Site Downtime (July 2016)

[zakk]

I am a fan of how the site was brought back relatively fast compared to last time

I am also a fan of the plan to move to a different hosting solution

[zakk]

I hear shotty has some ideas

phallus palace

[zakk]

Here you go.

[zakk]

Oh I thought it was zakk being stupid but actually it was Kappy

...



I pity the fool who doesn't read my sig.

[zakk]

I would not let shotty touch this site even with a long, long stick. Haha

[zakk]

this is devolving quickly

i think the best way not to let shotty "win" is to stop talking about him

[zakk]

I um. I want this to come across in the most undickish way possible...but it might come out rude anyway...

Who in their right minds thinks this site is worth money?

It generates no revenue, has a user base that continues to decline and requires hosting costs that are not recouped in any way.

It's been a great thing for me throughout my life and I'm very thankful to the people who continue to put hard work and money into keeping it running, but the idea that someone would pay money for the privilege of chucking money down the hosting black hole and dealing with the constant aggravation of users like shotty is mind boggling to me.

Well, it's "worth money" to the people who want to have the ability to control other peoples access to the site / threaten people off of it entirely. But we probably don't want them in charge.

I suppose a more wholesome reason would be someone able to float some large fixed costs now that would lower the monthly costs down the road. Although it would still probably be better to just donate that money to mith instead of "buying the site". (And actually, let me know if we're actually in this situation.)

According to some shitty site that tells you the worth of other websites the worth of MafiaScum.net is:

$9,322

I was actually surprised. I thought it was going to be worth only 2-3 thousand at most.

Those things are all bullshit

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Is it worth SOME money? yes
Is it worth THAT MUCH? hell no

There's definitely value in the site. A lot of people visit it, it has good SEO visibility & a ton of content. That foundation is valuable and not trivial to replicate.

Would you be able to make boatloads of money monetizing it today? Probably not. But think about how basic what we have is: a message board, the onsite chat & wiki. There's a ton of room to improve:
- Better website(moving wiki content there, building face-to-face app(kind of like Fibbage), building realtime game app with simple graphics)
- Improving what we currently have: streamlining the queues, modernizing the forum gameplay, better mobile optimization

This isn't me trying to persuade anyone to buy it(I'm here because it's fun to build stuff, don't care about $), but more to get people excited about the things we can do and can build if we just get excited about and focus on it.

This is reasonable. The site definitely has value

But the value lies in its value to the users, not the value to potential advertisers/marketers.

It's like a teddy bear that you've had for 14 years. Means the world to you, buuut, you'd part with it if your GF told you to, buuut, you couldn't sell it for more than a dollar if you tried. Goodwill at best, garbage at worst.

Unless your little brother shared the teddy bear, then he miiiight be willing to take it off your hands for a "fair" sum. lol

[zakk]

My experience with being part of "free communities" where someone with a bit of money tries to buy the community/property/game from the developer/admin/etc. (who has spent the best part of their twenties running a forum or old game and now wants to move on to Living Real Life™) usually ends up in the new owners dredging the community for ideas on how to create what end up being poorly contrived ways to attempt to marginally monetize the system in manners that don't cramp upon the current users style TOO unreasonably, but which also make the site literally ZERO percent attractive to outside users if they have to pay-to-play in ANY way, and the community thinks that everything's been "saved" for a while, but then it just goes back to how it was after a while, since:

a. the place is still a money hole in terms of hosting costs
b. the development of new features is still a huge time sink, and
c. the community continues to dwindle (at the same rate, or an increased one)

The key to "new management" is

not trying to monetize

. That'd be like electing a new president of a country, and then having him raise taxes and/or create new taxes that never existed before, just to pay off the government's bills. The citizens would be like "the fuck bro" and those that could move, would. And since it's an internet time waster instead of an actual place where we live and work and stuff, it's simple to just choose to leave entirely, OR just choose not to use the paid features (not a single one of you fuckers has paid actual real money for WinZip, don't lie to me).

That's not to say that transferring ownership might not be a good idea. If a price is agreed on and someone steps up, the key to "new management" is trying to provide users familiarity, first and foremost. A more convenient, more accessible, enhanced experience, sure, that's on the horizon. And maybe monetization of some things is in the future, sure, maybe. As long as it's in ways that will never affect the vast majority of users, and wouldn't affect balance in any way... perhaps it even catches on and becomes a fad, like ... I can't believe I'm saying this... but... look at the ridiculous market for hats in Team Fortress 2. Valve used to charge for the game itself. Then they introduced hats. Soon they made so much money selling hats in TF2 that they made the game free to play (so they could attract MORE users to buy hats!).

But if the user base is dwindling already without monetization schemes, what do you think adding them in will do to the basic user experience? lol

[zakk]

Another fun idea: get a bunch of big ms personalities in a game together and folks can donate to the site to join a spectator thread. Maybe one thread with role/setup reveals and one without.

This has potential.

who would honestly pay for that though <_<

You can't even get me to read games I'm IN, what makes you think I'd pay to read one I'm NOT in?

[zakk]

What about a series of MMA fights on Internet pay per view where scummers step into the octagon against one another to settle their forums grudges

I'm sure someone would pay to watch users whoop one another
We could call it Scumfights


Now I kinda wanna do it for free regardless

you can be like, this site's version of a people's champion

kurimbo slice, king of the ring

[zakk]

http://www.makeplayingcards.com/design/ ... -card.html

I think I used this to make my personal deck I use for meetups

tbh this isn't a bad deal

i was looking for something like this the other day and it was much more expensive

my business cards on moo.com cost over $1 a card (though i use a pretty fancy + gold foil design)