Suggestion - GWG Server fund raising Graph & donation link

As we know, the forum can run very slowly or indeed stop working for some of us at some times in the day. The forum admins know about this and have told us that the issue can be resolved by upgrading their server.

I for one, subscribed to donate money to the site primarily because of this - a site i use is one i am prepared to help out and in turn the site performs better which is a more efficient use of my time. Win - Win.

My suggestion is to see if we can be proactive in this and try and set things in motion. I suggest that we are all told how much money is needed for this new server and then a graphical image eg.



or some other way for us to all see how much is still needed...is put on the site along with a donation link. When money comes in then that total is updated and so we can all see how our donations are working towards improving the forum for us all.

It will be an incentive, for us all, and for people to donate money. When people see that money is going towards something definitive that will have benefits, then they are more likely to give towards it. Otherwise, donating money leaves us unsure where it went. Im sure the issue of the new server being needed has been about for months, i know it has at least for the last 2 months ive been here. Is it not a good idea if something is transparently and actively done about it?

If we could see you had in mind x server which you can show costs, for example, $1000 and you already had $600, then between our 20,000? or however many active members there are, i have no doubt that the money could be raised for it quickly.

If this were to go ahead, id be glad to put my money where my mouth is and be the first to donate some extra cash to it to get the ball rolling

edit - i take back this offer. a) The leadership on the forum here expresses no interest in offers to improving the forum. b) The leadership is prepared to allow some terrible moderation that somehow manages to condemn the innocent while condone the guilty. Poor show.

Good idea, however, it's a fan forum, people come here to moan not give away money.

While I'd gladly donate, I really can't see many following suit.

As long as I feel there will be something productive done with the funds, I'd be happy to donate. Guru is an important resource for the community in many ways and I think it would benefit from a hardware upgrade.

Although there are indeed some very great points about the community forums here I feel that the moderation improvement by its staff has to be greatly increased for this to even have a cahnce of taking off. Speaking from a " Fans " stand point, I come here to discuss things with other players , ask questions, gain information and sadly I see too much flaming and antics I'd find at some school yard recess.

I read through the post which is closed on a zero tolerence ( which is a different topic ) but I would encourage your staff to consider what impact your forum content is going to have on your efforts to get money from folks to get your hardware upgrades. I've had many a problem with loading speeds on a DSL hook up where other sites are just " BAM " up the instant I touch the mouse. I would like to see the leadership here within the forums, it's staff start to take point in cleaning up the forums. GURU is still a good resource for GW but there are other faster forums out there with a fan base as well where the flaming, trolling, ect. isn't found. Your in direct competition with folks who seem to care more then your staff and seem to be able to keep the forums squared away. This isn't meant as a jab or flame but just observations from a visitor to the forums and I doubt I'm the only one noticing this. I hope the community as a whole will pull itself togeather but honestly it won't happen unless the leadership steps up and fixes it.

Lord Feathers, we are the largest GW forum out there. With that comes increased masses, increased new players, increasing misinformation, as well as increased good information. We have twice as many posts as any other forum on any given day. We have the largest fansite staff. The "caring" of other forums is simply they can stay on top of and manage because of the amount of posts they get. Or I should say, they don't have to 'care' as much because their job is, by default, easier. Do you know how many of our moderators, who if you'll kindly remember are just volunteers, spend LITERALLY hours and hours a day doing their jobs? They are in IRC interacting with the community, they are pushing through hundreds of moderating actions a day to keep the sell forums fair and active, they are editing, closing, and deleting out flames in numerous threads at a time... all this while dealing with page timeouts, slowness and more. When I hear a forum user complain of slowness I look at my moderators who are diligently and faithfully there still trying to do their jobs.

Unfortunately, the answer for us is not simply increasing our staff from 30 to 60. Good volunteers are hard to find. Consistent and active volunteers even harder. I honestly don't think you realize the scope or the amount of time we all take to try to keep these forums a good source of GW knowledge and information. You see flames? Are you reporting them? Are you responding and making the situation worse? Or are you simply ignoring them, shaking your head and then blaming the Guru staff for not "doing their jobs". We are here and active every single day. We are doing hundreds of moderating actions a day. We are responding, constantly discussing in both forums, IRC and in game about these forums. It's sad that you can't see all that activity, but I don't imagine most are in game, in IRC, and on these forums as much as any of the moderators. Again, we are the largest GW forum with the largest staff. We are currently in the process of bringing in even more moderators, but to make blanket statements that we don't care as much because you can't understand the process or know how many posts and moderating actions are done daily is indeed taken as a jab. A misinformed one, but one that we continually and constantly are trying to stay on top of by our daily presence and responses. Clearly we care.

Well, my post has nothing to do with moderation, just the website.

I love this site. It is the best GW site period. That said, as the OP stated, the lag and stalls are real bad. Is there a plan to upgrade the servers? I hope so, really. I have had to give up a handful of times this week alone from posting or reading threads because the site was way too slow or outright stalled and my page wouldn't load.

I salute all the work you guys do. I moderate a forum as well, and understand it can be tough.

The reason the subscription option was introduced was to help Inde's server fund. A few have signed up, but I doubt the money raised so far is enough.

Always looking for new members the prizes Inde manages to get are pretty good, so that a nice incentive as well.

I too subscribed,but whilst they were quick to take my money every month automatically they cannot do the same for the elite subscription which seems to take an age to sort out,I do realise that the Admins guys are busy but surely someone with enough techy savvy could sort this out ? once this is sorted I will be delighted to start donating again.

LOL, I know Ghengis. You are like this anomaly that every month it just resets back to a normal member. No one else has the problem, so either your just special or unlucky. I'll send off some emails, I thought the manual reset would have just permanently set you to an elite member but obviously something else is going on so I'll do another manual reset in the meantime.

I have complained about the time-outs in the past. It is getting better, but still not near as good as it use to be. That aside, considering the traffic this site gets Inde has done a great job of keeping the site up. I have no objection to advertising, I wish I could help fund a new server but I am barley able to keep my head above water most months. All I can really offer is my time. If I can help in any way, give me a yell.
Even if it means cutting into my game time, guru is worth it.

I like to think I am more special rather than an anomaly lol,you still after Mods by the way? I await a reply to my application with baited breath...........and I can only bait it so long!!

Inde

* Claps hands *

I applaud the recent post that " Silly Warrior " stickied in the Eye of the North forum about the HOM. He or she actually took all the bitching and flaming and compiled that into a thread that was useful. That is what moderation is about and something that those of us you think are not watching are looking for. My post was taken as a JAB and I guess it could have been seen that way. What I wanted to point out was problems I see myself as a fan and user of these forums. GURU is indeed HUGE and no I can't begin to imagine the time spent by some running it but as with anything such as running a successful guild folks simply want things to work and if they don't they simply go somewhere else where they do work. Here's some constructive food for thought -

1.) I have many folks within the alliance and my own guild that hate these boards for the following reasons and I'll list a few of them.

a.) many of the threads are like recess is let out for 1000's of school children to post OMG & OMFG and threads with little to no point aside from post counts and whinning.

b. ) Site speed is aweful for some really really bad if you have a slow connection to start with

c.) Maturity base and flaming tolerence ( I'd like to see a zero flame tolerence, send a mssg ) needs to be tightened as many gamers who would actually contribute something worth while to the community are turned off and simply go somewhere else or take what information they gain from threads and stay quiet shaking their heads.

Now you asked I'm I contributing to this or simply making the problem worse ? I'd like to think constructive feed back is help.

Now that brings me back to the topic of what the forums themselves need. Is that graph here currently right ? and if so is that " x " amount of dollars needed a one time thing for a hardware upgrade and what requirements does the site have in terms of hosting ? I'm not the most computer savy person in the world but if GURU keeps taking steps in the direction they did this weekend I might actually put my money where my mouth is.

That graph was just an example Lord Feathers, posted by someone who would like to see it. And, I do have a bit of good news for you, of course the disclaimer that this is not firm but details are forthcoming soon. In 2 weeks times you should see a bit of downtime, and some vast improvements in performance. You'll see more information in the next couple of days.

And I know the type of threads you are referring to, there are many frustrated though by the state of the game so whether you want to take the viewpoint that the overall community is just deteriorating/fed up/lost hope/insert any other appropriate statement here or if it truly is just the condition of this forum is a matter of opinion and perspective. I visit many forums (I think I've stated that before) and if I can find 2 or 3 threads on a small guild forum complaining of a matter in game, then rest assured there will be 10-12 threads on the matter on Guru with many pages.

I know a lot of players in this game, from the newbie, to the long-term, to some of the first beta/alpha testers. I know those who have left, moved on, left and then come back, and those who stick around to just complain. I speak with them on the "state of this forum" frequently. I could probably write a small novel on the opinion of quality over quantity and how this applies and doesn't apply to guru. I've debated, listened, and explained my fair share of times and how some of this is under our control and some of it is not. (You all know who you are :P) So if taken from a neutral perspective (not a player of GW, and not a forum admin) you can weigh for yourself this debate over whether with an increase in size you must lose quality, whether to restrict yourself to a particular subset of players (i.e. PvP, Farmers, PvE, etc.) in order to maintain quality, how to continue drawing in enough advertising if you restrict and throw a heavy-hand on forum users, how to continue to grow a site without cutting out 1/2 of threads and losing the appearance of activity... well you can see the issues and the controversy that comes out of it.

Makes for some good convo though. If any of you have particular opinions coming from a neutral perspective on the above subjects (i.e. not a thread on how this is a Guru problem because if you want to debate this then it must come from the perspective that this is a problem with all large forums whether it's about cars, a game, a cell phone or a general discussion forum) then I would be pleased to try to explain some of the perspective and opinions that I have and gather new ideas and feedback from new forums users, experienced, previous administrators and website owners.

I wouldn't want the job of running something this big but I'm glad there are those that do

I'm also assuming that the discussions you are referring to are done in a " STAFF ONLY " forum and are something that takes up a large portion of the staffs time. From experience I can say that a bump up in ZERO tolerence towards flaming would reduce the amount of posts moderators would have to examine and go through if the so called " kiddies " for lack of a better word and this isn't a jab on age got their accounts banned for some of those actions a few times it would help tone things down. It's what keeps my own forums clear of the garbage I simply refuse to tolerate it and I'm on a much smaller scale then what you have here.

I appreciate the reply and would happily discuss or contribute my help in that endeavor.