Umm...A rant. Sorry.

[LadyDea]

I have always compared The Sims 2 CC to fanfiction as well. Writing is a hobby and I enjoy creating new stories or realities for characters that are not my own making, but never in a million years would I ever expect anyone to pay me for writing fanfiction. I also compare those writers who demand a certain amount of reviews before they further post a chapter or whatever to paysites. Drives me up the wall since I firmly believe that people should write (fanfiction or not) because they enjoy it, not for the gushing "OMG I luv it! Update so0n!" reviews or strictly for the money. How can you force yourself to write/create something you don't have any passion for? CC isn't very much different. The tools and talent may be different, but the concept is still the same.

[Saraswati]

Hey Celligirl

We were able to cover our hosting first time round ourself.. but second time, our owner had different circumstances so the staff gave what they could and then these guys around here helped out and kept us afloat. But we don't hold our content hostage, and we won't.. but sometimes you can't always find every single cent of your hosting. Kathy at Insim certainly can't, their hosting is several hundred dollars a month. (I think they might have mentioned they're having some trouble right now)

Kath

[SnarkyShark]

I really enjoyed reading your "rant", celligirl.  Excellent points.

[glasscigarette]

*Clap!*

Nice first post, Celligirl! The whole CC=fanfic is a good comparison, and one I've run into a few times. Makes sense to me.

Edited to remove reference to golfclap. Apparently some of us have been using the term incorrectly...? Not really sure, but I don't want to sound sarcastic just in case. 

[celligirl]

@LadyDea: Hee hee. And usually the people who are begging for reviews are the ones who can't write for piss to begin with, so I figure I'm doing the fan community a service by not reviewing in order for them to keep their grimy fingers away from their keyboard.

OK, OK, so I realize that the people who do this are generally 13-year-old attention whores who just need to do some growing up and get moar edumacation, but still...

@Saraswati: You know, there are more and more hosts out there that are offering unlimited bandwidth these days, as the cost has gone down as the Internet has blossomed that I don't understand why the big bandwidth-eating sites don't just pull up stakes and change hosts. I guess that's harder to do if you're forum-based, as many of them are, but if you're really desperate, you just back up the content you want to save and move elsewhere. I mean, my host offers a package that, for a little less than $20/month, you get unlimited bandwidth and unlimited file storage and I believe you get forum software with that, too. IIRC, the only stipulation is that you have to prepay for at least 2 years of hosting, so you have to cough up $500.00 up front. But if the big sites are paying hundreds of dollars for one MONTH of hosting, then...?

I don't know. Maybe I don't know enough about this hosting stuff. I'm certainly not an expert about it. But to me if your host wants to charge you hundreds of dollars a month and there are cheaper options out there and they're not willing to negotiate with you, then you say buh-bye to your host. Or at least I personally would do that before I would ask my visitors/members for money.

[LadyDea]

@LadyDea: Hee hee. And usually the people who are begging for reviews are the ones who can't write for piss to begin with, so I figure I'm doing the fan community a service by not reviewing in order for them to keep their grimy fingers away from their keyboard.

OK, OK, so I realize that the people who do this are generally 13-year-old attention whores who just need to do some growing up and get moar edumacation, but still...

Ditto I don't review on purpose for those stories. I came across one fanfic in particular that was well written (a few by the same author, actually with the same problem), but the writer kept going about how "nobody was reviewing" and "wah wah I'm not motivated to further update because no one is bowing to my awesomeness so I'm taking my story down and THEN you'll be sorry ". Not in so many words, but the general idea. Puts me off completely. Be gone shameless review-whores!

[Saraswati]

Hey Celligirl

What it is.. is that it depends on the capacity of the server.. not all servers are equal. If you get a big site that hosts their files on one server then if it gets lots of demands at one time, then that site slows to an unmanageable crawl for everyone, pages start to crash and won't load, which causes a great deal of stress.. Tiggerypum explained this to me. MTS for one is on something like six or seven servers dotted around the world. In order for them to be properly equipped and keep things moving at a reasonable speed, they need a lot more hosting than a 20 dollar a month plan provides. And most of us don't mind helping because if we don't help sites like MTS out that don't hold content hostage, you end up with TSR type sites where everybody pays.

Does that explain it a bit?

Saraswati

[celligirl]

Does that explain it a bit?

Saraswati

It does, thanks. Like I said, not an expert. And, in fact, my host does say that if your site is causing trouble for others, then you'll have to move up from shared hosting to a dedicated server which is, yes, $200 a month. I've never hit that ceiling yet, though, and there have been months where my one site has hit about 1.5TB of bandwidth. I imagine some of the large Sims sites probably go well over that mark, though.

I guess in my original post, I was thinking more about the smaller sites.  I've visited some that didn't have a huge amount of content available and who couldn't possibly be using a ton of bandwidth unless people were mercilessly leeching from them for some reason, yet they were saying something along the lines of "OMG! Bandwidth bill! Donate to meeeeeeee and I'll give you this seeeeeeeet!" Sorry, not buying it. I've got tons of multimedia on my main site, much larger files than a standard Sims download, and they are visited and viewed often. I can't see how offering a few hundred Sims downloads (Like I said, I'm talking about smaller sites here) could result in having a huge bandwidth bill when my multimedia-heavy site is only using on average about 600GB a month. Unless you're using a free host, of course, in which case...time to move! Cough up your six bucks a month for a non-free host who'll give you at least several hundred GB a month for your five or six bucks.

Now...time to grocery shop. Yay. :\

[Smeagol]

Basically, you don't donate to PBS because you really want that totebag.

Shuffles feet.... I do....  I LIKE the totebags.  Good for keeping knitting etc.......  LOL  

[Mi-Chii]

Please take that first post and send it as an email to every paysite owner. Seriously. That is made of win.

[Astonished lemons]

I loved that. Send it to all the paysite owners and all the sheeples that go to them.

Its probably been said, but Zillah, Parsimonious whenever they get a donation they may sometimes make an item that that person requests (if it seems like a good idea) and make it availible to everyone. The Wicked Nouk Family gives out those sets for everyone when they make their donations, and I think that those are good systems to go by.

[dietofworms]

Celligirl, your examples of copyright and derivative objects in your first post make the clearest explanation I've read.

Thanks for joining us.

[tiggerypum]

Looking at the various comments in this thread...

Filesizes for most fanfic (and other text) are nothing compared to sim download files, and yes, that does make a difference in hosting issues.

Also fanfic is a heck of a lot easier to deliver, you don't need to explain to people how to read it  (whereas in the sim community people expect support when they can't figure out how to put the stuff in their game).  I am sure with fanfic you can also get rude people and hate mail and such.

'Unlimited' hosting is not.  No matter what they claim, and they always have limits, sites that outgrow their 'unlimited' hosting find that pages cease to load correctly, downloads fail, etc.  Most of those sites plan to host -your site- and many others all on one server, assuming none of them actually need the whole server. 

MTS2 for instance, has a farm of servers, I don't have it memorized, but it's something like 7-9 servers, and at one point our monthly bills were around 2k...  Now - MTS2 has managed to keep the content free, but has had to sometimes run fund drives in order to keep things going (and we've had mixed results with ad services to generate revenue).  Even with that, we've had periods when people were having problems getting to the site or downloading.

I'm involved with a facebook app - lil greenpatch - which quite outgrew it's hosting at AbigcompanyIwontname.  Pages stopped loading, the database overloaded, coding changes did not help, and they simply said, sorry, no, this is all we can do for you.  GP had to locate hosting at a service designed for high volume sites.  With 500,000 daily users, even -without- large download files, the other company's system (and they did add servers) was just not able to handle it.

Bigger sites also often end up using databases (forums use a database too). Often forum software is not optimized for high volume - so they you need a great programmer (like Delphy) or you might need to hire a consultant to come in to help fix things... or buy more servers and hope that helps enough.

And historically - why most small sites offered 'donation gifts' is because (and I've been in this community since sims 1) -- because shockingly enough, most people were not motivated to even throw $5 at a site they liked if they didn't get something extra back. 

There are two ways to look at the sims downloads

1) as a consumer - who bought the product and is now 'shopping around' online grabbing more things for it.  The people who come at it as a consumer will gladly take things that are free and -not- pay, even if the site owner doesn't want to spend hundreds a month out of their own pocket funding this 'hobby' of theirs.  (and frankly for how some of these 'free' customers behave - hassling those who offer their work free - sometimes yes, it is a wonder that more people don't quit.)   At any rate, those coming at it from a 'consumer' point of view aren't going to 'donate' when they already got the stuff for free, but might 'buy' a donation gift.

2) as a member of a community - someone who sees themselves as a member of the community, even if they never create, and only download - those people might realize that there's more involved and that just because someone has talent and time, that doesn't mean they can afford to pay for hosting once it's gotten beyond the $10-$20 a month level.  Those people might donate from time to time to their favorite sites without having to be bribed with 'thank you' gifts.

Anyway - the sims world is NOT a community really.  It's a bunch of people with a common interest, and while some of the folks congregate on boards and form communities, it's not all one big happy family... There's as many people hating on each other and criticizing for one thing or another as there are any that are supportive... if not more.   But it is people who will behave as a community and be supportive of the others in it that make 'free' sites possible... because once a site becomes popular, hosting becomes difficult.

----

Anyway, my 2c, with experience running big sites (and I remember when 10k visitors a day made us one of the top 10 sites on the web, lol).  There's a lot more involved that people who haven't been involved with a very large site don't realize.

PS - I've seen more responses since I wrote this - and indeed for a little 1 creator site that -hasn't- hit it big, they should just treat it like the hobby that it is, and not expect that people need to pitch in to pay for the $10-$20 a month of hosting. 

[glasscigarette]

Filesizes for most fanfic (and other text) are nothing compared to sim download files, and yes, that does make a difference in hosting issues.

The comparison is based more on the fact that the process is creative, and utilizes the creations of someone else. I know nothing about hosting, so I have to assume that you are right (I mean, you have a bit of experience ), but I don't think that was what the comparison was initially built on. It's a good point, though.

Anyway - the sims world is NOT a community really.  It's a bunch of people with a common interest, and while some of the folks congregate on boards and form communities, it's not all one big happy family... There's as many people hating on each other and criticizing for one thing or another as there are any that are supportive... if not more.   But it is people who will behave as a community and be supportive of the others in it that make 'free' sites possible... because once a site becomes popular, hosting becomes difficult.

Hey, not everyone in my neighborhood agrees with one another, either. Political issues, for interest, regularly divide cities and states, even nations. That doesn't mean that we aren't all part of the same community; the larger community contains many smaller ones, but that doesn't make the larger one invalid. What makes Simmers members of a community is that we have this shared interest of which you speak, and are forced to deal with many of the same issues, some of which are positive and some of which are not. I don't think disagreements within a community negate its existence.

[LadyDea]

Filesizes for most fanfic (and other text) are nothing compared to sim download files, and yes, that does make a difference in hosting issues.

The comparison is based more on the fact that the process is creative, and utilizes the creations of someone else. I know nothing about hosting, so I have to assume that you are right (I mean, you have a bit of experience ), but I don't think that was what the comparison was initially built on. It's a good point, though.

Yes, that was what I meant. There is no way a fanfiction (unless is was novel length and even then that's pushing it) can compare filesize wise (try saying that three times fast!). When I compare CC to fanfiction, I am comparing the borrowing of a concept created by someone else and using that concept. Respecting that the back-story, plot, characters, etc., are not your own and that should be acknowledged by not demanding payment.

I'm not very good at explaining, which is why I stay out of debates.