The Sims Mod Board is having problems, too.

[silver]

I went to the Mod Board for the first time in a couple of months. I had seen something I liked and was JUST about to RAR it when this notice suddenly came on:

System Warning
SMB is closed now
because of:
1) no funds to pay hosting (in September)
2) not enough staff members to get the daily tasks done


This announcement will stay for 4 weeks.
If you love SMB you can do:
1) donate to help us paying the server
2) apply as volunteer for daily staff work


This announcement is paid until end of
September, then it will disappear and our
data on the server will be deleted (uploads,
users, forums etc.), if we cannot gain
adequate volunteers for moderation and
for administration tasks and if funds cannot
be collected for server payment until the end of September.

Read more here:
Donationdrive
SMB Staff wanted!

This was on the Donation drive page:

  Rescue SMB - Donationdrive
Help us to pay for our webspace and traffic
SMB has now two 25% Sponsorship places free which must be filled. SMB needs two new Co-Sponsors.


The Sims Mod Board Hosting is not free, because of bandwidth usage.
To provide you downloads with a fast speed, SMB uses many Gigabyte
webtraffic a day. The files take many space, so Gigabytes of webspace are in usage.
Our professional webhosting costs money and only with your help we can keep
it running. Monthly fees and server upgrade fees are not affordable just by one
(unemployed) private person. We rent a server to provide all the forums, downloads,
members and features.
The Server with fees, traffic and upgrades costs about 4 thousand dollars in one year.
Soon we will need two servers, if we are still growing.
A Setup of just one good Server could cost us 1000 dollars.
Please help us to keep SMB for future online.


Thank you for helping us out, thank you for your help to keep
the unique Sims Family with all its special and creative people online.

The SMB Management  


And on the Volunteers page:

Rescue SMB - 25 skilled Volunteers wanted
Help us to moderate and administrate SMB and keep it growing
SMB has to reoccupy 12 existing still unoccupied staff positions and SMB has to setup 13 new positions already.

Send your volunteer application please to: guardteam@pc-sims.com

The Sims Mod Board Website runs not itself. Our Superadministrator has to work
hard currently 14-18 hours daily to keep it running, even if the Superadministrator
would have a good reliable and consistent team of at least 15 staff members,
but we haven't it at the moment. To keep a "big" site running means doing a lot of
work. Every new registered user has to be checked, all uploaded and replied
contents must be controlled frequently. This are many "man hours" daily and of
course all voluntary, because SMB is unable to take paid moderators. SMB has
no income. Our advertisements can not even cover the daily webtraffic partly
and donations we have maybe 1-2 (about 10-12 dollars) in a long whole
month, which is eaten up by paypal fees and taxes immediately - nothing
left to pay for the host even, because the whole monthly donations are to little for
just making a currency conversion in one unique currency balance.

Now the site grew up beyond of 50000 members and a lot of old
settled members are now not anymore ambitioned, motivated or available for
staff tasks. This means that even with enough funds we could not keep it
running, if we would have not enough voluntary and ambitioned staff
members to keep the SMB program up, for example content checks, user
checks, weekly contestforums, linkmanager, site promotion, design,
bugfinding, post reporting and security - just to name a few of many tasks
needed to be done reliable and dialy all the time.


So if you cannot donate, you could think if you would be ready to invest 3-4
hours of your valuable time daily to help us out with site tasks or maybe
you know some good friends who would be ambitioned and motivated to help
out on a site.
We need reliable work, daily work and work which is not interrupted always.
Our Superadministrator had to work 18 hours+ two months ago and then
the workamount was growing so strong, that our Superadministrator was not
more able to fulfill all the tasks and we pleased for help and we offered
a few new positions for application on the site in the hope to recrute some
people for it.
Nobody new applied to this positions until yet, so we have now to search by
this announcement for urge.
About 60 hours daily site work have to be covered now, so we need
new volunteers urgently or SMB can run only with heavily restricted contents or even not at all.

The SMB Management

Please write your application if you are reliable and base skilled about
forums, moderation and administration to the emailaddress mentioned.
Note: We cannot take "occasion volunteers". You should be sure in it.
We cannot take beginners. You should at least know approx. how to moderate.
We would like to see people who have not already a task on SMB, because
those with tasks shall look to do their first task properly before to apply for new.

Send your volunteer application please to: guardteam@pc-sims.com



I'm really sorry to see that the Sims Mod Board is having problems. It has some truly inventive mods out there.  But I can't help thinking that the solution may not be getting funds or volunteers as it might be re-thinking how the forum should be run. Having a donation drive right after the Noukiesims and the MTS2 ones, and during an Insimenator drive that is progressing slowly might make a bad situation a lot worse. Asking people to volunteer 3 - 4 hours a day might not get the desired result. 3 -4 hours a week? Perhaps. But 3 - 4 hours a day? That is almost the equivalent of a part-time job without the pay, and I don't know if a whole lot of people will be willing to put in that much time.

Or is this how Sims sites are? I admit to not having any experience with running a Sims site.

[missangelica]

Erm, sounds scammish to me.    Is this a new way for them to go pay?

[SparklePlenty]

They can reduce all their costs by thinking of a new, creative way to provide a forum and files. I have never even heard of them, but I do know that asking for volunteers to work 3 to 4 hours a day is ridiculous. People have real jobs and school and lives.

Maybe its better if they close down.

[Micavaga]

I saw that this morning during my "morning rounds".  I read the notice and thought I could volunteer some time since I mod a non-Sims board, but when I read 3-4 hours a DAY, well, there's no way I could give that much time.

I hope they come back... I love the designers over there.  I'm glad I got Margierytka's Gold and Graphite bathrooms last night.

[silver]

I don't know if they need to close down, but I do think they might, indeed, need to restrict content or downsize their "vision" of what the board should be.

First, hopefully, at least some of the surviving admins, mods, etc. are on cordial enough terms with Delphy, Inge, Kathy, Eric, Pescado, etc., to have a chat with them on the mechanics of running a larger site. Do any of these well-known people in the Sims community have some tips for them? What worked? What did not work? How do they cut costs? How do they process submissions and divvy up the workload? It sounds that first and foremost, the SMB-ers need to scale down and rethink some aspects of the site, even if it means restricting some downloads.

And that 3 - 4 hours a day bit is shooting themselves in the foot, IMO. They aren't going to have the easiest time finding qualified people to do that. Once again, how does Delphy, Eric, Kathy, etc. etc. handle it? Perhaps they can impart a bit of wisdom without giving away "trade secrets". Would closing or consolidating forums help, for instance?

I, too, ran a couple of non-Sims boards in the past ... one small board, and one with about 3000 members or so. I was half-asleep when I first read the notice, and was about to volunteer for one of the functions, too, thinking, "Oh, I could probably help out for 3 - 4 hours a week." But then I re-read it and realized that no, it wasn't for 3 - 4 hours a WEEK. That dissuaded me from volunteering, and it probably is dissuading others, too.

I don't think they're looking to go pay, though I could be wrong. I sense, however, a truly overstressed owner who needs some serious assistance on how to deal with certain problems on the site .... and not necessarily monetary assistance, though that is important.

[calalily]

I don't think it's a scam - they've had problems in the past paying for hosting, and just plain old went down.  They came back though.

I would volunteer a couple of hours a week - cause like everyone else, I don't have 3-4 a day - but I couldn't figure out how to work it enough to download there (multi-lingual) easily, so I'd have real problems actually doing anything for them.

[Paden]

Damn! I have a membership there but haven't been for some time, months really. It was just difficult for me to find what I wanted but I did like the quality of items that I downloaded. I just don't have the three to four hours a day to devote to them, due to the fact that I'm active on more than PMBD, you know? Also, I'm a full time parent and while you may think I'm right here in front of the keyboard, lots of time I'm playing with my kid and taking care of him. I hate to see them having such problems, they're a good bunch.

[Duckie]

I've been there and snooped around but never downloaded anything. I'd help out but I don't think they'd want a known pirate on their staff.

[missangelica]

Now that you said that, I remember their tribulations before, Calalily.

You'd think that with their many members that donations and volunteers wouldn't be a problem.  I guess I smelled scammishness because I'm surprised that they would let this slip to the very last minute essentially instead of looking at the future ahead months ago and doing something then. :?

[HawkGirl]

I love SMB and all of Katy's little mods. It's because of her my Sims can actually smoke. lol They can ride out in lakes on boats, rafts, etc. Ship and recieve packages/gifts. Send postcards to each other. Have a courtroom with a judge and lawyers. Power Company, telephone company. Their own army, etc...over half of my CC is just made by Katy and her little object mods/her new little animations for the Sims. But, I hate that I've been getting flagged a spammer. Almost everytime I post. Doesn't matter if I type one sentence or a thousand. It's the one site I wouldn't mind being a monthly donator too, because I love the site and everyone on it. But I hate that Spam thing they installed and I don't think that's the right way to cut down on bandwidth. Plus they're so intent on keeping the Paysite discussion off the board they have to approve everything you do, you can't even edit your own posts now, so it's become more like a board in China like their watching your every move. Which can make you feel uncomfortable. I would have done monthly to Insim as well, but I knew Kathy was in a desparate situation so I took what would be a monthly and did as a one time donation. Then I'll just donate throughout the year to her. I hate to see SMB down, so I'll go see how much is needed to keep the site up.

[wicked_one]

It should not be costing them $4000 a year unless they are either being scammed by their server provider, or they are paying someone to do server admin stuff for them.
Also, their forum has the worst layout -ever-. They put up recolors on MTS2 and then force everyone to go to their site and register to download the mesh, but that place is such a mess you can't find anything. So I wouldnt be surprised that, if out of the like 10,000 members they have, only 20 regularly post. Which means lots of unnecessary boards and categories.
Plus all the unnecessary images :|
They have some nice stuff, but its so hard to find what you're looking for.
Emails to them with suggestions on how to fix it and make it more user-friendly (which would also make it use less bandwidth) went unanswered.
They also shouldnt need someone to help out 3-4 hours a day.
Even if someone pointed Delphy/Kathy/Pescado to the site and they gave advice, I dont think they'll follow it.
They should have known they were having hosting/money issues before now. Why are they waiting until right before time is up to say anything?

[HawkGirl]

It should not be costing them $4000 a year unless they are either being scammed by their server provider, or they are paying someone to do server admin stuff for them.
Also, their forum has the worst layout -ever-. They put up recolors on MTS2 and then force everyone to go to their site and register to download the mesh, but that place is such a mess you can't find anything. So I wouldnt be surprised that, if out of the like 10,000 members they have, only 20 regularly post. Which means lots of unnecessary boards and categories.
Plus all the unnecessary images :|
They have some nice stuff, but its so hard to find what you're looking for.
Emails to them with suggestions on how to fix it and make it more user-friendly (which would also make it use less bandwidth) went unanswered.
They also shouldnt need someone to help out 3-4 hours a day.
Even if someone pointed Delphy/Kathy/Pescado to the site and they gave advice, I dont think they'll follow it.
They should have known they were having hosting/money issues before now. Why are they waiting until right before time is up to say anything?

That's what they just told me also, it's going to cost between 3 and 400 a month for the host. They have 50,000 members now. That seems like a lot of money to me. But I also can't imagine anyone would give up their day job for 400 a month to work for them. I know Jan puts in a lot of hours there. So I don't know why it's so expensive or is that normal costs?

PS At least they are not going subscription it will either be free or not at all. So I think they are being honest in needing at least 400 to keep it open and going.

[Pescado]

There's no way in hell SMB chews up enough to need two servers, or need that many staffers. They're just being inefficient. Look how efficiently I run things under the Highlander Rule. If their administrator needs to work 18 hours a day just to maintain the site, they're doing it wrong.

<insert cat macro here>

[Ash Redfern]

<insert cat macro here>

[redisenchanted]

I've always had a love/hate relationship with that forum. Some of the downloads especially by Katy are very creative. The board was such a mess though. It was nearly impossible to find anything and blinky signatures and graphics everywhere.

I wouldn't mind donating to them but they are so inefficient, I'm afraid it would be a wasted effort.