Insim under new management!

[Sherry]

Look, the only reason I'm even CONSIDERING the possibility of keeping it is because I know the peasants would like a minimum of change. Therefore, either someone volunteers to pay for it BEFORE we get it up and running, or by the time the issue comes up, I'll have hucked it. Are you volunteering? An owned license for both sites will cost us $360, because those shysters raised prices. There are several different currencies, so you may be able to get a more favorable rate by conversion. I, personally, would rather eat my own offspring than pay that, and if this were just entirely about me, this issue would not even be debated. Are you volunteering to pay the equivalent of 2-3 months worth of server bills for THAT?

If this is so important to people could you maybe combine forums so that it would only be $180 for one (without phone support) and then $40 per year license.  Now since you don't need separate donations, assuming all donations will come through MATY or here, you could just password protect the area? 

[Pescado]

If this is so important to people could you maybe combine forums so that it would only be $180 for one (without phone support) and then $40 per year license.

It is not particularly feasible to merge a DB once it has been forked. That, and combining the forums would lead to 12s being able to see it all. And we can't have that!

[Piratey]

Personally I would love to know just how many "failed" business ventures his mommy has bankrolled. She had better close the purse strings before he uses up all of her resources. Otherwise the poor old fool (mommy) will be looking for a  position as a greeter at Walmart.

You mean Waltmart.

But yeah, I was wondering that too. Provided she actually knowingly bankrolled them. For all we know, she could be in some sort of hideous-decor induced coma and stole her bank account details.

[Sherry]

I thought maybe just temporarily put the forum up and then moved the downloads over by reuploading them.    I'm not sure how much there is so this might just be too much work entirely.   How much chat was going on that people felt compelled to save at insim adult?  Or at least if vB was important enough to everyone it might be worth it to save the money?  You could place downloads in an adult section that was hidden unless you had a password or registered to be over 18, and I think 12s could get into insim adult if they really wanted to anyhow.

$360 per year plus another $80 to renew every year seems a bit pricey to me as well when there are plenty of free or cheaper options available, but I am not one to tell people how to spend there money.  Just trying to offer suggestions, though they may be unrealistic.  I wouldn't know I was never over at the adult site.  

[calalily]

I am not advocating wild theories or opinions on anything, even though sometimes we tend to do exactly just that when it comes to paysites, and without evidence it's just as meaningless.  I think most of us could wade through that in order to find some truth in what is going on, and to keep the subject on tract.  However, if they are unwilling to answer for their behavior that is suspicion enough, for someone to say "something is not right here, we need some explanation, maybe we should work together to get some or at least call them out royally for not giving any."   I'm sorry I don't think the risk of speculation is any reason to avoid situations like this in the future, be it pay or free.  Especially if the other end can easily clear the situation up by giving an explanation instead of avoiding and neglecting concerns.  

Well paysites are already doing the wrong thing, so it's not as if they have integrity to damage.   I agree that maybe we as a community need this sort of thing, and had debated many time with myself as to whether to bring the subject up here - we've had many discussions about Insim donation drives here, Insim policies.  I tended to keep my mouth shut though because what looks fishy to me may not be fishy, and because if someone really does have problems in their life, then I have served only to hurt someone who was already doing the right thing, if a little hamfisted.  If they have problems and have to share what is private and personal, this would be a blow to them.

As for the excess of devoted, OMG I love X fans!, that's all part of the very problem, that extends past this K&E situation.   People are ingrained to think just because something is free for them then essentially anything free creators do is ok, when clearly this is not the case.   The more we avoid the subject the more likely it will be that people will be duped.  Plus, this site as seen plenty of asskissing rantings of paysite fans afraid that their precious peggy or rose will leave, it's nothing we haven't dealt with before.

I don't think it is about free - I think it's about personalities.  And while we universally have no sympathy for paysite fans, some pirates, even those who've been here a while still have difficulties dealing with the subtleties of how you're supposed to treat freesite owners.  In regards specifically to Insim, when we critiqued their anti-PMBD policy, there was some kermitflailing and much of the "but they're freesite owners!".  Converse to that, we have some people with personal grudges, who sink the boot whenever they can, and so there's that side of the equation.  We also have some who see critiquing an idea or debating something as personal attack on them, rather than just debate.

It might work, this plan, or it might end up being a new flavour of shitstorming.

[Delphy]

With regards to vBulletin - you don't have to get the support/maintenance thing every year.  You can just get 2 owned licenses and upgrade it for 1 year then be done with it.  Most of the "upgrades" are minor things that are easily hacked in normally anyway.

I will, however, come out and say this now:  I am prepared to purchase 2 owned licenses (1 for each site), at no cost to the community.

With that said, it might be more advantageous in the longer run to adapt some of the systems we have on MTS2 (specifically the filtering and sorting and displaying of actual downloads - to make it so that you can actually FIND stuff on InSimClone) to an SMF system.  This would benefit not just the New Insim, but also MATY and any other SMF forum that wishes to use it.  I am willing to take on that work and coding it up.

Of course, going the SMF route does mean it's free (less money) but you also get less features than compared to the existing Insim system that people might be used to.  I'd say maybe poll a vote based on the above.

[HugeLunatic]

I would agree the license fee seems a bit high.  vBulletin IMO didn't work well for InSIM, yet it works for MTS2 which I suspect is because of the tweaks Delphy makes.

What are the key differences between vBulletin and SMF?  Maybe that would help to decide.  I did donate at InSIM, but since I'm an unemployed student, now I can't.

[Delphy]

I would agree the license fee seems a bit high.  vBulletin IMO didn't work well for InSIM, yet it works for MTS2 which I suspect is because of the tweaks Delphy makes.

Tweaks? Tweaks?! I will not have my customisations labelled as mere "tweaks"! 

Seriously, they are so much more than tweaks.  The upload wizard, the download browsing pages - totally written from scratch, and the main showthread has had a ton of changes so that it's only about 50% original code.  Tweaks, indeed!

[Quorneater]

Delphy I promise you it is a complete fluke that I came on here to post this and found you happened to have just posted, so bear in mind my post was actually inspired by Pescado's talk about expenses he might incur!  I don't want to stir up any old arguments we might have had

My position is that once any project like the Pescado-Insimenator starts to look like costing serious money, I am right back to my day-1 stance which is why can't the creators from InSim just start their own free/pocketmoney sites, or accept the many offers of space on other people's small sites, at no extra cost to the community?

Ok so InSimenator was also a community that wishes to continue having an entity, but surely the community is the forum posts - why ever must an online community require there to be hundreds of game content attachments taking up expensive space and data server resources in the forum?  Links to the new homes of the refugee downloads can be posted instead, and they can carry on being *discussed* and supported in the new community forum.

[HugeLunatic]

My apologies! 

I love MTS2.  You've made it easy to find what I want, and not overwhelming with the massive amount of downloads.  I do understand they are more than mere tweaks, and I wish I knew how you do it.  Seriously.  I don't even know the differences between vB and SMF.  Sad yes.

[Piratey]

Some links on differences between SMF and vBulletin: Because I'm too lazy to explain it
http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/SMF+vBulletin+phpBB
http://www.phinesolutions.com/a-comparison-between-vbulletin-and-simple-machine-board.html

SMF is more versatile, while vB is more powerful. It's really a question of what features are truly necessary.

[SnarkyShark]

I agree that maybe we as a community need this sort of thing, and had debated many time with myself as to whether to bring the subject up here - we've had many discussions about Insim donation drives here, Insim policies.  I tended to keep my mouth shut though because what looks fishy to me may not be fishy, and because if someone really does have problems in their life, then I have served only to hurt someone who was already doing the right thing, if a little hamfisted.

I don't think it is about free - I think it's about personalities.  And while we universally have no sympathy for paysite fans, some pirates, even those who've been here a while still have difficulties dealing with the subtleties of how you're supposed to treat freesite owners.  In regards specifically to Insim, when we critiqued their anti-PMBD policy, there was some kermitflailing and much of the "but they're freesite owners!". Converse to that, we have some people with personal grudges, who sink the boot whenever they can, and so there's that side of the equation.  We also have some who see critiquing an idea or debating something as personal attack on them, rather than just debate.

Exactly. I even felt obligated to, in essence, put my money where my mouth is by helping support their donation drives. And I'm sure I wasn't the only one who felt that way. If this incident serves any purpose, maybe it's to teach the community to be wary of any site owners, pay or free, who are constantly pressing their members for funds.  If it doesn't smell right, throw it back.

[Delphy]

In terms of differences, SMF is much like the older 3.0.x vBulletin systems.  Insim, however, had the later 3.7/3.8 systems, which offer a lot more things like profile customisations, social networking, social groups, and much more use of ajax (which SMF also uses to a lesser degree).  It also has a much larger community for modding the system (vbulletin.org) as opposed to SMF - however, with that said, I really don't like the 3.5+ way of doing mods since it seems bloated to me.  3.0.x is much "cleaner" in that regard since you pretty much have to hack the core code to mod it, so it means that you have to have a much better understanding of how things actually work and the possible load they incur.  3.5+ allows "easier" mods to be installed, but unfortunately most of them (like a lot of the ones for 3.0.x written by people who dont run high traffic sites) aren't coded very well, hence meaning that the whole thing slows down as you add more stuff.

If all you want is basic forum-like systems, then SMF is probably the better choice becuase it's free and much "lighter" on the servers than a fully loaded out vBulletin system.  However, if you want the additional social networking, tagging, social groups, notifications and so on systems from Insim, then vBulletin would be the way to go.

(Note that even my hacks on MTS2 could not be done on 3.5/6/7/8 without hacking the core code.  I also make extensive use of memcached which makes everything very speedy.  However, the basic logic behind the systems is actually fairly simple so it could be modified to be used on other forum systems, with time.)

[redisenchanted]

Insim was a disaster trying to find items. Delphy's customizations over at MTS2 make everything so easy, it's the only V-Bulletin site that works.

I don't care what format the forum is in, I never really participated much, but please, I'm begging here, make the damn colors different.

I think that Quorneater is right. Small no or low-cost sites download sites that are linked from a central forum would make everything more resistant to catastrophe and greatly diminish the cost involved.

[TKPurrrrs]

I think a little grumbling is undersantable eledhel... we are going though a rough time and a lot of us feel like we where just pimp slapped. We are going to be grupy and jump at shadows for a while... we just have to take a little time and care so we dont alienate eachother with it.

As far as for whats going to happen on the clone site... I think that small postive changes at the site would be welcomed but that any changes should be decided with the staff... I trust them, their a good bunch who has basically been running things themselfs without a captian for a long while and although we have had some bad intanceses the staff for the most part have done well considering how kathy and eric hindered them. I think if you want the site to be the true home of us refugees you have to disscusse changes with the staff inorder for us regular members to feel happy and comfortable with it.

I also think that making the clone site truely nutural in the pay vrs free debate (or at lease trying our best) is what most of us want and I think most of us would agree we wouldnt mind seeing some of the people who post put up links to this site and the original site that they got stuff from... instead of people fearing saying anything about this site like they did with kathy around.

As for VBulletin... I dont really care, I want the stuff that made the site my home... I want my chats with my friend if possable althoug thats not as important as other things to me since some of the bulk of my conversations are inane stupidity sometimes, I want my storys and contest, I want to be able to find stuff like I was on the old site... except with mabey an improvement to the search function since that thing never worked for me, I want my downloads (thank gaud I have a copy of my self sim saved on both computers), and I want to sighn in and feel like Im at home again without having to be beat upside the head with "we need money now or the site will go down!" threats... from the way you all talk the donation system here is good although Im not shure how many of our old donaters will feel comfortable donating since they probably feel extreamly ripped off. Anyways If VBulletin frys your system or whatever or is not affordable for us then I suppose we will have to find something new... but please talk stuff over with our staff... if you just do it without expaining to them and getting the go ahead a lot of us are going to feel like peasents again... think of it as the staff are our representives and we are our own little state.