Umm...A rant. Sorry.

[pixelated]

/golfclap

This is totally unrelated to the rant (which was a good one by the way, occasionally it's good to be reminded of why we do what we do), but I've seen people using this to praise something more than once lately, and it bugs me because a "golf clap" is actually a way of showing false praise for something. A bit like saying. "WOW NICE WORK" with heavy sarcasm to someone when they mess up.

"A "golfclap", often quoted in between two asterices(*), has the definition of being an indicator of extreme sarcasm and/or false praise towards what another person has said."

There, got that off my chest. Carry on!

[Amazone]

Cellgirl, It's not just you, i agree also. Btw, While you were typing i found a similar solution in the country i live in, with more than enough bandwidth. One could choose where to have the server- in any european country, or in USA. I think i would choose a separate PC, a stand alone server, while working on my main computer. Not that i create CC, i have no time for it - but i think it's very fun, i have tried and if i spent more time, i can see it's not very difficult either.  I have always made a lot of effort into my hobbies, which i am sure everyone does. Maybe there is a problem for some creators of free CC to understand all this technology on internet, where to find hosting to decent prices, to make a system out of it. With several subdomains one can take backups of older files and put there with links, and one can be able to create new stuff all the time. I see that Peggy - that greedy paysiteowner already know this, she has always used the bandwidth as an excuse, while she probably do not pay much for her domain at all. And TSR? I don't know if they use the bandwidth as an excuse for people to pay for their items, probably not. Some paysiteowners simply do not care, they just want the monee!

I do not blame single siteowners of free CC, i do understand that they can get in troubble, simply cause they choosed wrong host, and because they do not always understand all this technology, while some does and do not ask for paypal help.  It has been too common to ask for help to stay free,  like i should ask you or someone else to help me with my website when i get into difficulties. This must not be understood as any attack on anyone,
it's just a personal opinon i have. And i keep MTS2 separate from this, as i do with Nouks family. They have after all established themself for a long
time ago, and are helping tons of other creators to upload their stuff so we can download what we want. A decent alternative to Peggy, Rose, TSR and other greedy paysite owners.

I am donating to MTS2 every month actually. While i would not mind donating to Nouks family when they need it. It's the single sites i
would like to see act different, i feel a pressure everytime i see a single site with a paypal button, or asking for help,  and if i do not donate to help them out, i feel guilty to even download some of their stuff. As a player, i would go broke if i should help out everyone who creates free stuff. At the same time, i feel that i am paying for someones hobby, even if they are sharing it with me. I think sims 2 fans are creating so much CC, it's like a jungle - i see it everywhere, and they must continue of course, for the fun of it, but i would love to continue seeing single sites without paypal buttons or asking for money.

To be honest, i do not even dare to reveal how much money i have spent special to rip off paysites, i have also helped some single sites, (guilt feeling) -and i have donated to Insim as well, but stopped when BBB started to act like an ass, and i've donated to S2C.  We, as players get an enourmous pressure on us, it's not excatly cheep (cheap?) to buy a game, which i have done with all my EP's except FT. I know i  do this voluntary, absolutely, but my priority has been trying to rip off paysites, that is why i am here. But now, i do not really need anyone else than the booty if i want something for my game,  i use MTS2 often, and i love Nouks hair I also have some few favorite sites in scandinavien, they do not ask for money, even if they have a lot of traffic and many downloaders. But like i said, it's just my opinon that people who start up a free site, should try to find a decent host they can afford.

*wow,  when i post this already 9 other have posted before, i use a long time to make myself understandable*

[calalily]

Okay. That'll be a $200.... donation.

Happily - that's a nice jumper and I'm very lazy.    My mother used to get people to pay for the wool - the jumper - she didn't sell. She didn't charge for her time either, but my mother was a very nice doormat.  

[glasscigarette]

This is totally unrelated to the rant (which was a good one by the way, occasionally it's good to be reminded of why we do what we do), but I've seen people using this to praise something more than once lately, and it bugs me because a "golf clap" is actually a way of showing false praise for something. A bit like saying. "WOW NICE WORK" with heavy sarcasm to someone when they mess up.

"A "golfclap", often quoted in between two asterices(*), has the definition of being an indicator of extreme sarcasm and/or false praise towards what another person has said."

There, got that off my chest. Carry on!

See...I'd seen it before used in another way. Urban Dictionary is probably right, but they have been known to miss additional definitions too. I thought it was meant to be quiet, polite, unexcited clapping, the way you do when you are on a golf course. My bad.

[Saraswati]

She is simply being realistic, and speaking of one of the several tangential issues that stemmed from the OP. Celligirl spoke of the responsibility for paying for one's own site, and several others discussed how that is not always possible if a site grows larger and faster than was expected.

The thing is, when we talk about bandwidth and paying for it, we need to look at who it's an issue for and who has actually had issues with dealing with it, or even mentions it. And that's not paysites currently. They stopped using bandwidth as an excuse a year ago. Now they just act like it's their right as a general rule.

The trouble you get is while you throw around the 600gig bandwidth, the truth is you can have sims sites that don't get anywhere near that and can still have their hosts slap them.. And this is an issue in particular for Sims sites. I had a friend on another popular free site yesterday telling me they hadn't gotten anywhere near their limit, but their host had still pulled down access to their forum because they'd gone over 1 percent server usage for that server and were affecting other sites. The honest truth is, you pay for five bucks hosting, you get five bucks. The fanfic analogy doesn't relate in most cases because the files in most cases would not be as large, and would not be being drawn in the same pattern. The point I am just trying to make is that this is a complex issue and it is not as simple a case as "find the cheapest host"...

[glasscigarette]

The fanfic analogy doesn't relate in most cases because the files in most cases would not be as large, and would not be being drawn in the same pattern. The point I am just trying to make is that this is a complex issue and it is not as simple a case as "find the cheapest host"...

That's true, but the fanfic analogy, although it does relate to Sims stuff, simply doesn't extend to this part of the issue; it's a good analogy, but not a full-fledged catch-all for all Sims CC issues. I think some of us might be blending Celligirl's points together. She wasn't comparing the cost of a fanfic site to that of a Sims site, but the process. They were two entirely different issues being discussed. Fanfic = creative product using another person's ideas, like Sims files, which makes them inapplicable for sale. That was entirely separate from the bandwidth issue, although she discussed both topics, and pointed out that site owners need to take responsibility for their own costs rather than expecting others to do it for them. I don't entirely agree with that last point, because there are plenty of free sites that have grown to large for their owners to pay for on their own, and that shouldn't mean that they have to shut down or live in a cardboard box in order to afford the site.

And you're completely right, most paysites don't even bother with the bandwidth excuse anymore, because it's not usually applicable, although it can be a fairly complex matter.

[Saraswati]

oh gawd, it's not even a question that they don't have the right to charge and they shouldn't be using it as an excuse if they do... And they don't have the intellectual property rights to their files.. This conversation is that it's wandering from the practical to the theoretical and back again, and I'm a practical girl.. I'm only concerned with how it works and who I've seen struggling with these issues the most.

[glasscigarette]

Absolutely. You can't expect people to pay for your bandwidth if you're selling child porn on the internet, either, because you have no right to sell child porn in the first place (not that payfiles are as despicable as kiddie porn, but you know what I mean). I was just defending the use of the fanfic analogy, because it seems like people are attempting to extend that analogy across more CC issues than Celligirl was originally attempting to describe.

Gah, I'm spending a whole lot more time on this topic than I intended.

[Saraswati]

*chuckling* Me too luv.. And I originally only piped in more because I've seen people I like and respect- WS, MTS and Insim, all suffer from these issues. And because I knew it wasn't that simple because Tig explained it to me, my original intent in posting was just to explain to Celligirl where it can get complex... This isn't an issue for us right now, our donation button is down now, and we won't have to worry about it for the next three years.

(third edit, because it's 3 am and my leg is in a lot of pain) I 100 percent agree with this discussion if it's a question of do they have a right to charge and use bandwidth as an excuse? no. Do they have the intellectual property rights to their highly deriviative content? no.

[Zillah]

This has all been very interesting - lots to take in. Guess I won't be setting up a pay sweater (jumper) site any time soon  I never knew that about fiber arts patterns. Learn something new every day. And anyway, I knit socks. Maybe if the site I'm on has to resort to begging, we can post a big sign - "will knit socks for bandwidth" lol
z

[Saraswati]

*laughing* my foot is killing me.. thank you, I needed that..

[celligirl]

However, to me, that's also very different from CC: technically speaking, you don't have to pay for the materials to make CC; I don't think anybody buys the game or a new computer just to make CC.

Well, from what I've seen, many people use Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to do recoloring. The former is not a cheap program no matter your budget, assuming that a person acquires the program legally. And depending upon your financial situation, the latter might not be considered cheap, either, although it's significantly less expensive than Photoshop. Granted, they might not have bought one of these programs just for CC creation purposes...but then again, they might have done exactly that. I really have no idea how meshes are created, but I would assume that it requires some type of software that costs money, as well. So, there are tools involved beyond the game or a computer. Just like Angel has to buy patterns and yarns and needles and markers and stitch counters and such. (I knit, too! Yay for knitters. I'm a sock person, like Zillah. I love to knit while zoning out in front of a TV. It's a lovely practical hobby, to boot. Unlike certain games. *cough, cough*) True, computer programs aren't consumable in that you don't have to buy them over and over, but they are still outlays of money. Photoshop, in particular.

@Luna: You do a great job with making yourself understandable, no worries.

I do think a lack of technical knowledge plays into this. It's so easy to start up a site, especially if you use templates so that you don't even have to know HTML. You can certainly create a site without understanding anything about things like bandwidth. And it's not just a lack of knowledge of the technology behind hosting, either. I'd be willing to bet that there's also a lack of knowledge about things that can be done to make a site "leaner and meaner" in terms of using less space and bandwidth. I mean, practically everything I know about this stuff, I learned from making mistakes. For instance, when I first started, I thought it'd be a really good idea to have really high-resolution pictures for all the graphics on my little site. Coming from a printing point-of-view, which is my background, high resolution is good. The higher the better, even, because the higher the resolution the sharper and cleaner your images look in print. It was only later that I learned that a monitor can't display a resolution above 72dpi. (Maybe that's changed now, but that was the case when I started.) So all of my images were about 5 times larger in file size than they needed to be, so essentially the site, as dinky as it was, was using about 5 times more bandwidth than it should have been using and I'm sure it took for-freaking-ever to download, especially because at the time broadband wasn't prevalent!:D Live and learn, as they say, and I learned that lesson quickly!

Maybe people out there aren't as dumb and clueless as I was when I started building websites, but I'll bet that there are some Sims sites out there that are way larger, in terms of file sizes and therefore in terms of bandwidth usage, than they really need to be. So that, too, would be something I'd look into before I'd start asking for donations, to see if I could "trim the fat" off the site to bring its bandwidth usage more under control. Lots of text instead of graphics, no fancy layouts, using style sheets that only have to download once the entire time a person is on your site, using smaller preview pics, etc. It might make your site less eye-catching and attractive, but if it was a choice between aesthetics and closing my site, aesthetics would lose.

As for hosts...Well, as has been pointed out there are some Sims sites that would simply not qualify for relatively cheap shared hosting. The amount of traffic they receive would require dedicated server hosting, which is much more expensive than shared hosting. I tend to think -- though I may be wrong, of course -- that this would be the case for only a minority of sites, ones like MTS2 that host hundreds of thousands of files and have probably thousands of visitors a day, merrily downloading away.

Maybe some of the people here can correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that on average a CC file, huge "supersets" aside, is usually less than about 5MB in file size. So, say I had 50 5MB files available for download, for a storage total of the downloadable files of 250MB. If all of those files were each downloaded 4 times in one month, that would be 1GB of bandwidth usage, yes? (Mind, I'm not counting the bandwidth for the preview pics and the HTML pages and such. I'm assuming that most of the bandwidth used on Sims sites is used by people downloading the zip/rar files, not so much from looking at all the pretty pictures. Correct me if I'm wrong about this, too. ) So, in order to reach only 100GB of transfer (and, so far as I know, several times that would fall well within the normal parameters and limitations for most shared hosting plans), my 50 5MB files would have to be downloaded 400 times each in a single month. (Or, some would have to be downloaded more than others in whatever combination to add up to 100GB of file downloads.) That...seems like a lot of downloads to me. I'm sure some small but high-profile Sims site achieve that regularly, but I can't see that happening on ALL of them. Or am I just being naive here and sites get even more traffic than that? Or am I just calculating bandwidth incorrectly?

I mean, either way I obviously don't think it's right to charge for content in order to defray your hosting costs. I'm just, frankly, skeptical of the sites, free or otherwise, who claim they need donations because of bandwidth when they don't offer a whole lot of content for download. When I'm skeptical, I don't donate to them unless and until I can be relatively certain that I'm not being scammed. I do donate to MTS2 and intend to donate to Nouk because I can plainly see that their site/network of sites would be gigantic bandwidth-eaters. But I'm not seeing the same thing for many small single-creator sites I've visited. So, bottom line, I'm wondering if my skepticism is warranted or if my knowledge is simply lacking.

And...I had other things to say/ask, but I've got errands to run, so it'll have to wait.

[glasscigarette]

Well, first of all, you can download MilkShape (a meshing program) for free and use it for a month before you have to pay for it (a very small amount), and there are a number of free programs that can be used for recoloring, so cost really shouldn't be an issue in that respect. It's honestly just running a site that costs anything, unless you are attached to a specific costly program instead of using the free ones that are available. And, I personally know dozens of people that use warez; I don't advocate it, but it's always an option. It's not necessary to go down that route, though, even if you don't have any money, because (yay!) free/cheap, legal options are readily available.

As for the bandwidth issue, I really can't speak on it because I don't have personal experience. But I do know that there are plenty of sites out there in the Sims community that run into bandwidth issues, and it's a lot more complicated than you might think. Piggi's Sims is one of my favorite sites for Maxis object recolors, and she has hundreds of files on her site. She uses preview pictures, but not an extraordinary amount of fancy stuff that might choke up the bandwidth, as far as I can tell. Still, two or three months ago she hit her bandwidth limit and was in danger of being shut down, at least temporarily. The wonderful people over at SimsCave hosted all of her files for the remainder of the month, and asked people to download from them rather than from poor Piggi, or her site would die.

Up until that point, she had never reached her bandwidth limit, and suddenly she surpassed it when the month was only half completed. I don't think Piggi ever expected that her site would suddenly spike in popularity to such a degree, and she wasn't prepared financially to do anything about it. She didn't start charging for content, she merely asked people to ease up on the site for a little while so she wouldn't be shut down that month. And the community came to her aid.

Basically, the bandwidth issue is a complicated one, and can't always be answered by smart host-shopping and simplistic site design. Popularity, for one thing, cannot always be predicted. Either way, no one here is going to argue with you about bandwidth issues not justifying paysites, but as several people have pointed out, the widely loved "bandwidth excuse" is no longer practiced by the vast majority of paysites because nobody is buying it. Smaller sites just don't need that much bandwidth, and the giants make far more money than they would ever need for the purposes of maintaining the site. It's an issue of ratios, really, and just about everyone knows that the bandwidth argument has been debunked.

That said, there are still plenty of reasons why a free site might need a little extra money to be maintained. Honestly, I don't see what's wrong with requesting donations. Nobody is obligated to contribute; smaller sites don't require that much money to run, and larger sites usually have enough members that even 5% of members contributing a dollar here and there is significant. And if my favorite creators are willing to spend their hard-earned RL money on their hobby, I don't have any problem with doing the same from time to time. The difference between donation drives and paysites is that paysites require you to contribute, or you don't get the goodies.

I also love a particular site (which shall be unnamed) with a forum and a fair amount of content, but nothing enormous. A few months ago the site owner asked if anyone could help with a donation. The very first person to donate gave $10, thus paying for bandwidth for a month and a half. Now, according to your stance, one might be irritated and wonder why this site owner couldn't shell out $7 from her own pocket for the month. Well, having been a poor college student myself, I fully understand. When I was in school, I easily could have eaten on $7 for 2 weeks, maybe more. Does that mean that this site owner should have just closed the doors and shut down her site just because she didn't have any extra cash? I don't think so. Several hundred people in her forum would have been devastated, and some great content would have been lost. So, in order to keep that from happening, she appealed to her friends and forum members, and one person's small donation, which would have bought a fast food meal and a cup of coffee at best, kept the site running.

Anyway, I don't think there's anything wrong with being wary of sites that ask for donations, but I think you might be a little more paranoid than is absolutely necessary. A site that asks for money all the time might be a little suspicious, but there are plenty of perfectly wonderful sites that are kept running on donations alone, simply because the communities there would hate to see the sites go down, and lots of other sites that simply need a little assistance now and then. Nothing wrong with that.

[calalily]

I really have no idea how meshes are created, but I would assume that it requires some type of software that costs money, as well.

IIRC, it's about $US40 at the moment - Milkshape.

You can certainly create a site without understanding anything about things like bandwidth. And it's not just a lack of knowledge of the technology behind hosting, either.

There's actually a site that helps with HTML and site coding - My Sim Site - started by Vashti and hosted by WNF.

I'm assuming that most of the bandwidth used on Sims sites is used by people downloading the zip/rar files, not so much from looking at all the pretty pictures.

Yep.

So, in order to reach only 100GB of transfer (and, so far as I know, several times that would fall well within the normal parameters and limitations for most shared hosting plans), my 50 5MB files would have to be downloaded 400 times each in a single month. (Or, some would have to be downloaded more than others in whatever combination to add up to 100GB of file downloads.)

I don't think that would be hard to achieve, actually.  For example, my site (which is hosted on Sublime, along with Hecubus' site and the Simmers against Securom site - meaning that there are four sites on there all together - 3 of them content heavy) I did an update in October last year. 3gb in 6 days - which isn't a huge amount - except that it was mostly recolours, only pirates really know about my site (certainly at that time) - and that's not counting all the other sites on the same hosting.  Should I be a hair mesher, I have no doubt it would be like a frenzy - 200 people might run to my site for something, but 600 people might run to Helga Sims for a new hair, or more people know about another site.

As far as filesizes - it's easy to go above 5gb. I have 14 files (that are just sims) over 5gb, a couple over 10mb, and I have 40 (some sims and some houses) over 4gb. I don't use any custom content in my houses, but if I did, that would make it even higher. Hecubus' Masterpeice Fallingwater is 48mb to download. So all that bandwidth limit would be easy to achieve - just 20 people download that a month - and bam, you hit the limit you've mentioned - and that's not even one person per day. And that's assuming that people download one thing this month from your site - there are lots of other things - I have 975mb worth of stuff on my site - that's a lot of choice in downloading - and that's just my site - that's not counting Hecubus' or Sublime which has been going for years.

[celligirl]

That said, there are still plenty of reasons why a free site might need a little extra money to be maintained. Honestly, I don't see what's wrong with requesting donations. Nobody is obligated to contribute; smaller sites don't require that much money to run, and larger sites usually have enough members that even 5% of members contributing a dollar here and there is significant. And if my favorite creators are willing to spend their hard-earned RL money on their hobby, I don't have any problem with doing the same from time to time. The difference between donation drives and paysites is that paysites require you to contribute, or you don't get the goodies.

As I've said, I don't think that it's wrong, per se, to ask for donations, so long as content isn't being "held hostage." I've said that, for me personally, it would be the very last thing I'd do. I might do it if all other options were exhausted, once I'd checked to make sure that my site was as lean as it could be, once I'd shopped around to compare and contrast hosts, once I'd bled my own budget, etc. If I'd gone through all that and still was in the red, so to speak, then I, myself, would likely close, move my content to a place like MTS2, and then give them whatever money I could in return for hosting my stuff. (Although if I couldn't give them any money, I wouldn't dump my stuff on them, either.) That way no one loses the content, and I'm not asking anyone to help me. Maybe I just have too much pride.

Of course, I realize that different people are in different places in life. I was at one time a starving college student, too (20 years ago ) and I have at times been unemployed with only infrequent and unpredictable writing jobs to keep me going and pay for rent and food. I'm more stable now, so I have some options. Not everyone's in that same place. I realize that.

Anyway, I don't think there's anything wrong with being wary of sites that ask for donations, but I think you might be a little more paranoid than is absolutely necessary. A site that asks for money all the time might be a little suspicious, but there are plenty of perfectly wonderful sites that are kept running on donations alone, simply because the communities there would hate to see the sites go down, and lots of other sites that simply need a little assistance now and then. Nothing wrong with that.

I am paranoid, yes, at least when it comes to giving anonymous online people that I don't know money. I am actually a generous person, in general, and will give readily when I know that my donation is really needed and that it will really be used for what the person or organization asking for it is saying that they need it for. I donate both time and money to several charities such as, for one, Habitat for Humanity. I am admittedly wary, however, of giving to a site if I'm really just supporting someone's hobby. Chalk it up to newness in the community, I suppose. Maybe I'll get past it, maybe I won't. More information about what these sites' costs truly are would help in that regard.

And now I really do need to go run those errands. Off the computer with me.