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As far as I know, it goes solely in to maintenance.

 

I highly disagree with this. There's a very decent, if not excessive amount of money being pumped into the website for improvements via donations. I just never see it being used.


Since I've advertised on Sythe.org before, I know a more accurate value of how much money ads generate than I should, so let's just go based on an estimated Daily Ads Review by Websiteoutlook.com: $91.75. Multiply that by thirty days and we have $2752.50 per month. Then come in donations: $38,800 from just $25 and above donors. This also assumes that no one donated above their rank amount, and obviously ignores the countless number of $5 and $10 donors. I'm going to assume most of these donations were after the 2011 free trade update, but let's just take it back to 2008. That's $9700 per year in donations. At this point I would like to state that if it was counted for exponentially as it appears to be, this would be closer to $20,000 this year.


Now for server costs. Sythe uses Take 2 Hosting. I'm not sure what plan is used, but let's go with their most expensive plan: Dual Quad Core Xeon 5420+ for $429.00 per month.



Let's add it all up:
~$9,700 minimum donations per year
~$33,030 ad revenue per year
~$5,148 in server costs
____________________________
~$37,582 net revenue


I'm completely fine with this and I understand Sythe isn't a non-profit organization, but I get upset when the lack of improvements is blamed on lack of funding.

 

Before this get's out of hand, let's all remember it's not something we can blame Verts, or one of the other staff members for.

 

I'd say it's more to blame on the lack of manpower.

Sythe likes to keep a tight lid on technical stuff (which, knowing the history of this site, I don't blame him for), so the only people who can really do anything in terms of improvements on a technical/coding level are Sythe himself, Matthew and I.

 

I'd just like to point out that you are ignoring DDoS protection - Sythe said that was the most expensive aspect of hosting so lets say $1000 a month while you still get a pretty significant profit, it's a major chunk removed.

 

But then again you aren't the only coders in the world. You claim it is hard to find someone who is trustworthy, and can do the job, which is entirely true, but are you looking?

I am sure there are plenty of honest people out there who could help out, and some of them may be on sythe right now, but I see no effort to reach out and look for more. I truly believe that if you look hard enough, you will find people who can and will help you.

 

This ties in with the staff structure we have on Sythe.org.

In order to have control over the site, one must first be promoted to Administrator to access the relevant areas of the control panel. If, by chance, someone who gets promoted to admin happens to be code-savvy, then they are able to contribute to technical administration of the site. That has happened twice so far.

Simply hiring people who are capable of coding and promoting them to admin would be unfair to globals and sectionals who have been trying their best to get promoted.

 

How does one get promoted on sythe? It seems to be a game that is played. You have to befriend the proper people, say the correct things, act the right way, and then maybe you'll have a chance. Just because someone doesn't play this game doesn't mean they aren't a good choice, and we are truly missing out on a lot of people by just sitting here, and waiting for the right person to do all of that.

As you have said before, the tech admins are separate from the general admins. I highly doubt anyone would have a problem with someone new joining yours ranks without wasting time trying to become a sectional, and then a global, and then an admin (a seemingly impossible task for most). This is why it takes so long to find someone new. We shouldn't be waiting around for literally years for someone to show up. If you think there is a lack of manpower, find more men.

 

They are also permitted to (and often do) perform other administrative duties if time allows. No one is promoted solely for being technologically experienced.

 

And no one can do both unless they've done the nearly impossible, and very long task of becoming an admin? You need more tech experts, find some, don't wait for them to come to you or you will continue to be short of manpower for as long as you wait.

 

No, they can't, unless they get promoted to admin.

Everyone is subject to the same rules for becoming staff.

We are in fact not 'short of manpower' for anything. Not sure where you get that idea. The work 3 programmers do is enough for a site run entirely by volunteers.

 

I got the idea from you..

 

Yeah... I mean, it's not easy to trust volunteers to have that kind of control over a site this size, so three people who are allowed to write code for the site is a lot, but in effect, we are limited to the man power of three people.

Make sense?

Installing lots of modifications is nice in theory, but practically, there are a lot of consequences. We've tried being liberal about it before; it ends up with bad results.

 

If it didn't work the first time, then do it differently, don't give up. There are plenty of people out there who can code, and are responsible, and trustworthy people. If you aren't 100% sure of the people you pick then there are ways to limit what they can do to Sythe on their own while still having them help. You can't just shut everyone out because you think its too risky, then we'll just have to keep waiting a few more years for a new guy to come around. If you say you don't have enough time because of your personal lives, then find people who do.

 

Have any of you given thoughts to maybe hiring a professional vbulletin programmer? Some one that makes a living off it. I can only imagine the errors that would pop up when upgrading to vb4. But wouldn't be much of a problem for a ninja programmer. I know some of you guys are great programmers but no match for some who programs/upgrades vbulletin on a daily basis.

Also, hiring a professional there shouldn't be any trust issues.

 

That is a good point, and as grave pointed out there is quite a bit of extra revenue that could be put towards that.

 

There isn't really that much left to prepare for the vBulletin upgrade; we're just waiting for Sythe to have enough time to perform the upgrade.

 

Someone such as that could help with a lot more than the VB4 upgrade, and if you're refusing to attempt to get anyone else, then that seems like the best option.

 

Its easy for you to say that when this isn't your site though. Just telling Richard to trust others with his server and domain is unfair.

 

Perhaps, but if others don't want to, or don't have the time to do anymore work, then who is going to do it? I am merely offering my suggestions on what I think should be done to make up for that.