A Community Funded WipeoutZone?

[infoxicated]

Would you be willing to help fund WipeoutZone?

Although I wouldn't think of making WipeoutZone a pay only site, it does cost in the region of £350/$560 a year for the space on the server.

At present I pay for this without too much trouble, and I get to host my personal site on the server space too, which is an added bonus. However - as has been documented before - additions to the download page have been non-existant for the last year or so due to bandwidth limitations on the server.

While I'd really like to have the 1st anniversary wallpaper entries available for download, amongst other things, it did worry that if we went over the monthly bandwidth on the old server then the charges were very heavy indeed. Athough we've moved to a new server with more bandwidth, this is likely to be a temporary measure as it's not too reliable... which really off-sets the bandwidth gains.


So... what I'd like to do is ask for contributions to a "slush fund" - an account where we can pool money to use in case of emergency. For example, if we need a new bit for the server in case it fails, or if we want to upgrade to allow more bandwidth for things like streaming movies.

Before I set up anything like this, I would like to get some opinion on the matter... discuss and vote at your leisure. :)

[xEik]

First of all, I hate websites where quality content is only avilable for users who have paid. On the other hand I wouldn't mind paying 5 or 10 $ a year. How much money would you get from that, though? I'm not really sure. How many of us are die hard WipeoutZone fans that would do so?

Another problem is: those who pay usually assume they have the right to have their demands accomplished. As if the site had to adapt to their requests simply because they paid for it. It's a complicated situation.

However, we all know that now the only one bearing with the costs of running the site are you Infoxx.
Concerning the problem of bandwidth, I have always been willing to donate my bandwidth. My account in a webserver in my University in Barcelona has plenty of space, good speed and no bandwidth limits. Hotlinking is enabled and the sysadmins (who are students as well) don't care that much about the usage we do of our accounts (a friend of mine is constantly downloading films with peer to peer software and nobody ever warned him). The whole download section could be backed up (just in case something happened) and then made available through my account using the links in WipeoutZone downloads section. It would cost me nothing and would relieve a little the official server's load.

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[DJ Techno]

Ahh. A contribution to this site!!!!

After reading all of what Infoxicated was talking about and about the bandwidth.
(I did find Julians site Infox)

A contribution wouldn't do nobody any harm, just decide when you want to put the collection plate on the table. :)

I guess the Americans can offer support of anykind :)

Question: Can this be considered a tax right off? :) (it's a joke)(And sure I wouldn't mind doing contributions to this place)

[Hybrid Divide]

Considering this is really the last bastion for WipEout related stuff. Not to mention this site rocks. I don't mind paying any money at all!

Here's the problem. Currently, I am not employed, and money is hard to come by. But I'd be happy to donate sometime down the road when my money situation looks a bit better! :D

Paying for stuff sucks.
However, WZ does not.
And if a small bit of money can make it all the better, I'm all for it! :D

Vagrant Logic

[infoxicated]

For any of you who tried to visit for most of yesterday, you'll see what I mean about the f*#@ing server being unreliable. Believe it or don't, this is the third time in six weeks the server has been down. :evil:

Anyhow - I believe the way to go would be a paypal account button or suchlike - so that people could just lend a dollarpound or two whenever they felt like it or were able to.

I could go the whole guilt trip and point out that I've already donated around $1000 dollars with the payment of server costs, Ezboard ad removal fees and registering/re-newing the domain name. But I don't begrudge a single penny of it - most importantly I have made many good friends here, and as an added bonus the site looks good on my resume when I apply for jobs (or get offered them! ;)).

All I'm saying is that I'm not as financially sweet as I was a year ago, which maybe wouldn't be the problem if this site was run by a number of dudes. I now have a car to pay off, as well as other finances to sort out (got burned by the market crash, you know). This means that WipeoutZone becomes less of a priority for me financially, and the knock on effect is that the site isn't as good as it could be because of this.

Anyone who finds themselves unable to contribute for whatever reason, well, that's okay - your main contribution will always be your participation in the community. And it's the community here that's more important than cash to me. :)

[lunar]

Great idea, a paypal thingy would work well as long as it was anonymous and people don`t think donating entitles them to any advantages or freedom to behave in an antisocial way, but people who think like that probably wouldn`t contribute anyway....
I can`t really see a problem.

I think the poll answers could do with one that allows us to express a bit more enthusiasm for your idea.

[Dragon]

I won't mind as soon as i start working for gamestop if i get the job :) If not, then i'll send ya the loose change i get from savin lunch change at school. The most its ever been to is $237. So i'll attempt to contribute. The thing is i'm only 15 and i make a crapy $60 on my paychecks at McDonalds (DON'T WORK THERE IT STINKS LOL) the only thing i like about the job, is when the manager leaves, and then my fav manager lets us do whatever we want (as long as its work). I start food fights :D. Basicly, unless i get a better paying, job, i won't be contributing for a while :(. I'll try to contribute to some extent though.

[zargz]

ha! my job situation is bad as well but I checked for the
'I suppose ten dollars isn't too much to expect.'
I thInk foxy ment 10 box / year ..
or contribute now and then whenever possible. 8)

[jmoid]

i'd be happy to chip in to a paypal account when i can, it's really not much to ask at all.

[stin]

I would gladly pay........cos I really do enjoy reading all the posts! :)

stin

[Thruster2097]

rob, you dont really need to ask my opinion on this one...... As I am a long serving member here, I would be honored to give something back to the community which has given me so much wipeout over the past few years.

count me in! :)

[Synthetic Consciousness]

I agree with Thruster. We need to keep this place going. I love being able to participate in intelligent conversation on a forum, instead of having to deal with all the usual l337-lamer comments and flaming found on other boards. Just let me know where to send the money order (cuz I don't have a Paypal account). :D

[infoxicated]

Okay, due to the mostly positive response (Asche XL - you know how you voted. :roll:), I've set up a paypal account to except donations on the mail address contributions@wipeoutzone.com

There's also a button for doing this on the main site. I would put it on the forums too, but I cant be bothered messing with the screwy templating system on an otherwise peaceful Sunday. :)

Thanks for all you can spare, but again - your most important contribution is your participation :)

[infoxicated]

Okay.... if you cant contribute it doesn't mean you have to feel guilty and stay away! :lol:

Where the hell is everyone? :-?

[Lance]

.
i suspect that many of us are distracted by the war news
.

[xEik]

From my point of view, it's the spammers heritage. Little relation do I find with our low posting and the community funded suggestion. As for me, I know I won't be contributing until I get my own revenues (not mi parents') and it doesn't make me feel guilty.

Why spammers heritage? Well, it all began in the late 2002. The amount of useless posts grew rapidly and strong policies had to be enforced. I think that when WipEoutZone forums were born everybody felt free to comment on anything he or she found interesting enough. I feel that these days people refrain themselves from posting non-WipEout topics just in case it could be considered spam. Historically this has been an open minded community that could talk about everything. But with fellow wipers feeling that non WipEout related issues may be out of place the posting rate has gone to the bottom. Another main factor is that the versions loved by all the community have been there for many years, we have talked about almost everything related to them. Last version (I still haven't played it) was a bit disappointing to most of the people here. No new release in PS2. A release in PS3 isn't at all assured. A guru like Nick and the people from curlymonsters get their sequel cancelled. These are dark hours for AntiGravity racing...

I'd just like to encourage people to post. Even if it has nothing to do with WipEout. The only true requisite for posting something has always been that it is forward-thinking. Nothing else.

On a side note...war doesn't really affect me: I live in France, I see no TV here or read any newspaper, I've always despised the Spanish government, etc...

On a second side note...The main site hasn't had a major update in more than a year. I understand that you have lots of others things to do but I'm sure that many from the community would like to lend a hand. Things like XL/2097 tables have been in the todo list too long. I'm sure someone would be happy to do the bulk of the job and then let you have the final tweaks. Some other tasks could be helped by the community, although now it's only the moderating tasks. I offered getting rid of the icq icons in the forums templates. You said you could easily do it but the fact is that, easy as it may be, you won't probably find the time and will to do such a thing. I know how this kind of things go. There's always something more urgent or interesting to do. Not that I act differently.

I don't know about the others but I vist the forums at least twice a day but it's true that I have been lurking for the last four weeks. I must get a program ended for next week's Friday, including an oral presentation and a written report for it.

Cheers! :D

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[infoxicated]

:o

I was only kidding! ;)

xEik, you are right that these are dark days for AG racing... but I know for a fact that the Wipeout series has not been laid to rest. With that glimmer of hope it definately makes it worthwhile to keep the site going until the excitement builds for the next installment.

Even if we have gone into hibernation recently, I do believe that the traffic would increase upon news of another sequel. But I don't think that news will come any time soon.

As far as development of the site goes, yes - there have been too many things on the to-do list for too long. Responsibilites change - if it's a choice between getting £1000+ for a freelance project or tweaking this place, then the paying project is going to win every time.

The spammers at the end of 2002 done just enough to damage the spirit of the site. In that regard, they were successful, I guess. :roll:

[Lance]

.
mmm.... weeel... the people who never spammed in the first place should not have any fear of speaking their minds and posting whatever they want to. the moderators only stomped on spam and flames. only a very small percentage of the members ever spammed or flamed. almost certainly less than 2 percent. the main thing that bothered me about the spammers was their solipsism, and the fact that most of what they said had no coherence or logic, and was said without thought of what had already been said by others, and often things were stated as confident fact when in actuality they didn't know what they were talking about. fortunately for them and us, the official Fusion forums are open again. part of the recent dearth [that is nOt a typo :) ] of posts here could be due to that re-opening
.

[Wamdue]

Im here! Ive been a member of wipeoutzone for so long now that everytime I open a browser I type www.wipeoutzone.com in the adress feild on routine.. Sometimes when I even know wich site Im gonna visit and when its not wz :D kinda freaky!

For the last weeks Ive been occupied with working on my university worksamples and since Live was released Ive played it most of the time I have off from the drawing, but I check wipeoutzone atleast once a day.. I too have been noticing a very few percentage of posts.. Hopefully itll rise again, and probably will. This is a community with many members whos been here for too long to just leave like that :D

[U V]

i've got what i came for on the main site [wallpapers/screen saver] and i find this forum to be just about right, theres hardly eny sh*tty posts, plus its very cool to see how well some people can play the 5 games 8)

[Spaceboy Gajo]

Perhaps it's spring time in the Northern Hemisphere, especially those parts that don't live in sunny California or Florida.

Perhaps being buried under the first real snow storm of the millenium, we AG racers like to spend our time with the birds, chipmunks and various other animals. Smell the flowers, etc.

Perhaps, we enjoy the weather!

I think it'll mainly pick up during the summer months. Especially when schools are done and when the summer gets a bit hot for my liking. I do enjoy the winter, love it in fact. However, the weather has just turned just about right here so I am going to enjoy it.

Don't get me wrong, I love summer but only if I can enjoy it like you can do with spring.

spaceboy gajo :)

[infoxicated]

On a second side note...The main site hasn't had a major update in more than a year. I understand that you have lots of others things to do but I'm sure that many from the community would like to lend a hand. Things like XL/2097 tables have been in the todo list too long. I'm sure someone would be happy to do the bulk of the job and then let you have the final tweaks. Some other tasks could be helped by the community, although now it's only the moderating tasks. I offered getting rid of the icq icons in the forums templates. You said you could easily do it but the fact is that, easy as it may be, you won't probably find the time and will to do such a thing. I know how this kind of things go. There's always something more urgent or interesting to do. Not that I act differently.

xEik - it has been brought to my attention that you may be offering to do the database work required to the site in order to have tables for 2097/XL/ Wipeout PAL/NTSC and integrate this into the legacy code that already exists for the site.

If this is the case, please mail me and I will send you a copy of the database schema, plus the templates for the time entry/display page.

Please bear in mind that the site was originally written in pre-php 4 days and in the December2001 update the legacy code was only "patched" to work with Global Variables disabled in versions of php 4.1.2 and above. This code is a complete mess and it is this I am intending to re-write when I complete my current freelance project.

Still, if anyone including xEik fancy's bolting on yet more patches to this code before the re-write... you're more than welcome to try.

[xEik]

I'll mail you past next week's Friday. As I said above, that day I have an oral presentation of a program I'm currently polishing. The biggest part of it is already done and only the final adjustments are necessary. In one or two weeks I should have plenty of spare time. We'll be in contact. ;)

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[infoxicated]

Cool :)

Now all I have to do is work out when "past next week's friday" is...! ;)

[xEik]

Is this bad English or you are saying that past next week's friday could be in two years time? :P In case it is bad English I mean that once next week's friday has passed (that is April the fourth) I'll send you a mail. Probably on saturday or sunday. I won't do it before because I want to focus on my current project. Just knowing that I could be doing something else would be too tempting. Specially in situations similar to when you can't fix something even after a couple of hours of debugging. :D

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[Thruster2097]

Perhaps i am doing something wrong, but the last two times I tried to make a contribution through paypal, it always denied me because I dont live in the united states, and I cannot give them a "valid" telephone number. I will keep on trying.... just wondered if I am the only dumbass having this problem!

[AmishRobot]

Okay, I haven't checked this thread out in a long time so my response is a little outdated, but...

I've hardly been posting to this site for the last few months, but that certainly isn't from a lack of interest. In fact, hardly a day goes by that I don't check the forums. Nor is my lack of participation from a fear of being considered a "spammer". I just simply haven't had much I thought was worth saying. Add to that the fact that my conversations of late all seem to divert into war talk, and I have no desire to spoil the spirit here over my opinions. On top of all that, my interest in videogames in general (lacking for better topics) is, to put it kindly, waning. The last few games I've subjected myself to have had the punishing effect of turning my love for games into complete apathy.

Basically, I still love Wipeout. I'm still considering my Daniel Chang logo tattoo. (It'll never happen ;)) I've been a member of this forum longer that any other I can think of, and while I may not be participating much, I'm still quite active. I'm guessing a lot of other people are doing the same thing.

Just wanted to say that. Thanks. :)

BTW, I will be contributing a little bit when I have the chance, though with all I've read on Paypal, I'm a bit wary of that avenue. Infox, if it came down to me sending a check, woud there be any problems with currency exchanges from the U.$.? IMO's are expensive as hell. I'd love to help out in some other way with the site, but with my skills the way they are, I'm afraid money would be the only way I could be useful. :)

[infoxicated]

I'm actually concerned about Paypal myself - I've received an absolute flood of spam on the account I created for the contributions, so I guess if folk wanted to contribute by snail mail, or suggest an alternative, then I'm all for it.

:)

[Spaceboy Gajo]

Hey Amish,

You cool always Photoshop your tattoo! Or have someone do it for you if you're not good in Photoshop. You know take a good picture of where you'd like the tattoo and then somebody could place it on. Then you can always imagine the tattoo you never had.

Infoxicated, well if you're wondering why you haven't seen me sign up immediately when you said that the posters are available, PayPal is not my preferred method of payment. Let's just say I love to shop online if I can send my payment by snail mail. I do not want the temptation that a credit card brings.

spaceboy gajo :)

[AmishRobot]

I've heard some bad horror stories about Paypal, but nothing I've bothered to confirm, so I won't go rumormongering. It is enough to keep me from using it, however.

I ordered a cd direct from a band in the UK about a year ago, and they didn't yet have the ability to accept cc orders (costs a lot to set up). My choices were an international money order, foreign currency draft, or cash. The IMO & bank draft both cost $20-40 just for the processing! Against my better judgement I sent cash, but was lucky enough to not have any troubles. Perhaps if you get an opportunity in the near future, you could check with your bank to see if they accept checks in foreign currency? I don't have too many ideas beyond that.

Gajo: I've already got the design on paper and ready to go. :) The two things that hold me back are the fact that it's a logo (and would have to be very clean, sharp and symmetrical), and that it's... rather permanent. I've actually been considering it off and on for about 6 years now, I just keep imagining looking in the mirror at myself ten years from now and seeing some sagging, fading tattoo that was botched to begin with, and thinking what a jackass I was. :P

[Spaceboy Gajo]

Like I said, a little photo manipulation by a great Photoshop artist will last forever. No regrets, no sagging and lots of fun.

spaceboy gajo :)

[Hybrid Divide]

Heh, I don't really trust PayPal either.

Any other methods of contribution Infox?
Cause I still want to contribute! :D

[infoxicated]

I could look into direct credit card payments, but then we'd have the problem that a lot of our younger users wouldn't have one! :)

I don't really know how to proceed with it, but the site has around 400 members (well, the forum - the main site has many more registrations), and so far I've only had a couple of contributions.

That's a very low percentage and it just doesn't look like I'll be able to reach the critical mass to allow me to switch to a new server. With the dwindling traffic over the last few months anyway, it's not as much of an issue as it once was - a fairly average server can cope reasonably well with the amount of traffic we get now.

[rhys]

Sorry i havnt been posting much either, but as amish robot said.... i have nothing interesting to say on the topics....

I am still here though, i come here every day, and i like the new frontpage :)

[lunar]

Well you`ve all scared me off paypal!! The problem with the internet is you seldom really know for sure who or what you`re dealing with. But it looks like you might need an alternative, Infox. You might find one (aswell as some scary info and stories) at:

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

nevertheless, Paypal still handles millions (or so) of transactions every day without problems, so we can make up our own minds about it.

This site led me to this case of internet fraud:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/22923.html

:roll:

there`s one born every minute, as they say

[infoxicated]

I have an alternative idea in the works now :)

Something I'd toyed with a while back, but it seems to make more sense now and might actually enhance the contribution and the return for the contributee...

I'll let you know more after I'm done investigating it :)