Cynthetiq

Thanks guys. OCM, the discussion going on since your last post makes my point better than I could. I don't have any issue with your OPs aside from that I don't always get them, but that's fine. What I'd like to emphasize about what I'm specifically pointing at with the post an image threads is that it isn't something that searches very well unless it's something like the zeigfield girls or the cosplay threads. Those are very specific and they drove some extreme traffic to us on several occasions.

There was a group of people that spun off from this site, some of you old timers may remember them. They asked me to come along and I said I couldn't but I would visit them from time to time. As I watched them put their own space together, Prometheus Forums or something like that, likening their claim to having stolen the fire and made a space for themselves. They create a council as their staff to make sure that it was even handed and not dictatorial. They had a technical guy put up the forums. A benefactor to pay for the site and collect donations to keep it afloat.

They had all the same kinds of things we had here, a group of like minded, respectful individuals who wanted to talk to each other. When they asked me my opinion of their setup and how they were doing from an outsider's perspective. I said, how will you get new members? What will attract them to your space? The witty banter that goes back and forth? The creation of new discussions isn't happening and you need to address that.

After a couple of years, I checked in on them and couldn't find their website. Those members that I still keep in contact with, don't know what happened to it, as they got bored and wandered off before it was taken off line. But the moral of this story is about the same as ts's. The forum died. Was facebook the culprit there? No this was years before facebook.

There has to be some give and take to this idea of evolving. It's not just the community but the staff as well, and possibly how we've setup the software.

People have put forth some good ideas and suggestions and each time I have posited these discussions, I've not let them fall by the wayside but pick through them and see what seems feasible enough to work and implement them.

As far as the finances go, Halx always counted on the community to fund this project. There are three ways that forums make their income. Donations, sponsors/ad revenue, and purchase click through.

I know that Halx tried to keep the advertising model away from here. He tried it once and it worked with one banner. The adsense stuff he had took care of a good amount of income and no one ever knew that it existed, even without an adblocker. It was killed because Google had an issue with some adult content not the porn but it still was enough to revoke the adsense account.

As far as paypal is concerned, it was all going to a personal account. Someone flagged it and Halx lost that paypal account and started another. That game was played for some time but now that we don't have the porn it's no longer a problem.

shauk, thanks. I got what you were saying, I was just trying to show how we know each other in a manner of familiarity to ts's point. I too am like you where I'm different person to different people. I don't share TFP with just any of my friends they have to be respectful and open minded enough, and unfortunately there aren't as many people in the world like that as there should be.

back to the finances, the server costs as much as it does because of colocation. We own our server and it needs to rent space in a datacenter. We don't have a great price, but for the traffic we now generate, it's expensive for what it is. I'd like to get better pricing on it, and Halx and I at one point thought of putting TFP into the cloud. I'm not sure we'd fare better pricing with that model, but I do think of how to reduce the costs to something small.

I have been trying to figure out how to switch us to a subscription model so that those that want to donate to us can do so simple and monthly without much hassle. I have to make some adjustments to how we do business, and that's something that is for sure coming.

Right now not only is there the RIAA to be worried about but there are copyright items to be somewhat concerned about. I've been working on it so there is a clear path that needs to be followed and I'll be unveiling that in the next day or so. Unfortunately it does mean I'll be asking for more money because lawyers don't work for free, even when they are my friend. Gas, grass, or ass as the saying goes.

As far as the 4 months thing, Jazz we just crossed the line with just a few hours to spare left in the month. October we've broken even!

re: posting stuff and facebook, I'm just as guilty of that as anyone. Any of the members here who are my FB friends can testify that I've posted more things there then I have here in months. It's so easy with the "Share on Facebook" button. If there was one like that for TFP, it would be excellent. I've been wondering just how I could create such a thing because it would make thread creation that much easier.

I wasn't planning on such a long reply, I just got back from Maine, and I'm tired. It's been a long weekend with all the stuff going on (wedding and finding out my father being hospitalized) and trying to keep up with this and other threads here on TFP.

I like to think that these threads have become less adversarial and more about the community understanding what is happening and how we as members (remember staff is a member first and a staffer second) should deal with the challenges we're faced. I like to think of it as no different than those "help I don't know what to do with my girlfriend who wants to break up with me" type of threads. I've got to get some rest now.

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