Limiting access to seed-runs, auctions & fundraisers

Community
#21

I humbly disagree with this, just take a look of the leader’s list and you will see the vertebral column of this site, even if they are not all that they should be. Thanks to their commitment, sense of humour, help and knowledge this site goes on and is an enjoyable reading.

If our oldest and most reputated members slowly disappear this site would not vanish, but wouldn’t be the OG we all know.

I have a Seedbox with 1 terabyte space and unlimited traffic, I pay just 10 € per month, I don’t see why all that amount of money needed.

I haven’t seen any discussion about ads, that is a subject that interests me and never seen such thread. This was the spirit of this site:

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I feel free to stop my contribution as this statement was broken and there are ads already. If you can kindly point me where that adds discussion took place I would appreciate it …

I don’t see a good point in that, the only reason to look for it would be “Hey sponsors, we have 100.000 daily visitors, pay me more as I need bigger disk space and more traffic”. So it creates a problem instead of solving it.

The OP of this thread is LJ :upside_down_face:, I cannot remember who was it before being splitted. There are no personal remarks on this, even being this discussion in the Shark tank. I think these questions affect the whole forum and need to be explained and discussed, that’s all … :sunglasses:

3 Likes
#22

I’m not entirely certain but I’ll disagree with the disagreement. The whole of the community contributes to the whole of OG. It is an expectation when joining as an individual to contribute to the community as it stands. Singular persons, cliques, and groups of individuals certainly have a strong voice in what that might look like but, taken alone, it does not comprise the whole of the community.

Leaders and moderators help in many ways to ensure productive discourse. A leader, unlike a manager, relies on those around them to do the right things and will encourage that. They will endeavor to make course corrections as necessary. They rely on the community to make choices that further OG, they set the tone, help to resolve conflicts, and help to bring OG forward and into the future. In most cases, they don’t have to be involved with everything.

Though, people do and will leave. That includes those in the leadership / senior roles. While few desire to see that occur, such roles are entirely voluntary without compensation. They do not receive unbounded accolades and appreciation. Much of their time is spent dealing with angst which is a reason why they heavily rely on the community to do the right thing.

Like anyone, senior members and leaders will get tired, have other interests, have a families and work, or decide to take on other ambitions. It is not unexpected for this to occur but it’s also safe bet that other trusted members on the forum can eventually pick up the torch when and if such a sad day arrives.

At $10 a month that sounds like an opportunity to stand up an example. I’ll suggest that it won’t take long to realize it will not be a scale-able solution, it’ll have minimal storage capacity, and there will likely be significant performance issues.

The suggested solution seems to be a limited member / private site more or less devoid of growth. It’s a workable model but it is not OG. Likewise, with more members there is theoretically more folk that are able to contribute, scaling.

The why was covered. Though, feel free to PM the admin (LJ) on that concern.

The OP was split from the complaint about the GA3 on the now defunct auction.

I feel a bit as though we are starting to cover the same ground and I’m now just soap boxing this stuff. While your thoughts and ideas are valuable, I’m not really changing my line of reasoning. Ultimately, some of these issues are really not my decision to make in the end anyhow.

All I can offer at this point is that you bring your thoughts and concerns up in the request for features, to TeamOG via pm, and LJ and we’ll do our best to address your concerns and consider whether there is a common solution.

7 Likes
#23

I think our point of views are now clear, even if we disagree in some concerns I appreciate your time taken to enlighten this matter.

I won’t request anything as there’s no way to stop the drift this forum has taken and hope for the best that my predictions are wrong, only time will tell … :sunglasses:

5 Likes
#24

Thanks @Northern_Loki I wouldn’t say it better. I’ve mentioned many discussed bits already in different topics in the past and you have summarised it excellently. Nothing have changed about my vision of open forum and I hope that there is still majority of users who see this approach like OG’s advantage. It is just the scale that has its challenges.

All auction proceedings since February have single purpose - hardware upgrade.

Our traffic has doubled in past year (and so did activity in the forums - number of actively contributing members and posts). During preparation for our latest (software) platform upgrade in February, I’ve been going through all aspects of our software needs, solved most urgent pains and identified our server bottlenecks (currently mostly lack of disk space and CPU cores). Sometimes even you can notice that there is few seconds delay when server is too busy serving high load requests (e.g. uploads, full text search) from other members. That is not pleasant and could affect our performance and in the end user experience. People actually do quit using sites because they are slow to load.

I’m trying to work with the statistics from the history and predict future needs and always try to include safety margins (to have some reserve if possible). From what I’ve been able to asses (and also after debates with my fellow server admin colleagues), I came to conclusion we need something like this Cisco UCS C220 M3. This one in used condition is available for approximately 2750 USD. It needs to be upgraded with new hard-disks and NVMe drive. Expected budget is around 4-5k USD.

It would be great to upgrade this year. I’ve tried to negotiate fundraiser auctions with donators and goal to buy new hardware.

ad Seedbox. I understand that from your user point of view it may seem like valid comparison. But your seedbox can serve only one purpose - seeding torrents. Our (future) Cisco server could run dozens of seedboxes like yours. OG’s situation is not comparable to a position of seedbox “user” but more to a provider of seedbox services. I have needs similar to the company that runs those seedboxes for customers like you.

We have grown to the size that it would be extremely impractical to run OG by depending on external services (virtual servers) instead of our own bare metal. Most importantly because of costs and security.

18 Likes
#25

I think this information is valuable and should be seen by the community so they could express their thoughts and doubts. The Shark Tank is not visited by many people and this kind of info will enlighten many doubts and mistrusts that people may have … :sunglasses:

4 Likes
#26

I’m running into the slow to load now.

How many members do we have compared to actual users?
So this amount will climb pending on how many members.

There’s members then there’s people who just sign up does their false membership effect your max number before we have to upgrade?

Costs a bit to operate one of these I know from the last private club but we had a max membership also. With only 25% actually being active.

Growing pains

4 Likes
#27

Of course not, I’m looking only on real activity numbers (mainly server load at peak times). Sign-ups are not of concern.

Moving relevant part to #community now.

3 Likes
#28

The site having it’s own dedicated server on lockdown is a great idea and I hope we can all make it happen soon. There is alot of traffic on this site and associated fees go up quickly when the numbers keep climbing. I see it as a good thing considering the ideals of the community. We should all be glad Joe is thinking ahead and not ignoring the site and allowing it to slow down. Overgrow the server I think not, overgrow the world , I hope so.

7 Likes
#29

Just to clarify, we are on our own dedicated server from the start.

When I was reviving OG in 2016 I had one “surplus” server which was pretty old even back at the time. 90% of the time it does its job well, but it is starting to lack the power in peak times.

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#30

That’s awesome to hear, I remember reading that before now that you mention it. I bet there is a surge in online presence now that most people are grounded to there :house:

3 Likes
#31

Any reason why that cisco box in particular? Its pretty outdated, a Dell poweredge R620 has similar specs and can be had for ~$200. I’d sooner get an R720 or R820 for a couple hundred and call it a day. They’ll have better specs and yeah, a couple grand cheaper. Just add in the drives and such you needed like you already plan. I run a PC repair and electronic recycling shop and have been a network/systems admin for a decade. If you were in the US I could find a way to just give you a newer server but I feel like you’re in the EU and I’m not so sure on shipping for a ~40lb+ 2U/4U server :confused:

Could always check reddit.com/r/homelab and/or reddit.com/r/homelabsales as I bet you could find the server you need or better for cheap. Obviously warranty might be a concern if you need/want it but yeah, just a thought ^^

12 Likes
#32

I have seen many people moaning about newcomers being able to bid in auctions, earn a prize in promo contests being his first pot or participating in Seed runs.

I propose that all those perks and giveaways should be in a hidden section available only for Level 2 members and ahead, also that the requisites for being an OG member were harder.

My doubt is if this idea is also shared by other members of this site, I should have expected more opinions and discussions about it but seems people think it has been already decided.

I would urge to participate at least in this poll so we have an idea of what people thinks about it.

Should we limit access to Seed runs (non particulars), auctions and fundraisers to levels 2 & 3?

  • YES
  • NO
  • I DON’T CARE

0 voters

1 Like
#33

You already know how I feel about this

1 Like
#34

I don’t think they should be hidden at all but perhaps have a minimum posts or something before being allowed to post or edit wiki on certain topics …but the hidden stuff puts good people off I recently referred someone to here …he was signed up for bean basement but put off by the required log not because he doesn’t grow he definitely does but that regular updates aren’t for everyone some don’t have the time and well some of us get forgetful :wink:

5 Likes
#35

But I don’t like the seed swindler’s myself that said

2 Likes
#36

You are mixing a lot of different things together. @Northern_Loki has already explained why there is different approach to each.

  • Seed runs were discussed already and the result of that discussion was that they are tl2+.

  • Auction terms are completely managed by auction organizer / seller.

  • Seed giveaways from sponsors simply can’t be hidden or tl2+ because sponsors want as much visibility as possible.

I don’t see why the latter two should be of any concern to you. If you don’t agree with auction terms, just don’t bid. If you don’t like to see sponsored category in latest, just Mute it.

There are still mixed opinions about advantages and disadvantages of influx of new users that has roots in sponsored giveaways. It would need detailed analysis to draw any informed conclusions.

9 Likes
#37

I have muted already the Sponsors category long ago, and it is not included in the question. I agree auctions are managed by the seller, but actually he has no “hidden section” to post in if he wants only level 2 & 3 to participate, same with the Seed runs. Now we have one entitled “only for OG members”. If there exists that hidden section he would have posted there.

People would like guarantees in those auctions so only trustable people would participate and be fair play. I insist: I am not proposing where should they be posted, only the choice to post them available to all people or just to Level 2 & 3, freedom of choice … :sunglasses:

1 Like
#38

So you will agree with me that those are among the newcomers, not in our community, this is the way to stop them … :sunglasses:

1 Like
#39

Yes and no I don’t like them in the giveaways but I understand the stance of the sponsors want maximum exposure the seed runs don’t bother me so much cause they take months and they cost money even if it’s a minimum it serves the purpose I think

As far as the auctions go if the money’s needed to have an auction I have no problem sticking a new person with a high bid they don’t pay they get the boot it sucks to see 155 dollars lost that burns my ass a little that was like half of the money of the auction that’s all I can speak on the auction stuff I honestly don’t know shit about servers except we need one

4 Likes
#40

As I stated before, the sponsors are not included in that question, I just don’t participate and that’s all … :sunglasses:

1 Like