@saintlewi,
saintlewi wrote:no, for us, it IS a personal thing. for you, it is financial.
When I said let's not make this personal, I was not saying that the forum was not personal for you, but that you didn't need to make it an issue about our respective personalities (like you are doing now by trying to ascribe motivation to me that I don't have).
Quote:as the OWNER of this site, talking in other threads about the costs associated with it buying it, converting it to your forum, what it is worth in terms of posts/users imported from our forum...youre going to honestly tell me you are doing this for pure altruistic reasons, with ABSOLUTELY NO financial aspects motivating you?!
I have financial limitations, but that is not my motivation here at all. If I were a millionaire this is what I'd spend my money on. But that doesn't mean that financial factors are not involved.
So what I am objecting to is your characterization of this as being motivated by money when it is motivated by my desire to build communities and is
limited by money.
The droid forum would struggle to make $3 a month (which is probably why it was sold instead of monetized), it's just not the cash cow you seem to think it is. I spend $3oo of our company's money on it (which is not just mine, so I have to justify the spend on a financial basis to some degree) so the benefits have more to do with community than direct profit. I see potential there for the community but honestly forums are not great ways to make money. Right now, the best thing I could do for my company in terms of making money would be to just get rid of all our forums, but we made our company in order for us to be able to spend time on forum building because we like doing it.
I've probably lost between $80,000 and $100,000 on this site so far, if I were as motivated by money as you say I am going about it unintelligently.
Quote: if that is the case: give us back what we had before you spent money on it.
Who is this "us" you speak of? If you are willing to spend the money it
costs (not
makes) I would gladly do so.Thing is, I think you just want to complain, and don't think at all about the actual cost of what you want. But if you are willing to put your money where your mouth is I'll do it.
I am willing to put my money where my mouth is to build community. It's very easy to run your mouth about it but harder to do it. If you really are willing to do it I am more than willing to help you and restore the community.
But remember, I found it for sale. I did not "steal" (as some of you have accused me of) your forum. I think what I did kept it online where it otherwise might not have but if someone else is willing to lose money on it (and trust me, unless it achieves economy of scale it is not going to make more than it costs) to keep things the way there were for you then I am willing to lose my $300 to help you.
So if you are willing to buy the forum software license it was running (which I did not purchase and thusly do not own) and are willing to spend the money on hosting I will give it to you at a personal loss. But no, I am not willing to spend my money on your ideals that I do not agree with.
Quote:thats the problem: it IS personal to us, because our forum was personal, not some big (or, from the sounds of it, small) business venture for someone.
I get that. But that doesn't mean it doesn't cost money. If I wanted to buy the forum and run it as it was it would have cost me $500. I am not willing to do that (especially because this is not not just my money and our startup company is not rich, I even had to cut the company a personal check as a loan for the $300 just to buy the forum, and with some of our members living off credit cards we can't afford to throw money away right now), but I'm willing to pay half for you just to see if you are really willing to put your money where your mouth is.
And if you aren't, why are you asking me to put my money where your mouth is?
Quote:you call it improvement. nobody from our forum sees it that way. we did not have ads on the top, sides and bottom of every page. because we didnt want them. of course, when you are selling ad space, and you can show how many people you have as users, you can charge more for the space, right?
In theory yes, but we don't sell the ads ourselves here (they are just automated network ads) so making claims about traffic won't help because the advertisers don't really ever decide to buy ads here, they decide to buy ads on a network that we are a part of.
And remember, the droid forum traffic is worth about $3 to $5 dollars a month right now. You really must think the numbers are very different to keep seeing this as being about making money.
Quote:so...if you hadnt bought it, it would have stayed the same, we would have been happy, but you wouldnt be getting an extra bonus in your check, right? but its not financial motivated...i get that.
No, if I hadn't bought it the owner would have kept trying to sell it (I bought it the second time I saw it for sale, the first time there were no buyers) and it's very likely change would have come or just be closed at some point.
I won't get any bonus in my "check". My company doesn't pay me. I have loaned my company almost $35,000 in the last few years for forum building. If I were as greedy as you make me out to be I'd just keep the damn money and stop spending it trying to improve communities ($30,000 of that is part of what it cost me to make this software and I could have just let it use crappy software and kept the money).
Quote:while I am sure there are plenty of good people here, it is very frustrating to want to focus on a specific topic and have most of the posts be completely unrelated. and please do not say money has nothing to do with it. anyone looking at the last couple pages of this thread:
http://able2know.org/topic/141905-1
...will see, by your own posts, how much of it has to do with $$.
There is a difference between not having money for something and being motivated by gaining it. Not having unlimited money to make money "not an object" doesn't mean someone is motivated by financial
gain, perhaps they simply would like to avoid more financial
loss than they can afford.
Quote: at least be forthcoming about the reasons why it happened. now that THAT issue is out of the way, good luck with your business, hope it works out for you, glad i could help facilitate that along. again, i understand (and hope you do, too) that its nothing personal here.
I'm being very forthcoming. I bought the forum for $300. The forum software costs about $200. I'll swallow my $300 loss myself (I can't ask my company to spend $300 to give you what you want but I'll switch that cost to my own money by forgiving the loan) and give you the domain and do all the work of setting up the forum for you just the way it was if you buy one year of hosting and the forum software it used to run on. That is the bare minimum you'd need to keep the site online and it should run you about $300 (which is peanuts for a forum, but it's a small forum). I like to see forums work, if you can convince me that you are going to make it work and are willing to make personal financial sacrifice for it (instead of just criticizing someone else) I'd cut my losses and let you have at it.
Are you willing to spend the money to make the forum the way you want to? If not, why are you trying to get me to spend mine to make it the way I don't want to?
(I was just funnin.)
