of being a "pedophile tranny". If people want to calmly and rationally discuss the finances of the website they should do so in another thread, or better yet privately, because this one seems long gone to those espousing a certain "agenda".
EDIT:
The goons accusing her of being a pedophile tranny has been only one person, Neo_Chip, if I recall correctly… And he’s been called out on it.
I thought you were done, guess the patriarchy needs a few more slaps eh?
http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrlfchWJPA1qeakgbo1_500.gif
Okay, you win. This is clearly the greatest argument in the history of the internet and proves that ffshrine is stealing all our money and using it to fund feminist journalists to rant against theh evil menz. Congrats brah.
———- Post added at 07:44 PM ———- Previous post was at 07:43 PM ———-
I thought you were done, guess the patriarchy needs a few more slaps eh?
You seem to be going out of your way to add new posts every time I try to log out, at first I wondered why you cared so much, then I saw your "Location" and understood everything..
Paedophile Tranny is the name of my local punk band.
———- Post added at 07:44 PM ———- Previous post was at 07:43 PM ———-
You seem to be going out of your way to add new posts every time I try to log out, at first I wondered why you cared so much, then I saw your "Location" and understood everything..
I care about this issue a lot, I just find it gleeful that you people really do try to always to move the goalpost, I didn’t want to argue about off-topic garbage, yet you kept insisting. Back to twitter you go.
So, all of what you said has been filler, do you know what’s going on with the money?
So, all of what you said has been filler, do you know what’s going on with the money?
it’s kinda funny how people who employ the tactic of moving goalposts then turn around and accuse others of doing it when they are the ones who have been doing it the whole time. sort of similar to the concept of gaslighting in abuse situations actually. and then he/she goes and suggests starting a new thread.. i guess 8chan considers their mission accomplished in this one.
I did think of the hosting-provider inflating costs possibility myself, but then again, what has been Sarah’s behaviour doesn’t lead me to believe that’s the cause of the issue. I’m a human being, prone to commit mistakes and though I certainly don’t think I am smart, I at least like to entertain the thought I prioritize efficiently. Any issues revolving around money happens to be a big issue for me and it generally is the same for a lot of other individuals, as far as I’ve seen. So, if we suppose she’s getting screwed by the provider and I was in Sarah’s shoes, I certainly wouldn’t be spending my time on Twitter, I’d move to sort out the issue.
EDIT:
The goons accusing her of being a pedophile tranny has been only one person, Neo_Chip, if I recall correctly… And he’s been called out on it.
Alright, bring up points, what have I done that’s hypocritical? Where am I moving goalposts? Bring them up, come on, I’m not afraid of being wrong, All I’m focusing right now is where money is going.
But I know trying to argue with SJW is like trying to punch a concrete wall, they won’t listen.
Do you know where the money is going?
I’m sorry, but over $2,000 (I believe it was $3,200 this last time, correct me if I’m wrong…) a month for server costs is incredibly unrealistic, especially knowing that the GH download server has not been up since 2013! A forum like this would likely not be anymore than ~$100 a month, and even that may be too high.
Sarah had to purchase a special edition 3DS to play MonHun with her AGG brethren in the pantheon of Anti-GG heroes.
No no of course all the money goes to the server…. the private MonHun server she is secretly running alongside FFS.
Then why did you bring it up? As others have stated, it’s completely irrelevant. I am sorry if my attitude has come across as being a poor listener and "not giving a fuck", as you seem to be one of the more reasonable posters in this thread. It’s just a hot-button issue for me and the drifting of the questions from being about money to being about Sarah’s personal life seemed really fishy, especially considering the history mentioned in the link she posted, no matter how much of it is true and how much is journalistic "enhancement".
Anyway, to your point, I have worked in IT all my life. Some people just don’t understand the fine details of how computers and the internet work, especially when numbers are involved. Sarah seems like the kind of person who would get bills from web hosting providers and get anxious about paying them, rather than running numbers and verifying their accuracy, which has to be incredibly hard on a forum of this magnitude anyway. Perhaps she should recruit someone she trusts to handle that aspect of running the forum, and some of these issues might go away. I agree with the posters who have suggested she may be trying to handle more responsibility than she has time and energy for at this stage of her life, I just think we should give her every benefit of the doubt until we have more solid facts. I also think that what seems like evading questions is just her being overwhelmed by seeing so many questions, claims, accusations, and implications directed at her. When you see someone digging into your personal life on a public forum you’re not going to be thinking about financial questions for a while. Granted, if we get on more information about where the money is going, it’s going to seem suspicious, but for now I see no reason to believe it’s not going to the upkeep of the website. Given my professional experience, Occam’s Razor says its far more likely to be the web hoster if anyone is scamming here.
…
What I’m seeing are not the actions of a con artist, they’re the actions of a busy, overwhelmed person who deserves patience, respect, and, at the most, gentle inquiries into where the money is going.
Uhhh….wut?
First off the article in question is public information and does come up quite easily in cursory searches. Secondly, the people who have donated repeatedly deserve some transparency in the question of where their donations are being used. A little specificity isn’t gonna hurt. I don’t approve how the admin has dealt with the whole donation thing with basically locking up the forums until people donated (?).
The admin’s personal life is not important or relevant. But when it has a direct link to why the site is even in rough waters in the first place then maybe some questions arise. And they have to be answered because this is not a one-person blog, this is a community.
Complete transparency cannot be expected but simply linking to an irrelevant article is not enough. It tells us more about how the admin is going through tough times because of her political stuff, then about why the site is in financial troubles. This is not about GG. This is not about admin’s sexuality, that has been a topic of discussion in other places where the sole point is to malign her but here in this discussion, it’s utterly irrelevant. Her sexuality or her preferences otherwise have no impact on her ability to keep this site online. Her debt has some relevance because it adds another layer of mystery on top of the current state of vagueness regarding the usage of the money.
It’s looking like this topic could create a rift here and that doesn’t need to happen. This is going to go around in circles until in the end people get pissed off at each other and do some stupid symbolic gesture or leave on bad terms. That is until Sarah provides direct specific answers to direct questions related to the site.
If I were the web hoster and I was not morally upright, you can be damn sure a website with this much traffic would not be running for $100 a month unless the customer was smart enough to prove I was scamming them.
Okay, now I must force myself to close this damn tab before I go insane…..ahahahahha
Where is the money going?
Where is the proof?
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/929/354/d91.gif
Anyway, to your point, I have worked in IT all my life. Some people just don’t understand the fine details of how computers and the internet work, especially when numbers are involved. Sarah seems like the kind of person who would get bills from web hosting providers and get anxious about paying them, rather than running numbers and verifying their accuracy, which has to be incredibly hard on a forum of this magnitude anyway. Perhaps she should recruit someone she trusts to handle that aspect of running the forum, and some of these issues might go away. I agree with the posters who have suggested she may be trying to handle more responsibility than she has time and energy for at this stage of her life, I just think we should give her every benefit of the doubt until we have more solid facts. I also think that what seems like evading questions is just her being overwhelmed by seeing so many questions, claims, accusations, and implications directed at her. When you see someone digging into your personal life on a public forum you’re not going to be thinking about financial questions for a while. Granted, if we get on more information about where the money is going, it’s going to seem suspicious, but for now I see no reason to believe it’s not going to the upkeep of the website. Given my professional experience, Occam’s Razor says its far more likely to be the web hoster if anyone is scamming here.
Actually I think youre on to something here. In fact I think it was brought up months ago that Sarah had to take on all of these new expensive security, backup, etc. measures in order to combat DDoS, and manage the b/w. it might be possible that all these services together demand such a high cost.
———- Post added at 08:14 PM ———- Previous post was at 08:10 PM ———-
Uhhh….wut?
First off the article in question is public information and does come up quite easily in cursory searches. Secondly, the people who have donated repeatedly deserve some transparency in the question of where their donations are being used. A little specificity isn’t gonna hurt. I don’t approve how the admin has dealt with the whole donation thing with basically locking up the forums until people donated (?).
The admin’s personal life is not important or relevant. But when it has a direct link to why the site is even in rough waters in the first place then maybe some questions arise. And they have to be answered because this is not a one-person blog, this is a community.
Complete transparency cannot be expected but simply linking to an irrelevant article is not enough. It tells us more about how the admin is going through tough times because of her political stuff, then about why the site is in financial troubles. This is not about GG. This is not about admin’s sexuality, that has been a topic of discussion in other places where the sole point is to malign her but here in this discussion, it’s utterly irrelevant. Her sexuality or her preferences otherwise have no impact on her ability to keep this site online. Her debt has some relevance because it adds another layer of mystery on top of the current state of vagueness regarding the usage of the money.
It’s looking like this topic could create a rift here and that doesn’t need to happen. This is going to go around in circles until in the end people get pissed off at each other and do some stupid symbolic gesture or leave on bad terms. That is until Sarah provides direct specific answers to direct questions related to the site.
Im so turned on right now, I love trying to unravel the mystery what lies beneath Sarah’s kimono of Matryoshka dolls.
😉
😉
that just sounded…….. I am scarred now
Where is the money going?
Where is the proof?
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/929/354/d91.gif
this is actually getting a difficult question to see the light….
Because of all the new attention, I wonder if FFshrine bill for this month will exceed past records?
::busts out credit card::
I SUMMON MORDICRAB
Where is the money going?
Where is the proof?
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/929/354/d91.gif
People are trying to argue about shit that doesn’t matter or go anywhere, it’s all a big circlejerk between people at this point.
So, that being said, I’m just waiting for sarah to share information about the bill, that’s all that matters right now
Yeah, I’ve been snooping around a bit of personal info, but as you can see from my message at the start of page #2 of this thread:
1) What I’ve disclosed could potentially be found by anyone.
2) Any of my findings basically lead to the next one. I’ve looked up who was registered as owner of FFShrine.org (and found a general location, by extension, not my fault, it’s been provided by the website I’ve used). Given I had a location, and I had at least a rough idea of just how much illegal revenue this domain (both as Galbadia Hotel and board) may generate, I’ve checked if the owner was also recorded as some kind of tax payer having illegal sources of income, turned out she is recorded and she also owes a nice sum of money.
3) That coupled with the latest donation drives and the short amount of time passed between them piqued my curiosity, understandably. In this very thread I was among the firsts to call for transparency, and even in my research post what I’ve asked at the end is still: where the fuck does the money you get from those users go?
I have a server with a nice amount of Terabytes of storage and unlimited bandwidth, which I use for personal backups, I get to pay €900 every 3 months and while it has been brought to my attention I may be getting ripped off myself, the fact they aren’t the +$2000 dollars this place has always been asking for made those findings above a bit more "trustworthy" to my eyes.
That being said, as some of you have pointed out, there’s no evidence the Shrine-community’s money isn’t going where it’s supposed to end, but there’s also no evidence for the contrary. After all this time without answers, you can’t really expect everyone to stay still and simply accept it at face-value, suspicions are bound to be raised.
Right now we need to know the costs, why, how much, for what?
then we move to a Second Focus, and after that the third. Getting all shit together in the same quarter will result in what you (Morbidcrab) notice above.
Focus One:
Money!!!
Let us wait then and see about it.
No reason, Just that Kaylani is an agenda-driven feminist with daddy issues….or something.
::busts out credit card::
By keeping mum on the status of the donated money, Sarah has kind of shot herself in the foot.
I know she said we won’t have to worry about donations in the future… but what if we do have another drive? Almost no one will donate this time unless Sarah promises a real look behind-the-scenes at where the money goes and why, or something else really, really, really worth it.
Let me know when she’s taking a dump.
I need to know everything every single minute of the day.
And until it gets answered directly, there’s no point in anything else.
How many threads have been created?
I see everyone has taken a liking to excercising their rights in fulitlity.
And most of them go on a monthly basis.
I believe this place goes quarterly?
This is hilarious, I’m done. I’m so done.
Why was Sarah asking for donations for GH, when the shit is dead?
Why is Sarah asking for donations for GH, when the shit is dead?
Still asking
———- Post added at 09:20 PM ———- Previous post was at 09:19 PM ———-
Oh and dl1 is down.
Thank you for the new material.
:erm: Should ask mods to change the name of the thread to add "NSFW".
Anyone who comes up with a new topic, gets followed by I came pics.
Also throw in hot chicks pics and hot dicks pics.
i’m… horrified at what i came back to here. i’ll make every attempt to be as transparent with all of you as i always have been, i’ll answer any questions you have.
I’m trying to be respectful, but this game of ‘hiding under the bed’ has to stop. To be clear I’m not an affiliate of gamersgate. Some know me as a sparce contributer here and this place has served my VGM needs and has exposed me to many soundtracks I’ve never heard and enjoy, so I thank you for that.
But let’s be clear and honest, your response was an emotional post NOT a straightforward answer we needed . Life is tough I wish you didn’t have to go through your past experiences which is possibly why you’ve taken personal decisions that I don’t agree with but I can’t judge you I’m not God. Honestly I can give a rat ass about your problems.
The problem I have with you is ‘your hiding something’ and not only have you fooled me, but the thousands of other members who honest-hearted donated to you. To make sure you know you will never get a goddamn cent from me I lost all trust on you.
• — When the fuck were you going to tell us all about "REAL REASONS" of the high costs of FFShrine servers?
• — Why did you use the excuse of Galbadia Hotel as the high cost when it was, according to you, EXTRA SERVER PROTECTION costs?
Either way you LIED to us, why would you do something like that when you had the entire community’s trust?
But I’m also dubious about the motives of anyone who would publicly side with GG principles and be okay with calling someone a "pedophile tranny" as was stated earlier in the thread and was what got me riled up. I am not talking about anyone in particular (except whoever said that, I don’t feel like going back and reading it). It’s just really rude to come into someone’s own "house", (even if you have partially funded that house with donations, you sure didn’t do the hard work to build it and keep it going) and insult them like that.
Excuse me is she (goddamit he, it whatever ‘it’ classifies itself) sucking your dick or something? you seem to take a ‘fair’ approach but tend to be defending her with ‘maybe’ situations. I agree with some of your points but get real man, there’s vague explanation on Sarah’s defense to justify costs that I feel abused all the members here at FFShrine with LIES.
Also Sarah IS a "transvestite" from the photos on the sites linked previously. You know… ‘transform’ from a male to a female. Tranny is not an insult its defining Sarah what she wants to be considered.
I’m not aware of the pedophile comments, but reading through her past posts talking about children is fucking scary and is NOT normal. So both statements I’ve are valid and are the truth. So calling her that is a bad thing when she wants to be considered like that?
Oh good, we’ve reached that level of this forum.
Also, I think that’s a chick, man.
———- Post added at 10:55 PM ———- Previous post was at 10:52 PM ———-
Oh good, we’ve reached that level of this forum.
It begins, who wants to check their privilege first?
For those who don’t go to 4chan anymore…
Where is all the donation money going? (an issue of integrity, and by extension how reliable is Sarah given the debt issue)
The quarterly(?) cost of this place (by extension, why are we supporting an empty shell website aka GBH)
Backing stuff to the new website since a backup of the lossless thread + others is important..
Non important info:
Gamegate nonsense
Further delving into Sarah’s life than what’s already been shared
Passive-aggressive remarks made by various people who help derail the focus of the topic.
Though it seems that people misconstrued the purpose of why people are getting upset, and it has nothing to do with being ungrateful or personally attacking Sarah, the issue is that there’s so many factors going on behind the scenes and on the stage that it’s difficult to truly believe that people who donated for the cause of keeping this place alive, that their money is potentially being put into Sarah’s pocket for non-shrine reasons. So far I can see the only next steps really is to help further establish a presence on the new website when it’s ready to go, and to figure out what exactly needs to happen. I propose the question about a new IRC channel, or network to help get people to gather there, and I mentioned Qnet because it has a nifty +x function for masking ips. But if there’s nothing else, then aside from the issues stated previously, and getting activity on the site when it’s ready, I think that things are ready to go.
I get the impression she’s acting like a cornered animal attempting to make herself look like the victim and I don’t know about you, folks, but I’ve never seen a honest person so often conveniently side-stepping what have come to be pressing questions; as I’ve implied in my previous message: I’ve witnessed Staffers actually backing their claims when their behaviour got questioned in pretty much the same way, Sarah, on the other hand, is just convincing me all the more she’s got some shady crap to hide, in regards to the destination of Shrine’s donation-money.
Hi Velocity hosting (https://www.hivelocity.net/ (https://www.hivelocity.net/)):
Bandwidth = $99 for 10TB/monthly, $199 for 20TB/monthly. Also plans for unmetered, but if you go over for every Mbps it’s $5
DDoS mitigation = $39/monthly
Backup Services (daily) = $29 for 20GB/monthly to $1,199 for 5TB/monthly
Their barebones server setup is entirely free unless you want faster CPU cores, extra memory, and an additional hard drive, among other fancy things like raid cards and hardware firewalls.
I don’t know what you’re doing with security audits and the additional security, but I can’t see any reason this place is costing over $2,000, let alone $3,200 a month/quarter. We don’t need DAILY backups for a forum, I’m sure most of us can deal with making the posts/threads once again from a monthly/biweekly backup.
Kimsufi : le serveur d???di??? pas cher ! (http://www.kimsufi.com/)
https://www.cloudflare.com/plans
*interested in this conversation*
The main point is: this is a sinking ship. And when you are on a sinking ship it’s better to get the hell out before it’s too late.
I’ve been friends with Sarah for a few years now, so i know her a lot better than you guys and know about her character. She’s not a thief, she’s not taking the money and spending it on her own personal stuff, any donations she gets go back into the forum. Just because she’s not talking openly about the financial details of the forum doesn’t mean she’s taking it for personal use, i’m sure many of you wouldn’t just post openly about your financials on a forum. Yes, some of you did donate and are entitled to what you were promised and i would like to see everyone that did donate get everything they were promised, but getting financial details as to where the donations were being spent wasn’t part of that promise. I also don’t get paid for being an admin here, just thought i’d mention that because i saw LSK having to state that before in the lossless vgm thread.
Also, the last time we asked for donations was back in late October of last year and before that it was late January. You’re not being asked to donate for each month, it was a total of 6 months, so that’s about $400 a month. The donations we get from that message on GH and the message at the top of your emails from the forum are very small as is, the only real donations that come in is when Sarah has to close the forum. I’ve asked Sarah to add a donations meter on the forum for monthly goals but she doesn’t want to add this because she doesn’t want to ask for donations on such a large scale in the first place. She has paid costs herself out of pocket during the times where we didn’t ask for donations and didn’t have to close the forum but she’s not financially able to do this anymore.
If there were any shady goings on here i wouldn’t want to be a part of it but i know Sarah and i know that nothing like this is happening.
Also, I’ve found and shared evidence showing how the deal with Advertisers pulling out of FFS is most likely related to her own actions against another place, that in turn affects her ability to keep up this place. I didn’t want to snoop around, but stuff like this effectively turns her into a potential liability to the existence of FFS. I fancy a replacement, personally, but then again: I’m not the one who has to make that call; there’s no shame in dropping out. That goes along with the fact she is currently struggling to support this place financially, too.
I entirely disagree with your statement about how users shouldn’t be getting financial details as to how the money gets spent, you are attempting to get them involved in matters related to costs and it’s their money they’re sending off, they have a right to know how it’s gonna be used, and if they don’t happen to trust the mere word, heh, suck it up. (EDIT: Felt I should clarify my last statement: I certainly don’t mean making that stuff public knowledge, you at least owe something to those who donate, should they want proof).
Should she be inclined to post financial information about this forum, it would be something I???ve never ever experienced in all my years (decades, really) surfing the net and being part of countless forums. But I did indeed experience that some places close after a while, it happened and still happens all the time. Should she decide to close down FFShrine… well, so be it. There will always be something else to replace it. Still, as long as it is here, I will continue to stay and support it, and I will not waste my time spewing crap about someone I don???t know (reading her tweets doesn???t qualify in claiming to know her).
I don???t care who runs the site. I don???t care if she???s transgendered, gay, black, white, fat, slim, short haired, long haired, whatever. I do care however that she???s a person… a human, some of you have obviously forgotten what that means. So stop your fretting and harrass someone else, will you? Or go out and get a fuckin’ life. Needless to say that I???d prefer the latter.
Oh, of course, I forgot: that would mean that some of you would need to get out of your basement, which I fear you won???t be able to since you???re so fat from all the pizza and soda you???re regularly consuming. After all, aren???t all gamers basement dwellers? And wasn???t that just the biggest ad hominem of them all?
The main point is: this is a sinking ship. And when you are on a sinking ship it’s better to get the hell out before it’s too late.
———- Post added at 10:07 AM ———- Previous post was at 09:58 AM ———-
I???m disgusted by the vile and vicious sexism one can find in this thread. Against women and transgendered people. The amount of ad hominems in this thread trumps the height of the Mount Everest. Basically, they boil down to "she???s transgendered so she isn???t able to handle finances". WTF?
Should she be inclined to post financial information about this forum, it would be something I???ve never ever experienced in all my years (decades, really) surfing the net and being part of countless forums. But I did indeed experience that some places close after a while, it happened and still happens all the time. Should she decide to close down FFShrine… well, so be it. There will always be something else to replace it. Still, as long as it is here, I will continue to stay and support it, and I will not waste my time spewing crap about someone I don???t know (reading her tweets doesn???t qualify in claiming to know her).
I don???t care who runs the site. I don???t care if she???s transgendered, gay, black, white, fat, slim, short haired, long haired, whatever. I do care however that she???s a person… a human, some of you have obviously forgotten what that means. So stop your fretting and harrass someone else, will you? Or go out and get a fuckin’ life. Needless to say that I???d prefer the latter.
Oh, of course, I forgot: that would mean that some of you would need to get out of your basement, which I fear you won???t be able to since you???re so fat from all the pizza and soda you???re regularly consuming. After all, aren???t all gamers basement dwellers? And wasn???t that just the biggest ad hominem of them all?
Im gonna save you alot of grief and myself alot of typing, frankly: you are wrong. This is about finances and timely updates. Everything else is a sideshow.
Completely unusual and weird? I agree, but I’ve respected the folks running that place a lot for such decision and their transparency. You’re gonna bring others into payment-related matters? Then it is no longer your decision alone what the fuck happens to your domain, or how it’s gonna get handled.
Should she be inclined to post financial information about this forum, it would be something I???ve never ever experienced in all my years (decades, really) surfing the net and being part of countless forums. But I did indeed experience that some places close after a while, it happened and still happens all the time. Should she decide to close down FFShrine… well, so be it. There will always be something else to replace it. Still, as long as it is here, I will continue to stay and support it, and I will not waste my time spewing crap about someone I don???t know (reading her tweets doesn???t qualify in claiming to know her).
I don???t care who runs the site. I don???t care if she???s transgendered, gay, black, white, fat, slim, short haired, long haired, whatever. I do care however that she???s a person… a human, some of you have obviously forgotten what that means. So stop your fretting and harrass someone else, will you? Or go out and get a fuckin’ life. Needless to say that I???d prefer the latter.
Oh, of course, I forgot: that would mean that some of you would need to get out of your basement, which I fear you won???t be able to since you???re so fat from all the pizza and soda you???re regularly consuming. After all, aren???t all gamers basement dwellers? And wasn???t that just the biggest ad hominem of them all?
Again with the transvestite… holy fuck
Pardon my language but, when has Sarah’s sexual orientation mattered in all of this? If you read my posts, (which I’m sure you didn’t) why do you keep blowing this up to make it look like the ‘main’ issue here?
Last I checked Sarah clearly stated answering everyone’s little questions, and knowing the scale of the issue this has brought I would assume she would have given an answer by now.
So we keep waiting, making her activities heavily suspicious, wait don’t say it! Cause I know someone’s going to say it. "She’s probably too busy to address answers". Uh no, she knows what she’s doing and she better come up with a good thorough post addresing the previous issues.
One last thing, drop the transvestite topic as I have never made that the issue. Apparently acknowledging people for their orientation gets you a ‘callout’ here.
Some people’s children… goddamn
And it wouldn’t be such a big deal if she were doing those things instead of telling us about the site if it were just her money going into supporting it.
But when it’s thousands of dollars of other people’s money, that’s when she should start prioritizing FFShrine over her other activities.
I’m not trying to justify leaving this place entirely or donating here in general because a lot of places do it! It’s the AMOUNT that is concerning us. We want answers and we’re not getting them.
We need to be searching/developing a backup forum that a majority of users have decided to move to if another lockdown occurs again, and, currently, no one really knows of one. Personally, I feel like that’s the entire objective of locking down the forums in the first place because of this very reason, whether you believe or not; we have content that will not likely be found elsewhere in the internet.
Does this include giving the donators what they were promised, but never got?
But when it’s thousands of dollars of other people’s money, that’s when she should start prioritizing FFShrine over her other activities.
as i mentioned in the previous post, i’m out of town. as such, i don’t have access to my regular computer so it’s harder to get some shit done. regardless, i have been working on FFS stuff– i’m following up with advertisers right now. people are kind of making me work on two fronts, one to put out this fire & ridiculous conspiracy theories and the other on actually fixing things.
the user perks are coming soon.
there are good reasons to have been concerned. i don’t fault anyone for that. but the conspiracies and ridiculous theories are just absurd.
jessie pointed out to me that two of the messages (on GH and in the forum mail) are really outdated and reflect old, not current costs. i think that’s where the source a lot of the concern is coming from. i apologize those were still up, that was my fault. i’ll be editing them momentarily.
the numbers that people are throwing around are… from people that have no idea what it takes, financially or otherwise, to run a site like this. bargain basement servers from kimsufi are for things like seedboxes for torrents and sketchy sites, they’re awful for a big site like this. as sites grow in size, the headaches grow exponentially. people are using traffic estimates that aren’t even *close* to on track. someone compared what a site like this uses to a 200mb sql database… that would be taken up in no time at all. our database is *gigabytes*.
i don’t know if people remember, but a few years ago everyone was complaining about the speed of the forums. the reason why that went away? we upgraded our servers. tiny bargain basement shady sites aren’t meant for these kind of sites.
we run three separate servers, none of which are from sketchy sites. they’re from reputable hosting companies. the last time we tried using a sketchy one, they disappeared overnight and we had to use a months old backup. i don’t want that happening again.
historically, GH has paid for the forums because forum advertisements don’t work quite as well. that’s the reason i’m not ditching the idea of GH but there are some technical headaches that need to be sorted out.
i’ve kept FFS running for over a decade. i’m willing to answer questions, i’m willing to do what i can to restore faith but please stop with the conspiracy theories– realize where these malicious lies are circulating from and take them with a grain of salt. my grand plan was to scam $2,400 out of people after ten years? that comes out to $20 a month… it’d ridiculous. i wouldn’t dare throw FFS down the drain over that.
as jessie said, the last time we asked for donations to help the site stay afloat was half a year ago– that comes to ~$400 a month. that doesn’t even cover everything, the idea that i’m taking this money for myself is ludicrous.
i’ve done everything i can to keep FFS running this whole time. nothing’s changing that. my number one priority is going to be making sure FFS is sustainable.
PS: cstrife, i’m definitely willing to entertain additional perks for people. i have no issue with people offering constructive criticism at all!
I’m still standing by my statement. Without GH, those donations would go a hell of a lot further.I don’t know how many times this needs to be pointed out. Galbadia Hotel has been down for two years and as such cannot have had any effect on the site’s finances for the last three donation drives.
First, thanks for taking the time to address the concerns of everyone around here. Just a little nitpick:
there are good reasons to have been concerned. i don’t fault anyone for that. but the conspiracies and ridiculous theories are just absurd.
I haven’t seen any conspiracies around. What Leon shared, as he pointed out, is information anyone can find on the internet. Gamergate and such things are none of my concern. That said, all I want to know is this: will FFShrine continue existing? That’s pretty much the bottom line. Since I have not contributed in the donations (not because I don’t want to, but because they happened the same time I had no extra money to do some support) I won’t ask you about anything regarding donation perks and that.
Bottom line: All I want you to know is that I could care less about the drama. Just want to know if this place will go on, what will be done to keep people happy and how can we contribute if anything. Thanks for your time and have a good day.
Why three separate servers? (GH+forums+???)
Why are the costs so large when GH has not been operable for awhile though? Your size issue can be solved in two ways: prune all threads from 2010-older and (unlikely as you’re not ditching it I guess…) everything on GH. I honestly don’t know why you’ve been keeping threads since 2006(!) available, but I would correct in that most of those download threads back then have dead links and are of no use to anyone.
Also, daily backup plans are ridiculous to any IT junkie you would talk with (and Hi-Velocity’s backup rates are insane compared to doing this yourself). Your security measures as well that you’ve included are ridiculous, but based on your circumstances with your life, I can’t exactly argue against. DDoS’ers are gonna DDoS.
If you don’t have the time to correct the outdated donation message costs and not taking into consideration cleaning up the forums, may I suggest handing the reins over to someone(two, three, four individuals?) that are willing to try and find ways to trim areas that are bloating the site?
Not to be rude, but you’re showing me that this is a sign of laziness on your part.
i’m not using hivelocity’s inbuilt backup, btw. i agree that their costs are absurd for that.
my priority right now is: change donation messages -> add perks for donators -> follow up with additional potential advertisers -> try to trim costs. i’ll be updating this thread as progress is made
AFMG: FFS isn’t going anywhere 🙂
YES.
The download section of the forums is obviously the most used, and many people join up just to get their links, without even a "thanks". There are members who have been here for many years with not one post. I’d love to see these users pruned, and it will only help the Shrine.
Pardon my language but, when has Sarah’s sexual orientation mattered in all of this? If you read my posts, (which I’m sure you didn’t) why do you keep blowing this up to make it look like the ‘main’ issue here?
Since you???re asking so nicely about it I will remind you of the two times you mentioned it yourself:
-> #post191 (http://forums.ffshrine.org/f7/thank-you-donations-3-update-ffshrines-finances-187582/4.html#post2930239)
-> #post32 (http://forums.ffshrine.org/f7/thank-you-donations-3-update-ffshrines-finances-187582/#post2929153)
Judging from these comments of yours, her gender expression / identity did indeed matter – at least to you, you made that perfectly clear when you were running out of arguments. Before I forget, you actually were the first to give some importance concerning this particular topic in this thread. You started it – so don???t start to whine now when you meet some opposition.
One last thing, drop the transvestite topic as I have never made that the issue. Apparently acknowledging people for their orientation gets you a ‘callout’ here.
Some people’s children… goddamn
Be a dear and see above, will you?
And while you???re doing that, do me a favor and read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
These questions are being answered – slowly – although I have to say I am NOT AT ALL HAPPY with the revelation that the costs have been deliberately inflated in order to speed and increase donations. Let’s not beat about the bush; that is lying to make money. It’s not a "business plan" – it’s a lie. If the forum’s financial model depends on deceit, you have a problem. I know that it’s tempting to overstate costs to build up an emergency fund, but seriously… that’s no way to run a railroad. (And nobody knew that, anyway – you ask for more money than you need, it looks like you’re spending $400 on the forum and $2000 on a Caribbean cruise. Just say "We need X, but please donate whatever you can so that we can build up funds in case of problems in the future."
Be transparent. Explain. People are giving their money. They deserve that much – and frankly, if they don’t get it, they will vote with their wallets and the next donation drive will crash and burn. Every single donation drive, I mentally put aside $100 which I would have happily donated if I’d had confidence in the process. I didn’t, so I haven’t donated. That’s $500 you don’t have because I felt like something fishy was going on. People are kind, and very generous, when they have confidence.
As a suggestion, next time donations come around… Don’t shut down the forum – open a thread, sticky it, stick a banner up "ATTENTION! WE NEED $xxx BY xx/xx/2015 OR WE’LL HAVE TO CLOSE" and link it to the thread. Rally support. Post updates. "Thanks to Tangotreats, Leon Scott Kenedy, Vegeta, and Neo_Trip for donating today! Thank you so much guys, we’ve only got $xxx to go, keep it up!" Maybe even have a "today’s biggest donation gets a big perk" contest. Maybe even do a lottery – every day random donator (entry requirement is to have donated more than $20) can win $30. Yes, you erase one of the donations, but you make it fun, and people who are having fun spend more money.
The more people talk and engage about the donation process, and talk and engage WITH the people asking for the donations… the happier they’ll be to donate, and the more they’ll give. The "sudden hostage" model might seem like a good one but it really isn’t. It’s a way to prevent people talking it out before they give. It’s a way to stop them knowing how much OTHERS are giving and what their thoughts are. It’s taking advantage of uncertainty and desperation. It’s just not cricket, folks. Putting up a message saying "we need money NOW NOW NOW or you’ll lose all your stuff and lose contact with your friends"… Just doesn’t wash well with me.
NONETHELESS, Sarah deserves a round of applause for sticking on topic and actually addressing the grown-up issues instead of rising to this shameful display of childish mudslinging.
There are unanswered questions and shady areas, but things are making more sense than they did. I am very grateful to her for her efforts for (and financial commitment to) this site which, frankly, treats her like complete and utter shit sometimes.
The download section of the forums is obviously the most used, and many people join up just to get their links, without even a "thanks". There are members who have been here for many years with not one post. I’d love to see these users pruned, and it will only help the Shrine.
Among those leechers some of you despise so much may be individuals helping with donations and, on a level which strictly concerns users and uploaders, leeching refers to someone which downloads and doesn’t bother to interact, right? Well, half of it sucks, the other half is still awesome news for the community as a whole: they download->they potentially extend the "life" of a link by 30/60/XX number of days. They don’t really deserve much of the crap folks seem to be sending their way.
Onto the rest.
Hm. Thanks for the recent answers, Sarah. Guess I will still have trust, another chance is deserved, but I’m gonna be honest: I’ve stirred up the drama and even now I don’t regret it, I’ve seen users waiting too long for answers they weren’t getting. For what it’s worth, all I’ve come across has been seen through the eyes of an outsider whose pressing concerns were trying to understand the reasons behind the silence and offering some possible answers to the community. Now, I’d like to get a bit more info on a few things:
– Jessie mentioned suggesting the addition of a donation-bar to the place, and I also recall other users bringing it up over the years. Would you consider attempting that some time in the future? It may help, it may not, but to me a donation-meter still sounds better than completely shutting down the board to put up a notice.
– I’m not privy just to how much Jessie can actually do as Admin, so I may very well be talking crap, but: do you have someone helping you completely administer things? (I mean stuff like managing servers, fixing up the occasional technical issue, adding those perks) If not, would you consider looking for someone? I do understand finding someone to trust with such privileges is hard, but it seems you can use the help.
And what kind of "technical headaches" are there in a site like GH that’s nothing but files and download links? That sort of thing should be far simpler from a technical perspective than a forum.
I’m going fishing.
Sure, can’t expect everyone to do things by hand, so at least a collapse function could really help. Keep it in mind when making your site, @Zaykho.
I think you should dump Galbadia hotel ENTIRELY. it obviously costs you an enormous amount of money and I know that i never use it. the quality of the mp3s is very poor and not worth my time. The method of download is slow and tedious. GH serves no purpose but to cost you enormous amounts of money and then once a month make the community angry because the forum gets shut down. It is the forum that really matters, not GH. Sarah, you obviously make quite a bit of money. Why don’t you save and/or invest it instead of dumping into GH? Maybe you could use the future proceeds on an online project which is better or more interesting to you.
Since you???re asking so nicely about it I will remind you of the two times you mentioned it yourself:
-> #post191 (http://forums.ffshrine.org/f7/thank-you-donations-3-update-ffshrines-finances-187582/4.html#post2930239)
-> #post32 (http://forums.ffshrine.org/f7/thank-you-donations-3-update-ffshrines-finances-187582/#post2929153)
Judging from these comments of yours, her gender expression / identity did indeed matter – at least to you, you made that perfectly clear when you were running out of arguments. Before I forget, you actually were the first to give some importance concerning this particular topic in this thread. You started it – so don???t start to whine now when you meet some opposition.
Be a dear and see above, will you?
And while you???re doing that, do me a favor and read:
Transgender – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender)
ad hominem – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)
Well its been great being a member here, I for one cannot believe it has gotten this far for Sarah to act its downright ridiculous and is a crystal ball of this sites future.
You See when something’s wrong in the forum, wait a couple months for your admin to reply or how about this forget about receiving an answer, its a pattern Sarah has built-up. I’m not convinced any real progress will be taking seriously. Your approach of "let’s keep it together guys" doesn’t instill hope rather acts more like a whistle to calm everyone’s attention.
Please do me a favor and delete my account from this shithole managed forum. Thank you and I hope your members are giving what they are promised…
-Neo_chip
i’m… horrified at what i came back to here. i’ll make every attempt to be as transparent with all of you as i always have been, i’ll answer any questions you have.
this misinformation is coming from a group that’s harassed, stalked, doxxed, sent myself and my family death threats. you can read about what happened to me here: I Set Out To Expose A Hate Movement In Gaming?So They Set Out To Destroy My Life | Ravishly (http://tinyurl.com/mmdseet)
these are the people this information is coming from. they’re harassing me and making up lies about me. yes, i am in debt, which is why i can’t cover the costs myself anymore– that does NOT mean the money for donations goes to that, it never has. not a penny of it goes to my debt.
the very people harassing me are the reason the donations situation is as it is now. i had to pay for additional server security, DDoS mitigation, frequent security audits, additional backup services and much more. they’ve also bombarded our advertisers with lies trying to get them to pull out.
i’ve run this site for over a decade now. i’ve put thousands upon thousands of my own dollars into this site as well as thousands of hours of time. i know i haven’t been around as much lately, and i feel very guilty for that– running a site for this long takes a huge toll emotionally. it’s kind of heartbreaking to see after this much time and everything i’ve put into it, people are going to believe a group of trolls and villainize me over their lies instead of standing by me.
i’m going to make sure ffs survives, and as i said earlier, i plan for this to be the last time we’ll ever need donations.
i’ll answer any questions you all have, and i’ll be transparent as possible. but please, before you believe any of that bullshit, know that you’re believing people who have tried to had me swatted, have sent death and rape threats to myself and my family, and have grossly and repeatedly violated my privacy, and have overall made a game out of trying to destroy my life. i’ve had to contact the police multiple times because of what’s been going on.
i’m going to stick by FFS no matter what. i hope you all do, too. i promise to be around more and answer any questions you have. please, read the above article. look at who you’re choosing to believe. these are people that aren’t doing everything they can do harass and terrorize me.
K. I have a question. And you specified that you’d answer ANY questions that we have.
So. Are you Sarah, then? As in THE Sarah? Or are you her hubby? Because in your post you specifically describe that your girlfriend is having a crisis. So we can only surmise two things in this scenario:
1) You are Nicholas ******, hubby to Sarah. (Very likely, but why don’t you post under your own account if you don’t want any transparency? You’re hiding under someone else’s moniker, AND you’re taking thousands of dollars from your forum members. STOP WITH THE FUCKING BULLSHIT.)
2) Somehow the dog that you two are keen to have sexual relations with has learned to type on a computer keyboard, and even knows how to give us this typical political bullshit that Sarah has been stuffing down our throats for eons. Seems impractical, but hey, I didn’t know Sarah is a tranny, so who really knows what’s possible anymore.
Anybody else find it strange how, during the time when the forum is offline and its collecting donations, that it doesn’t show anywhere how much money has been accumulated? Just very vague, and brazen updates that could be fake. Example: "WE NEED $800 LEFT IN ONE DAY OR THE FORUM WILL BE DOWN FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!"
What if, in that instance, one person donated $800 then and there, but you didn’t turn the forums on at that moment, because you’re such a scuzzbucket that you wanted to keep getting as much money as possible, and thus more donations came in, well beyond the already ludicrous $2400.
I don’t really give a shit if you are horrified by the stories and the facts that have been coming out in the last several days. That’s personal life that you have leaked in one way or another, and it’s turning its ugly head on you. The most of us have normal lives, and aren’t buried to our knees in debt. We manage things just fine. Stop using excuses and figure your shit out. And using forum members are as exploit to paying your debts. Sorry, I mean covering the bandwidth fees for the fucking desolate Galbadia Hotel.
I also find it histerical how you’re quick to play the victim card, and accuse people of "invading your privacy", but also stating that they’re lying. What if they DID invade your privacy, but found out that you’re a scum bag? Technically it’s true that they’re invading privacy. But you’re fucking with people in multiple aspects.
Can’t deal with it? Pass the deed of FFS to a group or an individual that the community deems appropriate, stop posting pointless shit on your Twitter, and fucking go dark. Stop telling these stories to people. That way nothing CAN be leaked. If you want to fuck your he/she wife, and take your dogs dick in the ass, go for it. I couldn’t care less. But the moment you post any of that is the moment you void the right to play victim and whine that your disgusting secrets have been exploited.
Same goes with charging an obscene amount of money for emergency funds. I don’t care what you’re using it on; but I think everybody can agree it isn’t what you’re saying its for. Go ahead, prove us wrong. Show us every fucking cent and where the money is going. I DARE YOU.
-Neo_chip
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I’ve been friends with Sarah for a few years now, so i know her a lot better than you guys and know about her character. She’s not a thief, she’s not taking the money and spending it on her own personal stuff, any donations she gets go back into the forum. Just because she’s not talking openly about the financial details of the forum doesn’t mean she’s taking it for personal use, i’m sure many of you wouldn’t just post openly about your financials on a forum. Yes, some of you did donate and are entitled to what you were promised and i would like to see everyone that did donate get everything they were promised, but getting financial details as to where the donations were being spent wasn’t part of that promise. I also don’t get paid for being an admin here, just thought i’d mention that because i saw LSK having to state that before in the lossless vgm thread.
Also, the last time we asked for donations was back in late October of last year and before that it was late January. You’re not being asked to donate for each month, it was a total of 6 months, so that’s about $400 a month. It says on GH that we require $2000 a month but that’s really just there to encourage people to donate, it’s a business plan to ensure you get enough donations to cover your monthly costs, which it doesn’t even come close to. Maybe if it said a lesser value we’d get more donations but on the other hand it might even be less. The donations we get from that message on GH and the message at the top of your emails from the forum are very small as is, the only real donations that come in is when Sarah has to close the forum. I’ve asked Sarah to add a donations meter on the forum for monthly goals but she doesn’t want to add this because she doesn’t want to ask for donations on such a large scale in the first place. She has paid costs herself out of pocket during the times where we didn’t ask for donations and didn’t have to close the forum but she’s not financially able to do this anymore.
If there were any shady goings on here i wouldn’t want to be a part of it but i know Sarah and i know that nothing like this is happening.
umm yeah this doesn’t help one bit either. atleast in her case.
https://forum.encyclopediadramatica.se/threads/sarah-butts-sarah-******-nicholas-nick-e-******-thread.20264/
[16:04] Sarah: My wife and I are new to the K9 thing but are very aroused by it. We have both tried oral on our K9 but his Knott goes away after just a few minutes and loses his hard on. Is there anyway to help him keep it up? Also my wife wants to see me get taken anally by our K9. Is there any real difference between anal and vaginal K9 intercourse."
+1,000,000
What the hell does that have to do with donations?
Is everyone from 4chan?
Also how exactly does GH pay for the forums, if its not donations? I don’t see no advertisements on there.
Can someone explain this to me?
If we can sustain advertisers, as Sarah has mentioned, we supposedly wouldn’t have these large donations required from the community. What’s going to keep them from dropping us like the other ads did in the past?
My concern now is, if these new ads get pulled, Sarah,
Are you going to continue holding onto GH and these dead threads hoping for other advertisers to support us, which will thrust all of your high server costs onto the community? (Like you have for the past year or so)
OR
Will you "trim the fat" and move to a smaller host knowing this isn’t going to happen anymore, which will reduce costs you’re going to require from the community?
Once again, I’d like for the community to suggest some alternatives, a second ffshrine, to retreat to if the ship goes down, no matter how unlikely it may be. I haven’t heard any updates from Zaykho and I guess Neo_Chip will no longer look to assist us.
Maybe this thread (Thread 188018) would be better for that discussion instead of this one.
You’re going to need more than advertisers to help with the forum. And I do mean the forum singular, because that’s the only reason any of us are still here. If it were just GH, we’d all have fucked off to somewhere else a long time ago. FFS is the only reason we’re still here, and visit frequently, and why people actually donate. So, let’s just talk about FFS’ future, because it’s pretty clear the only person that cares about GH is Sarah, and it clearly isn’t enough to ensure stability.
And, anyway, if advertisers were hesitant towards helping because of the whole piracy thing, what makes you think they’re going to magically close their eyes now and write off checks to you? Because you think if you’re dedicated to searching, it’ll happen? Really, I’m not being a smart ass or a cunt, I’m legitimately curious as to what your reasoning is. I’d love to hear it.
———- Post added 04-10-2015 at 12:07 AM ———- Previous post was 04-09-2015 at 11:41 PM ———-
As a side note, does anybody want to do some investigating into this Kaylani.Larelli individual? I’m a bit suspicious of them and their rather aggressively defensive motives.
Right now, the person only has 24 posts, half of which come from this thread itself. They (I’m thinking it’s a female name but that’s speculation on my behalf) also have only been registered under this account since March 2015. And they are talking as if they know a lot about the situation. Much more than someone who has only been a member for one month.
So, either it’s a former user, or, it’s someone that doesn’t want to talk more than they want to on their real account. Perhaps Sarah is having a case of split personality disorder?
You wouldn’t believe the bullshit I could get away with asking marketing firms for advertisements on a site that’s clearly involved in piracy. 😀 You’re usually only caught-and-dropped when you get reported, which so happens to be the case with this, uh, movement of individuals that did this to the previous advertisers. Also a concern for these supposed new ones that we’re about to obtain, hence my post before.
Is everyone from 4chan?
You do have to understand that sarah’s into some shady shit according to the posted thread and it doesn’t stop there either.
Just please, please PLEASE, do NOT get distracted.
Thank you!
I think this is the first truly complete reasonable post I read today* here in this thread.
*today in my time zone
http://forums.ffshrine.org/f7/latest-donation-drive~-172322/
http://forums.ffshrine.org/f7/thanks-donations-~-181185/
I don’t know if any of the user found in the threads above ultimately got their perks, but given they’ve tried to remind a few times how they had yet to get any of that crap, I’d be inclined to believe they also would have stated they… Huh… Finally got it. Just proves of rather crappy/lazy management, not like there’s a lack of that, anyway.
I’ve forgot to mention yesterday the business plan of inflating the costs is a disgusting move on your part, but whatever, tangotreats pointed it out much more nicely than me.
I do "know" Sarah was currently following up with 2, sometimes 3 advertisers in multiple instances (messages are spread in this very section of the board and on the Facebook’s Shrine group). Is it now hard for you to find advertisers? Then, shouldn’t you have done something "drastic" about it sooner? You’ve stated on Facebook the resources for GH and the rest are pooled together, but that shouldn’t be hard to fix: backup the board somewhere (I guess that would require quite the downtime, but I think that would be the first downtime users are going to be happy about), wipe everything else… GH and that useless website about the FINAL FANTASY series (not updated in years)… And restore the board.
Also, while I agree we shouldn’t dwell too much on the whole deal with GamerGate/Anti-GamerGate/Sexual activities, most of you are forgetting all of that adds another side to the problem which does concern the Shrine, potentially a lot: I don’t care myself if all of the information brought up is true or false, all I see is that you, Sarah, have become a target of harassment (whether justified or not, again, I don’t give a fuck about it), at least part of those folks knows (or should have I used know?) you run FFS, it also has, thus, become a potential target of attacks perpetrated by them. If you really care about this Shrine as much as you’ve said you do, please, please understand that is time for you to retire and hand ownership to someone "neutral". Having your character still attached to this place in such way now adds another layer of danger which, frankly, we can (and should) do without.
1) You are Nicholas ******, hubby to Sarah. (Very likely, but why don’t you post under your own account if you don’t want any transparency? You’re hiding under someone else’s moniker, AND you’re taking thousands of dollars from your forum members. STOP WITH THE FUCKING BULLSHIT.)
Just to clear it up, there aren’t two people. Nicholas and Sarah are the same person. It’s more of a before-after thing. Anything more is irrelevant to the donations situation.
Thank you for that statement. I was going to try to discuss that situation without offending Sarah or anyone else on either side, but you said it better than anyone.
The extra security in place may protect us, but, we are the ones paying for it in the end, since Sarah cannot. I think that should give everyone a voice in where ffshrine goes and what should happen. This is as much as our home as it is for Sarah, Jessie, Leon Scott Kennedy, myself and for over 13,000 active members in the community.
Also, while I agree we shouldn’t dwell too much on the whole deal with GamerGate/Anti-GamerGate/Sexual activities, most of you are forgetting all of that adds another side to the problem which does concern the Shrine, potentially a lot: I don’t care myself if all of the information brought up is true or false, all I see is that you, Sarah, have become a target of harassment (whether justified or not, again, I don’t give a fuck about it), at least part of those folks knows (or should have I used know?) you run FFS, it also has, thus, become a potential target of attacks perpetrated by them. If you really care about this Shrine as much as you’ve said you do, please, please understand that is time for you to retire and hand ownership to someone "neutral". Having your character still attached to this place in such way now adds another layer of danger which, frankly, we can (and should) do without.
Quoting this here because I wouldn’t want it to get ignored by the concerned party.
(…)
Please do me a favor and delete my account from this shithole managed forum. Thank you and I hope your members are giving what they are promised…
Usually, I do not put the boot in, but in this case… good riddance.
———- Post added at 02:05 PM ———- Previous post was at 01:53 PM ———-
Can say the same about you, you’re here, too.
Quoting this here because I wouldn’t want it to get ignored.
Partly true, I agree. At least I don???t spend my time collecting gazillions of links which are trying to discredit a person. FYI, the paragraph you quoted from yourself was what prompted my "Get-A-Life" sentence in the first place: "…you run FFS, it also has, thus, become a potential target of attacks perpetrated by them. If you really care about this Shrine as much as you’ve said you do, please, please understand that is time for you to retire and hand ownership to someone "neutral". Having your character still attached to this place in such way now adds another layer of danger which, frankly, we can (and should) do without."
Let me please be an admonishing bitch (again) and tell you: should it happen that this site is over, nothing will happen. Our world will not crumble to pieces, the apocalypse won???t happen, the earth will continue spinning. I think that you give way too much importance to trivial things. With "trivial" I mean compared to things like meeting friends, going to a club, reading a book, listening to some music, having sex… you know, basic stuff. I would worry should you extend that much importance towards FFShrine. I get the feeling as if you are embarrassed to be a part of this forum when it???s owned by "such a person" (a person making such a fuss about things, someone who???s attacked right now, does have personal problems, yadda, yadda).
Let me please be an admonishing bitch (again) and tell you: should it happen that this site is over, nothing will happen. Our world will not crumble to pieces, the apocalypse won???t happen, the earth will continue spinning. I think that you give way too much importance to trivial things. With "trivial" I mean something basic like meeting friends, going to a club, reading a book, listening to some music, having sex… you know, basic stuff.
You seem to not get that this isn’t about basic stuff only: users have donated their money to keep this place working, if the surfacing of certain information about the Webmaster has put in question her usefulness/damaging-potential in that role, maybe something should be done about it. I have no reasons to completely trust what I’ve brought up, but I’ve no reasons to not completely trust it, either. I’m sincerely convinced that whatever crap has been going on on Sarah’s side (external services like Twitter included) may mean more trouble for this place. I suggest making some kind of poll, redeem "yourself" a bit and let folks which ensured this place remained online decide who gets to run it.
I have personal problems? Hahaha! Keep your petty insults to yourself, please.
Say, if FFS really crumbles down, I’d wonder if any of them would ask for refunds, and even, uh, get them.
I have personal problems? Hahaha! Keep your petty insults to yourself, please.
I never said you were having personal problems. I merely attempted to clarify that it???s important to keep some sense of perspective. And I admit I temporarily forgot users paying up to 50 Euros to keep this place alive. In that case, it???s valid to have some questions as to where that money is flowing, of course. But to combine that with what I perceive to be a witchhunt? Not the way to treat people.
A witch-hunt? Yeah, this developed into that, but what I have originally posted at the top of page #2 is information anyone can gather on his/her own, heck, I’ve used public tools and websites to check potential reasons behind the silence and the amount of money required for servers originally stated by the donation-notice. I’ve seen for months users wondering about the very same things and some even expressed concerns privately. I’ve shared what I found and, again, I asked for explanations, I’ve even suggested other users to wait for Sarah to address those concerns, but let’s just say her first answer wasn’t really much of one, leading to folks like me having more suspicions.
I agree completely with you sir, when you say this place is ultimately one amongst many which could serve the same purpose(s), but if you ask money to your users, I think you at least owe them a bit more transparency and a generally better treatment. I’d dare to say, also based on a statement by Sarah herself, that she’s truly being targeted by a group of folks, again, I don’t know who’s wrong or right in that neck of the woods, still, she’s getting targeted->evidence suggested that FFShrine.org got to lose advertisers as a consequence, effectively raising the doubt (in some users’ minds) if it wouldn’t be better for Sarah to step down from the role she currently has at Shrine, for all I care it doesn’t even have to be a permanent deal, free to come back when she has sorted whatever crap she’s going through.
So correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t you not talk about things that you’re not aware of yourself? If anything, it just shows how rogue Sarah is going, leaving her staff completely in the dark about what’s going on. Not just people that are helping, but her fellow admins as well. I think that is as alarming as everything else.
I know why you’re posting. Because it looks like everybody is accusing her of being a crook, and you want to play the part of the good guy and give people some hope that this isn’t gonna go tits up but look, people don’t need your promises that she is this or that. Nor do they want you to speak for her if you’re not fully aware of the situation. Sarah should be capable of speaking for herself. I think she owes that much. And while she has spoken about some things, its still very vague and open to interpretation. In other words, it isn’t good enough.
I’m an admin for the forum, i have nothing to do with the running of GH nor do any of the moderators, so Sarah wouldn’t need to keep me or any other staff members of the forum informed on anything to do with that, but if i did want to know something she would tell me. It’s obvious to everyone that when the forum is closed that we’re in need of money to keep going, i don’t see that as being kept in the dark. I have LSK as a friend on fb, if he ever wanted to ask any questions about the forum when it was down he could ask me there or even add Sarah herself and ask her. She’s not a hard person to talk to. She actually answered some questions on the ffshrine fb page long before all this happened.
Go back to King’s Landing where you belong
ditto.
I know not why certain strange personal business started to be relevant in oneself definition of bad.
The past donation threads have users with the same concerns that we’re talking about in this thread, and no one got a response from Sarah about it! "GH is dead, how are we suppose to use these privileges?!" -no response. Again, not to be rude, this place is ran by someone with a lack of communication skills and leadership skills, something that should be required for such a large and active community. I know this is going to make Sarah "smh" again, but this is making you look like you’re taking advantage of the community, even when you’re not!
Can you really blame us for blowing this out of proportion when our voices have fallen on deaf ears in the past?
I guess our voices will tell you when the next donation lockdown happens again. (and don’t bother trying to say there won’t be one, it’ll happen. Probably between August-October 2015, if nothing changes)
I just feel like the place would be better off being transferred to someone that is a great leader and owner, that’s willing to listen to their community and make decisions based on their voices. Someone that is also financially stable and can also pay out of their pocket when donation goals may not be met is a plus as well.
Well, sorry for the late post and not being able to further explain everything, but its just to point out that my forum is ready.
I’m working at archiving some lossless post here and here and making a better theme for the forum too.
But since I don’t know how everything will evolve, I will let the community decide whatever they want: migrate or stay ? before making my forum public.
But Tyrion Lannister is no longer in King’s Landing…
I tried to word it without spoilers…. so for anyone who got the reference would understand that I found the user "Tyrion Lannister"’s post quite rude and demeaning so I told him to go back to King’s Landing to.. face justice . That was the true meaning hidden behind the fact that his username represents Tyrion Lannister who as we all know belongs in King’s Landing, not on ffshrine..
But Tyrion Lannister is no longer in King’s Landing…
That’s how you do it.
That’s how you do it.
Yes, I know. I’ve used spoiler tags in some of my own threads
But season 4 just ended, not everyone has zero life.
Plus with thousands of shows every month, not everyone is going to be caught up.
And "if you’re a true fan" doesn’t even begin to validate anything.
What people "should" be with their lives is none of your business.
Welcome to Shrine.
Lighten up
It started a year ago and ended 10 months ago
The filming, yes. It didn’t air until April 2014.
… a year ago? Like DAK said?
Nothing’s being blown out of proportion. We’re just discussing, that’s all
The filming, yes. It didn’t air until April 2014.
Yes, which was a year ago. It’s April 2015. 10 episodes over 10 weeks, which is 2 months. It premiered April 2014 (a year ago), ended in June of 2014 (10 months ago)
… a year ago? Like DAK said?
Correct
Season 5 of Game of Thrones™ premieres Sunday, April 12th at 9PM only on HBO???
He said "a year and ten months ago"
Or maybe I can’t read
Edit: yep I read it wrong. Either way we’re both correct
Thread’s dead already. Beyond the point of any SyFy remake.
He said "a year and ten months ago"
Or maybe I can’t read
He said it started a year ago and ended 10 months ago.
I still have the remuxes for the episodes just sitting and waiting.
I think I’ll start a marathon of highlight episodes from each season tomorrow night.
Youtube should have some really nice "previously on Game of Thrones" material.
True Blood blurays had a nice 4 minute "previously" that showed a lot of crap that happened in previous season I was thankful for.
Edit: yep I read it wrong. Either way we’re both correct
So everybody wins. Great. Just great.
Thread’s dead already
Me too. One where members have to post and be involved in order for it to remain open. Unlike all the trolls hiding in their caves on this place….
I agree completely with you sir, when you say this place is ultimately one amongst many which could serve the same purpose(s), but if you ask money to your users, I think you at least owe them a bit more transparency and a generally better treatment. I’d dare to say, also based on a statement by Sarah herself, that she’s truly being targeted by a group of folks, again, I don’t know who’s wrong or right in that neck of the woods, still, she’s getting targeted->evidence suggested that FFShrine.org got to lose advertisers as a consequence, effectively raising the doubt (in some users’ minds) if it wouldn’t be better for Sarah to step down from the role she currently has at Shrine, for all I care it doesn’t even have to be a permanent deal, free to come back when she has sorted whatever crap she’s going through.
Sorry for posting so late, have been scrubbing the terrace, cleaned the summer furniture and our bikes, the sun was shining and it was warm, both of which was too good to pass.
I have to say that I never cared who runs this forum, I didn???t know if it was one person or a group of people. Until yesterday I just didn???t ask myself. Nonetheless, I mused about it in passing when those "we-need-money"-messages popped up. What I want to say is that I probably still wouldn???t know all of this if people wouldn???t have provided that data via some information they linked. The tricky thing about this kind of information is how it???ll be treated once it is combined with less stable individuals, people bringing their personal issues into the discussion. One just cannot expect them to work with this knowledge in a responsible way, they just don???t work like that (Hell, in the past I twisted such info on another forum, too – and I???m ashamed). IMO it would have been wiser to self-censor your information so that it wouldn???t have been abused. I don???t know, only saying "Sarah has some personal problems, she can explain those herself if she wants to." Don???t get me wrong, usually I hate censoring of any kind. But when people are attacked it crosses a line, I think.
I also think that it???s wrong to ask for her removal. If it???s true and she is right in the middle of some sort of transition, it would be bad to take something away from her in which she invested time, money and her passion (sounds cheesy, I know). Changing a gender is never easy and aside from psychological problems the physiological pain is tremendous. Having something to occupy your mind with is therefore a very good thing. In light of this, I think it???s brave for her to be this outspoken against discrimination, if I would be in her situation, I would certainly be a coward. Furthermore, being attacked doesn???t make things easier, especially when a thread has been derailed. And now I???m gossiping myself. Fuck.
Anyway, I have decided to be patient about all of this. I cannot change it anyway, and I don???t want to. Time will tell if this will be sorted out, I can wait.
BTW, I very much enjoy that you and I have a discussion lacking aggression 🙂
I also think that it???s wrong to ask for her removal. If it???s true and she is right in the middle of some sort of transition, it would be bad to take something away from her in which she invested time, money and her passion (sounds cheesy, I know). Changing a gender is never easy and aside from psychological problems the physiological pain is tremendous. Having something to occupy your mind with is therefore a very good thing. In light of this, I think it???s brave for her to be this outspoken against discrimination, if I would be in her situation, I would certainly be a coward. Furthermore, being attacked doesn???t make things easier, especially when a thread has been derailed. And now I???m gossiping myself. Fuck.
Most of this discussion should not be about the forum owner’s gender for crying out loud. Most of that was brought on by other members when it honestly never should have in the first place.
It’s more in the matter of a certain group of individuals (read Sarah’s earlier posts please) that are looking to damage everything in this person’s life, including this very forum. Now the owner is in debt trying to protect themselves from these individuals and has no funds to contribute towards the server costs. Also, these individuals reported our advertisers (which would keep server costs down otherwise) and pushed Sarah into buying extra security measures because of all of this. Now all the inflated server costs have been thrust upon everyone in the community to pay for in order for the forums to stay up.
Whether we can believe what Sarah has stated to be true or not is up in the air, but I’m just basing this all on what has been stated by Sarah and what we can find in public on our own, like Leon Scott Kennedy has done (and even myself, looking into the forum’s hosting company pricing). We’re not asking to remove herself from the community, just to transfer ownership to someone that isn’t being threatened for their life so we don’t have to continue the additional, and un-needed, security costs.
An owner that can pay for the rest of the costs that donations do not would be nice too. Maybe if donors are offered some great perks to contribute, and not privileges to a dead site, they may never have to run into this that issue of paying out-of-pocket at all possibly.
I know Sarah suggested some kind of reward but that was out of gratitude and kindness from her own heart. To me it is a simple matter, if you love this place for the community here or you just wanna continue downloading or sharing cool shit then you should consider donating with no strings attached. I have donated in the past but I have never expected or demanded anything in return.
@Zoran | SonicAdventure
I do understand what you’re saying, seriously, but even if you "love" this place (I think the active contributors do, they’re probably the ones donating the most, but this is speculation on my part), there is a breaking point: my, oh my, Shrine has allowed folks to download soundtracks for years… Big. Fucking. Deal. Not the first place, not the last. I don’t know how many of those who donated money are actually concerned with stuff like perks, but it’s a fact, let me stress it again, a fact that the perks promised were for a website dead (content-wise) for years… And I’d venture a guess users didn’t even get forum-related perks (again, advertised on the donation-notice). You don’t care about it Zoran? Good for you, still, don’t expect it to be the same for everyone else, not everyone becomes that attached to what is merely, for all intent and purposes, a simple tool to share messages/images/URLs. Presently, the Shrine isn’t really offering anything special enough to set it aside from the rest of pirates’ dens. Though I’ve approached it only in November 2007, it is my understanding that some of the content which found its way on Galbadia Hotel came from the users, so without this community, where… Or rather… What would FFS be? Nothing.
I know I could have expressed my concerns in regards to the whole deal privately to at least Jessie, first, but I was under assumption he couldn’t really give the answers I wanted (an assumption he had confirmed), besides, this is a matter mainly concerning Sarah and the community, I thought the heat of it should have been shared with them, too.
I understand also the concerns about the privacy of such information, but:
1) Had Sarah acted as a more responsible Webmaster/mistress, some wouldn’t have felt it was time to take matters into their own hands. As I’ve stated previously, users contacted me about donation-drives and, having witnessed how Sarah didn’t bother to answer to legitimate questions on the board, over time, forgive me for thinking I wasn’t going to get much better out of her.
2) This is something trivial, but I’ve noticed that when I’m logged out of the forum, the block of sections "containing" Question, Feedback, Assistance is hidden. Plus, it has been stressed enough times that the main concerns for users here aren’t her personal issues, judging by some of the opinions expressed in this very thread, I’m going to believe folks wouldn’t even bother "adding fuel to the fire"; they’d simply move to another place.
I’m going sound like the piece of scum lacking empathy/sympathy, but in regards to the removal-from-her-role suggestion (which, I state again, it doesn’t even have to be permanent):
– You can’t expect money-senders to be always understanding. Someone’s got legitimately annoyed. Even though I don’t know Sarah at all (I’ll have "talked" with her 2/3 times – maybe -, in all the years I’ve been here) and I honestly wish her to successfully get out of whatever mess(es) she’s got herself into [I’ve dealt with harassment in my early years], I’m still thinking it would be a display of correctness|maturity on her part to hand the reins of Shrine to someone who is competent and able to support it financially, both aspects she showed to not being able to handle in a satisfying manner, any more. Please understand that by suggesting to let Sarah "take a vacation" we’re also looking out for ourselves and our security, we can’t have someone who’s been targeted like herself in such a position; who can safely say those folks harassing her aren’t going to target us and our personal data, too? They do know she runs FFS.
Maybe or maybe not, it would be nice 🙂
wanted to give a brief update: i fixed the older donation messages that reflected outdated costs. again, i’m sorry about that– i can see how they caused concern with people. i had honestly forgotten they were even there.
i’ve updated that, i’m about halfway done adding perks for everyone. as i mentioned previously i’m out of town but i’m getting back tonight so i can wrap up adding the perks and work on the other stuff soon here. i’ll also go back through the thread and answer more of the questions tonight/early tomorrow
PS, tarenki: go to your private messages. if your PM limit is 3,000, that means you’re in the supporter usergroup.
Looks like someone is in the right spot … (Scissors)
Goodbye everyone, I’ll use my diamond hard erection to open the door.
See you all on the new forums!
Why?
Was waiting for this response. Heya Darth. 🙂
Heh… I always strike… just… biding my time.
Too bad! Unless you include the Hotel.
I do not want to lose the sub forums at all. I do not want to lose this place. I thrive here. I love it here. A little more rough and tumble than some forum, but far more interesting and vital. I do not want to see any changes in my favorite place.
This does not mean I do not understand the frustrations of certain donors. Certainly there are issues. I have no answer to that. I do not pretend to. I resigned myself to these donation drives years ago. And every time, I am braced for the place to fall. It has not yet. Obviously that may change soon enough. And if so Sarah has no one to blame but herself, since she does not seem to keep even her staff in the loop. Nothing I can say or do about that.I frequent many sites. Another spot to drop into is always welcome. I am saddened by the atmosphere in which it is happening, but nothing I can do about that either. Time will tell.
Most of the ‘Old Guard’ have moved on, yet there are some who are still here… I do not support the download section at all. However, with Amanda, while we have butted heads in the past, it’s her choice to upload/download, just as it’s my choice not to. Who the Hell do you think you are Vrantheo to judge us? We have our opinion just like you do… Don’t have to like it, but at least respect it.
You already saw lots of people in this thread shouting "WHAT DID THE FUNDS PAY FOR", "WHERE DID THE MONEY GO" and such, and most of them are from the DL subforum itself.
And when you "drew that conclusion", you seemed to have confused the DL subforum with the "download section". The DL subforum is just people posting links, which shouldn’t cost much. Galbadia Hotel, on the other side, is the monstrous place that hosts tonnes of MP3s, has been down for "quite a while", and seemingly sucks up the most ridiculous amount of the funds.
You’re mistaking us for enemies, fellows. The Hotel is probably what you should be against. But it’s all up to Sarah, we should all keep questioning her for information.
We’ve cleared the air a bit. Sorry if the intense banter offended you 🙂
And this goes to Revan too.
You’ve already got the added perks from donating. You don’t use an avatar, so you wouldn’t notice the added dimension size allotted for that and you should have increased space for private messages.
Doesn’t look we’re going to get a response anytime soon if even at all.
Wanna know something? At this point I don’t think an answer from her might really make a difference; same old litany. Why did I even bother… Should have known by now how it was going to end.
Disgusting.
Please do me a favor and delete my account from this shithole managed forum. Thank you and I hope your members are giving what they are promised…
-Neo_chip
Sigh, where are the games sarah!? YOU PROMISED THERE WOULD BE GAYMS!
Anyway, if that is true, then I guess she is still struggling with it, she hasn’t answered about it, she’s dodging the question like malaria only leaving cryptic info without concrete proof, I’ve already started posting music on this other boards anyway but still man.
Anyway, the lockdown thing would still counts as paying for pirated content, wouldn’t it?
>Download links are hosted @ Filesonic, which is dead.
Despite acknowledgement of further pirating/sharing of copyrighted content (old news~), it has nothing to do with the server finances we’ve been debating about.
But yeah, at this point I’ll be sharing content elsewhere.
this thread is completely filled with nonsense and libel from the group of people harassing me. i’m willing to tolerate any questions, what i’m not tolerating is links to the people engaging in this harassment which contained things up to and including my home address and the names of my family members. you do that, i’m banning you. i had to ban one user already. the people some of you are choosing to believe i’ve already had to contact the police over three times.
please keep the thread productive and on topic and i’ll answer any questions. insults, personal attacks, libel, links to my dox? not happening.
everyone *should* have their perks. if you haven’t received them yet, PM me and i’ll sort it out. i’ll start trying to go back and answer some more questions here in a second.
cstrife0777: if you can explain/detail your concerns i’ll gladly address them
Why do the servers cost so much? Is this purely from traffic? Is it from GH’s dead weight? Like, actually break down the cost per month or something. If all of our assumptions (as far as costs, traffic, etc.) are wildly off then could you please give us some accurate ones?
Among those leechers some of you despise so much may be individuals helping with donations and, on a level which strictly concerns users and uploaders, leeching refers to someone which downloads and doesn’t bother to interact, right? Well, half of it sucks, the other half is still awesome news for the community as a whole: they download->they potentially extend the "life" of a link by 30/60/XX number of days. They don’t really deserve much of the crap folks seem to be sending their way.
Onto the rest.
Hm. Thanks for the recent answers, Sarah. Guess I will still have trust, another chance is deserved, but I’m gonna be honest: I’ve stirred up the drama and even now I don’t regret it, I’ve seen users waiting too long for answers they weren’t getting. For what it’s worth, all I’ve come across has been seen through the eyes of an outsider whose pressing concerns were trying to understand the reasons behind the silence and offering some possible answers to the community. Now, I’d like to get a bit more info on a few things:
– Jessie mentioned suggesting the addition of a donation-bar to the place, and I also recall other users bringing it up over the years. Would you consider attempting that some time in the future? It may help, it may not, but to me a donation-meter still sounds better than completely shutting down the board to put up a notice.
– I’m not privy just to how much Jessie can actually do as Admin, so I may very well be talking crap, but: do you have someone helping you completely administer things? (I mean stuff like managing servers, fixing up the occasional technical issue, adding those perks) If not, would you consider looking for someone? I do understand finding someone to trust with such privileges is hard, but it seems you can use the help.
http://forums.ffshrine.org/f7/about-donations~-167299/
http://forums.ffshrine.org/f7/latest-donation-drive~-172322/
http://forums.ffshrine.org/f7/thanks-donations-~-181185/
I don’t know if any of the user found in the threads above ultimately got their perks, but given they’ve tried to remind a few times how they had yet to get any of that crap, I’d be inclined to believe they also would have stated they??? Huh??? Finally got it. Just proves of rather crappy/lazy management, not like there’s a lack of that, anyway.
I’ve forgot to mention yesterday the business plan of inflating the costs is a disgusting move on your part, but whatever, tangotreats pointed it out much more nicely than me.
I do "know" Sarah was currently following up with 2, sometimes 3 advertisers in multiple instances (messages are spread in this very section of the board and on the Facebook’s Shrine group). Is it now hard for you to find advertisers? Then, shouldn’t you have done something "drastic" about it sooner? You’ve stated on Facebook the resources for GH and the rest are pooled together, but that shouldn’t be hard to fix: backup the board somewhere (I guess that would require quite the downtime, but I think that would be the first downtime users are going to be happy about), wipe everything else??? GH and that useless website about the FINAL FANTASY series (not updated in years)??? And restore the board.
Also, while I agree we shouldn’t dwell too much on the whole deal with GamerGate/Anti-GamerGate/Sexual activities, most of you are forgetting all of that adds another side to the problem which does concern the Shrine, potentially a lot: I don’t care myself if all of the information brought up is true or false, all I see is that you, Sarah, have become a target of harassment (whether justified or not, again, I don’t give a fuck about it), at least part of those folks knows (or should have I used know?) you run FFS, it also has, thus, become a potential target of attacks perpetrated by them. If you really care about this Shrine as much as you’ve said you do, please, please understand that is time for you to retire and hand ownership to someone "neutral". Having your character still attached to this place in such way now adds another layer of danger which, frankly, we can (and should) do without.
(In Response to LSK above…)
Thank you for that statement. I was going to try to discuss that situation without offending Sarah or anyone else on either side, but you said it better than anyone.
The extra security in place may protect us, but, we are the ones paying for it in the end, since Sarah cannot. I think that should give everyone a voice in where ffshrine goes and what should happen. This is as much as our home as it is for Sarah, Jessie, Leon Scott Kennedy, myself and for over 13,000 active members in the community.
I want to believe Sarah is doing everything possible to make things better for us, but, there is evidence that she is also quiet about some things that really should have been discussed with the community when it happened, namely the things LSK brought up on page 2. Not once has Sarah ever brought up the additional security measures on the board until page 4 of this thread and not once has Sarah ever mentioned anything about not being able to pay for server costs herself since Sarah is in debt. Not to mention, we lost our advertisers that would reduce server costs, also not discussed with the community. Those three points have done two things: jacked up the server costs and now the servers are being paid by everyone in the community, not including the owner in debt. (Now I’m asking myself, when did these changes occur, since Sarah doesn’t ever mention it. My only estimate would be sometime after August of last year when "that" movement began.)
The past donation threads have users with the same concerns that we’re talking about in this thread, and no one got a response from Sarah about it! "GH is dead, how are we suppose to use these privileges?!" -no response. Again, not to be rude, this place is ran by someone with a lack of communication skills and leadership skills, something that should be required for such a large and active community. I know this is going to make Sarah "smh" again, but this is making you look like you’re taking advantage of the community, even when you’re not!
Can you really blame us for blowing this out of proportion when our voices have fallen on deaf ears in the past?
I guess our voices will tell you when the next donation lockdown happens again. (and don’t bother trying to say there won’t be one, it’ll happen. Probably between August-October 2015, if nothing changes)
I just feel like the place would be better off being transferred to someone that is a great leader and owner, that’s willing to listen to their community and make decisions based on their voices. Someone that is also financially stable and can also pay out of their pocket when donation goals may not be met is a plus as well.
I could also suggest additional perks for donators, but I’ll leave that to you or let the others give you suggestions. The two issues I see with this is that 1) you don’t have a sort of "gimmick" that would consider us to more likely donate to you and 2) you have no real way to sort out posts based on specific requirements.
Examples:
*) A photo rendering site that has premium hi-quality renders locked to regular users unless you "unlock" the post with points we earn from "thanking" others and posting in general discussion.
*) A rom download site that limits the amount ALL visitors can download daily unless they register and make posts to be able to accumulate additional points for more downloads.
You could maybe have a special donator’s section for only donators and admins/moderators, a flash game section, I could go on….
———- Post added at 01:25 AM ———- Previous post was at 01:20 AM ———-
Some more~
Most of this discussion should not be about the forum owner’s gender for crying out loud. Most of that was brought on by other members when it honestly never should have in the first place.
It’s more in the matter of a certain group of individuals (read Sarah’s earlier posts please) that are looking to damage everything in this person’s life, including this very forum. Now the owner is in debt trying to protect themselves from these individuals and has no funds to contribute towards the server costs. Also, these individuals reported our advertisers (which would keep server costs down otherwise) and pushed Sarah into buying extra security measures because of all of this. Now all the inflated server costs have been thrust upon everyone in the community to pay for in order for the forums to stay up.
Whether we can believe what Sarah has stated to be true or not is up in the air, but I’m just basing this all on what has been stated by Sarah and what we can find in public on our own, like Leon Scott Kennedy has done (and even myself, looking into the forum’s hosting company pricing). We’re not asking to remove herself from the community, just to transfer ownership to someone that isn’t being threatened for their life so we don’t have to continue the additional, and un-needed, security costs.
An owner that can pay for the rest of the costs that donations do not would be nice too. Maybe if donors are offered some great perks to contribute, and not privileges to a dead site, they may never have to run into this that issue of paying out-of-pocket at all possibly.
I’m sorry to mix the answer to both of your quotes, but I’d probably end up repeating some stuff.
@Zoran | SonicAdventure
I do understand what you’re saying, seriously, but even if you "love" this place (I think the active contributors do, they’re probably the ones donating the most, but this is speculation on my part), there is a breaking point: my, oh my, Shrine has allowed folks to download soundtracks for years??? Big. Fucking. Deal. Not the first place, not the last. I don’t know how many of those who donated money are actually concerned with stuff like perks, but it’s a fact, let me stress it again, a fact that the perks promised were for a website dead (content-wise) for years??? And I’d venture a guess users didn’t even get forum-related perks (again, advertised on the donation-notice). You don’t care about it Zoran? Good for you, still, don’t expect it to be the same for everyone else, not everyone becomes that attached to what is merely, for all intent and purposes, a simple tool to share messages/images/URLs. Presently, the Shrine isn’t really offering anything special enough to set it aside from the rest of pirates’ dens. Though I’ve approached it only in November 2007, it is my understanding that some of the content which found its way on Galbadia Hotel came from the users, so without this community, where??? Or rather??? What would FFS be? Nothing.
I know I could have expressed my concerns in regards to the whole deal privately to at least Jessie, first, but I was under assumption he couldn’t really give the answers I wanted (an assumption he had confirmed), besides, this is a matter mainly concerning Sarah and the community, I thought the heat of it should have been shared with them, too.
I understand also the concerns about the privacy of such information, but:
1) Had Sarah acted as a more responsible Webmaster/mistress, some wouldn’t have felt it was time to take matters into their own hands. As I’ve stated previously, users contacted me about donation-drives and, having witnessed how Sarah didn’t bother to answer to legitimate questions on the board, over time, forgive me for thinking I wasn’t going to get much better out of her.
2) This is something trivial, but I’ve noticed that when I’m logged out of the forum, the block of sections "containing" Question, Feedback, Assistance is hidden. Plus, it has been stressed enough times that the main concerns for users here aren’t her personal issues, judging by some of the opinions expressed in this very thread, I’m going to believe folks wouldn’t even bother "adding fuel to the fire"; they’d simply move to another place.
I’m going sound like the piece of scum lacking empathy/sympathy, but in regards to the removal-from-her-role suggestion (which, I state again, it doesn’t even have to be permanent):
– You can’t expect money-senders to be always understanding. Someone’s got legitimately annoyed. Even though I don’t know Sarah at all (I’ll have "talked" with her 2/3 times – maybe -, in all the years I’ve been here) and I honestly wish her to successfully get out of whatever mess(es) she’s got herself into [I’ve dealt with harassment in my early years], I’m still thinking it would be a display of correctness|maturity on her part to hand the reins of Shrine to someone who is competent and able to support it financially, both aspects she showed to not being able to handle in a satisfying manner, any more. Please understand that by suggesting to let Sarah "take a vacation" we’re also looking out for ourselves and our security, we can’t have someone who’s been targeted like herself in such a position; who can safely say those folks harassing her aren’t going to target us and our personal data, too? They do know she runs FFS.
help with administration: frankly, there aren’t a lot of people technically competent enough that i trust. i have no issues with handling the back end of things, i’ve done so for over 10 years and have mostly kept the site stable for that long. in that entire time we’ve had brief downtime a few times, and only once in those 10 years have we had to do a board restore that lost more than a month of data. before i became webmaster here? we had complete board wipes four times in three years. jessie has done a lot to help me manage the front end; the moderation and administration of the forums, and he deserves tons of thanks for doing so. i want to add even more staff to keep things running smoothly, and that will be happening once i handle the more urgent stuff.
more on advertisers: finding an advertiser isn’t hard. finding a good one can unfortunately be relatively challenging. see above; i’m actually testing to find out the CPM on one of the new ones right now.
on transparency issues: i admit i haven’t been as transparent about the fact that we lost advertisers & had some security concerns as i should have been. i’m trying to fix that now, which is why i’m answering questions. my gut instinct was to try to fix things and get everything under control without having to worry the userbase, but i realize that backfired and wasn’t fair to anyone. i’m sorry for not giving people a heads up sooner; that’s on me, and you’re right to have been bothered by it. i thought i could get things under control in time.
additional perks: i’m definitely open to suggestions for more perks! a donator-only forum is definitely a possibility. we could make a separate thread for suggestions and vote on them, if you like?
I have donated via the e-mail address [email protected]. Could you kindly check? Tried to PM but failed to find the way…
I have donated via the e-mail address [email protected]. Could you kindly check? Tried to PM but failed to find the way…
ah, it looks like it didn’t go through because of your usergroup. it should work now– thank you. the PM should also work if you have any other questions
1) Gaining profit from piracy is a violation of pretty much every advertiser’s Terms of service, fuck me with a chainsaw if that doesn’t make obtaining new advertisers "impossible" for this place.
2) For better or worse, a group of folks supposedly caused FFShrine to lose advertisers; what makes you think there won’t be a repeat of that event?
help with administration: frankly, there aren’t a lot of people technically competent enough that i trust. i have no issues with handling the back end of things, i’ve done so for over 10 years and have mostly kept the site stable for that long. in that entire time we’ve had brief downtime a few times, and only once in those 10 years have we had to do a board restore that lost more than a month of data. before i became webmaster here? we had complete board wipes four times in three years. jessie has done a lot to help me manage the front end; the moderation and administration of the forums, and he deserves tons of thanks for doing so. i want to add even more staff to keep things running smoothly, and that will be happening once i handle the more urgent stuff.
more on advertisers: finding an advertiser isn’t hard. finding a good one can unfortunately be relatively challenging. see above; i’m actually testing to find out the CPM on one of the new ones right now.
on transparency issues: i admit i haven’t been as transparent about the fact that we lost advertisers & had some security concerns as i should have been. i’m trying to fix that now, which is why i’m answering questions. my gut instinct was to try to fix things and get everything under control without having to worry the userbase, but i realize that backfired and wasn’t fair to anyone. i’m sorry for not giving people a heads up sooner; that’s on me, and you’re right to have been bothered by it. i thought i could get things under control in time.
additional perks: i’m definitely open to suggestions for more perks! a donator-only forum is definitely a possibility. we could make a separate thread for suggestions and vote on them, if you like?
That’s great but
Why do the servers cost so much? Is this purely from traffic? Is it from GH’s dead weight? Like, actually break down the cost per month or something. If all of our assumptions (as far as costs, traffic, etc.) are wildly off then could you please give us some accurate ones?
the numbers that people are throwing around are… from people that have no idea what it takes, financially or otherwise, to run a site like this. bargain basement servers from kimsufi are for things like seedboxes for torrents and sketchy sites, they’re awful for a big site like this. as sites grow in size, the headaches grow exponentially. people are using traffic estimates that aren’t even *close* to on track. someone compared what a site like this uses to a 200mb sql database… that would be taken up in no time at all. our database is *gigabytes*.
i don’t know if people remember, but a few years ago everyone was complaining about the speed of the forums. the reason why that went away? we upgraded our servers. tiny bargain basement shady sites aren’t meant for these kind of sites.
we run three separate servers, none of which are from sketchy sites. they’re from reputable hosting companies. the last time we tried using a sketchy one, they disappeared overnight and we had to use a months old backup. i don’t want that happening again.
historically, GH has paid for the forums because forum advertisements don’t work quite as well. that’s the reason i’m not ditching the idea of GH but there are some technical headaches that need to be sorted out.
I will say that if I was running this site in Sarah’s place, I wouldn’t trust advertisers with sustaining the place and prune the excess content regardless if we had them or not. Extremely risky and just not cost-effective for the community as a whole.
but that’s my opinion so i’ll just shutup now…
cstrife & despair: i can look into trimming some of the fat, for sure. the DB is big because we’ve been running this instance of the forum for over a decade– actually, i think it might be closer to 15 years. which is all kinds of crazy. someone else mentioned pruning; pruning the threads isn’t a great idea (it hurts search traffic which hurts revenue) but pruning things like old user accounts is something that i’ll be doing soon. beyond that, there are other optimizations i’ll be looking into (possibly cloudflare, maybe move one of the boxes to a cheaper server). GH costs money, yes, but traditionally it’s always paid for the forums, not vice versa. that’s the longterm plan once i get everything functional there, which is why i’m not dropping the place entirely.
the actual stats are roughly ~12GB of SQL space for the forums alone, almost 50GB of it when you include everything on the entire site, and couple that with ~200,000 pageviews/day across everything most of which are highly DB intensive… running that isn’t cheap. but yes, there are things we can do to make it cheaper, and i intend to do that.
to some extent we could sacrifice some degree of speed in exchange for keeping the overhead lower. about a year and a half ago-ish (guesstimate, don’t remember exactly), the forums were much slower but everything then was being served on a mysql/web combo server instead of two seperate ones. there were complaints about speed… a lot. that’s why we moved to two seperate servers for web/db (and then there’s still the backup/fileserver..)
My god….
Well thank you for the answer.
That’s something I’m sure all of us do NOT want to happen, especially since we’re always growing bigger and bigger by the day. Why bother downgrading when we’ll soon have to upgrade once again to accommodate for the expected increase? Unless you setup a systematic prune of all threads ~5 years and older, I don’t see any reason to do this.
Anyways, hopefully we’ll see your words put into action.
Enlighten me some more, please: exactly what kind of technical-competence would be required to manage this place? I’m not talking about the forums alone, obviously, I’m seriously asking because, well, it looks like FFS might really use a general overhaul: non-working servers and a lack of optimization which this place might have benefited from… Not really helping your statement.
Hate to repeat this, but what about finally upgrading to vBulletin 5 while we’re at it, again?
Hate to repeat this, but what about finally upgrading to vBulletin 5 while we’re at it, again?
I, for one, am not against such a thing!
We can rebuild it.
We can rebuild it.
I am. Some of the thread would be nearly impossible to rebuild, and so much content would be lost on the DL forums that we would be flooded with re-up requests for months, if not years, afterward. Hell…we’re pretty much already flooded with re-up requests.
I’ll add my 2 cents on various issues:
Can’t we just let go of the old Galbadia Hotel ?
I’m also in agreement that the donation bar would be a much better idea than locking the forum. I didn’t donate this time because money is a bit of an issue, but I usually do.
Pruning the user DB would probably be a nice start. Just taking down account that have been abandonned for the last 2-3 years would be a start.
Also, I’m with Leon on the advertising problem: if someone told the advertisers that we break their ToS, we’re fucked with that ad-revenue. it happened once, and history loves to do encores.
Keep in mind, I haven’t read the whole thread, and this is just a simple opinion from a forum user.
"Responsive response" to re-up requests serve better than a huge pile of not-sure-if-obsolete threads and posts anyway.
you try that when the re-up requests come so fast that no matter how many uploaders and how much goodwill there is, you can’t rebuild anything. Just think of the shitstorm that would start in the film score download section. just think of the links still active in threads that are not active anymore. there are tons of them. tons. some aren’t even that ancient.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t erase stuff, I’m pretty sure there are tons of old topics in the various DL sections that could be erased to gain space. Also maybe resetting the request sections, as not much would be lost. That or saving the big threads, that are pretty much the core of the various DL subforums. I don’t know, but reseting the forum would be a bit much to my taste. not that I want to save stuff, as a lot of my old threads would be pruned and I couldn’t care less (I’ll just re-up), it’s for the big ones where people have invested a lot of time and exchanged a lot I’d feel bad for. There are not so many of these. that represent maybe, for exemple, 10 pages out of the 900+ of the film score sub-forum.
Just schedule a deadline and notify everyone to backup their stuff, then repost them on a new site instance.
In other words, pick over and sort out the "important" uploads and just scrap the rest (mostly dead links and other no-one-cares-anymore stuff), then the re-up requests will be useful to signify what’s still missing and wanted.
In other words, pick over and sort out the "important" uploads and just scrap the rest (mostly dead links and other no-one-cares-anymore stuff), then the re-up requests will be useful to signify what’s still missing and wanted.
I’m not speaking of uploads. that’s the thing. I’m speaking of threads. some of them, like the big star trek, Dr Who or Old Anime ost threads act not only as "posting" threads, but also as a knowledge database on what is out there, what exists in that particular field. Same with the Blade Runner soundtrack threads, and there are probably others. I’m still saying pruning heavily the forum is a better option than starting it from scratch alltogether.
Just copy them too! What’s stopping us from doing the same?
I tried, years ago to make a complete archive of the Old Anime ost thread. it took me close to a month and was still incomplete. Unless there is a way to save some threads and copy them on the new shrine, saving some of these isn’t possible, or is gonna be hard as hell to do.
Indeed. It’d be the same with other threads, like the blade runner soundtrack one, or the Old Anime OST thread on the anime subforum. of course that one is savable (I did it earlier, take a bit more than a hundred megs all by himself). The trek thread is nearly as long. the "BIG ORCHESTRAL ACTION MUSIC THREAD!" is twice as big, and the Dr Who audiodrama thread has long been passed the 1000 pages. even by putting a 1000 posts per page, it would take a long time to save, it would be impractical to use, hence, better keeping these big, social gatheringy thread and pruning the thousands of one-two page threads.
But I guess that’s just not something people are willing to accept, because you still lose "years of history". Uh huh, and I get that. But that history doesn’t mean much if the site goes down a black hole when we’re not prepared for it anyway.
Do you actually reread any of that? I don’t think a newcomer will either.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. No one is going to go back hundreds and hundreds of pages and read all of that. Even if it’s just to reference something. And a newcomer definitely isn’t going to read 100s of pages just to get caught up and join the conversation. He/she will probably read the very fist page and maybe a few after that and then jump to the last page. Maybe read a few pages before the last pages.
Of course, threads like the Lossless VGM Thread, Lossles Anime Music Thread and other threads of that sort are a different story. But the threads where there’s just conversations about stuff going on isn’t. I can understand wanting to keep every bit of it, but it isn’t completely necessary.
For the sharing part of the Shrine, a simple database, or even just a text spreadsheet, basically a dumbed down Discogs/VGMdb with links, would already suit our needs very well.
I agree with you on that.
I’m going to be "that guy" again and remind some of you that the driving force behind this place is the rampant piracy going on in it. Keyword here is piracy, why am I bolding it? Because any goddam pirate which is worth a fraction of such definition knows that in the case of boards like this one (which offers enormous amount of pirated content), there’s the threat of getting shutdown for good at any moment (no, the litany "it has yet to happen" doesn’t hold any value, nor changes shit), so he/she should:
– Keep a copy of personal+desired links on owned device (PC, etcetera)
– Not bother "generating" or taking part in such discussions
– Not really give a crap if the content ends lost for some reason
Short summary: I also understand the desire of keeping a few "developed" threads, but we should not forget that we may lose such content anyway, because of external "reasons/actions", so, why let all of this become an issue? You lost "X", tough luck, take some small relief in the fact you were part of "it", but be smart and move on.
Sigh, whatever, I pity the fool(s) which will still donate to the Shrine when the next drive shows up, but if you’re still that stupid you deserve to be "robbed".
I’m going to be "that guy" again and remind some of you that the driving force behind this place is the rampant piracy going on in it. Keyword here is piracy, why am I bolding it? Because any goddam pirate which is worth a fraction of such definition knows that in the case of boards like this one (which offers enormous amount of pirated content), there’s the threat of getting shutdown for good at any moment (no, the litany "it has yet to happen" doesn’t hold any value, nor changes shit), so he/she should:
– Keep a copy of personal+desired links on owned device (PC, etcetera)
– Not bother "generating" or taking part in such discussions
– Not really give a crap if the content ends lost for some reason
Short summary: I also understand the desire of keeping a few "developed" threads, but we should not forget that we may lose such content anyway, because of external "reasons/actions", so, why let all of this become an issue? You lost "X", tough luck, take some small relief in the fact you were part of "it", but be smart and move on.
Sigh, whatever, I pity the fool(s) which will still donate to the Shrine when the next drive shows up, but if you’re still that stupid you deserve to be "robbed".
Indeed. Hence why i’ve started archiving a few threads for my own personal use. I do most of what you say (I keep a .doc file with tons of "to DL stuff" on it), and I don’t care that much. I just put so much time in some threads I’d be a tad sad to see them go the way of the dodo. Hence the archiving.
let’s call that a professionnal deformation (hey, I’m a librarian, I like archiving stuff.). it’s also because I’m a librarian I’m aware you have to prune the forum of its dead weight, as I do when I take the lesser/never used book from my library to give them to charities or to sell them if orders from my hierarchy say so. (you don’t throw a book to the bin, people. you just don’t). I know pruning could reduce the cost. although I’m more than a bit skeptical on that. I’ll just leave it at that and let this matter drop.
I had forgotten how much drama this place had the ability to conjure. amazing, really. worse than a library staff reunion.
We’ll see what happens when the next donation drive comes up. I personally don’t think the Shrine will "survive" it (either because it ends up forced to close, or because, as someone else already stated, users will say screw it and go elsewhere).
the actual stats are roughly ~12GB of SQL space for the forums alone, almost 50GB of it when you include everything on the entire site, and couple that with ~200,000 pageviews/day across everything most of which are highly DB intensive… running that isn’t cheap. but yes, there are things we can do to make it cheaper, and i intend to do that.
So if we assume 1TB/day and 200,000 page views/day, that would be an average of 5MB per page view.
But when you look at the total size of the HTML, JS, CSS, images, etc., a typical page view on the forums only requires a pretty consistent ~1.2 MB from ffshrine.org. Many pages are much larger than that due to high-res images – for example the custom covers thread. But those images aren’t hosted by ffshrine.org. They’re hosted off-site on services like imgur or other image hosting sites.
Also, most repeat visitors will be pulling less than 1.2MB/page view because they have some of those assets cached on their computer and thus won’t need to request them from ffshrine.org each time. So how exactly do you get to 30TB/month with only 200,000 page views/day when the average page view requires 1.2MB or less? That would mean the monthly bandwidth would be something closer to 7TB or less, which is significantly smaller than the total quoted in the donation message.
Of course, Sarah said that those 200,000 page views/day were "across everything," but it’s obvious that the forums account for the overwhelming majority of traffic to ffshrine.org. The rest of the site hasn’t been updated in ages and is mostly dead content as far as I can tell. But for the sake of thoroughness I checked Galbadia Hotel, Zelda Shrine, the home page, and most of the other subdomains on ffshrine.org. Each of them had page sizes far below 5MB/page view, so they can’t explain the "30TB/month" figure either. All of them were far below 1MB/page view, in fact – smaller than the forums.
In short, the math doesn’t add up. How do you end up at 30TB/month with 200,000 page views/day when the average page size is far, far below 5MB everywhere on FFShrine.org?
Well, you’ve seen what happened in the Lossless VGM thread. A dude or two just went ahead without asking other people, then tadaa, presented another half-assed site. This wouldn’t work well.
The bandwagon effect is essential for a successful Ark, but yeah, it’s hard to motivate a community.
ark it is, then buddy. get your hammer, wood and nails, and start building. Like Amanda, I have a plan b in place.
———- Post added at 04:24 PM ———- Previous post was at 04:19 PM ———-
Well, you’ve seen what happened in the Lossless VGM thread. A dude or two just went ahead without asking other people, then tadaa, presented another half-assed site. This wouldn’t work well.
The bandwagon effect is essential for a successful Ark, but yeah, it’s hard to motivate a community.
depends. some people have already built arks. hell, at least one has already sailed away, with only one member mad enough to dedouble himself and be both on the ark and here. I also know of at least one other ark. but keep in mind, most of the arks are invitation only. it keeps most of the drama out.
Otherwise I would’ve done so long ago too. Not to mention I only have the techniques to craft an Ark; I don’t have enough "materials" at my disposal.
It’s been all talk and no action from me regrettably, but I’d still like to promote better collaboration.
The bandwagon effect is essential for a successful Ark, but yeah, it’s hard to motivate a community.
Zaykho’s has come along really nicely, and so far he’s added whatever features we’ve asked for. It’s got about 100 users but I think most of those are from people who made "just in case" accounts on day 1 and never came back.
Haven’t seen any of the big names from the lossless vgm thread anywhere besides here so they probably won’t ever jump ship until another drive comes in.
Haven’t seen any of the big names from the lossless vgm thread anywhere besides here so they probably won’t ever jump ship until another drive comes in.
Everything will change when this damn new theme/board will come up, I spend a lot of time to make this one far better than any other forum board.
Wait the neolight theme to come, then, uploaders, leechers etc…. will love this new place. :p
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