2011: Ads or fundraiser?

We can only reach the total amount in donations that Kevin sets though. I think for this year he said we need $2200 for the forum, yet you imply that it is still far from enough. Is the forum really costing so much money to run? More than what is asked in donations?

Maybe other members would not be so against ads if they new/had a better understanding of how much the forum is really costing, because if it really is costing so much then I think every little bit counts and ads could help with that.

I'd choose donations/fundraiser but only because of what we have been told, but if the forum is costing much more than what is needed then I think I'd support ads as well.

 

my issue with you being a socialist is they are worthless people
who want nothing but central control ( soviet Russia, Hitler the queen of england, the UK, the EU and Obama, Nixon )
they all want to tax the crap out of there citizens rather then deal with issues in an intelligent manner


just like YOU want to tax the users of assymblergames
by placing ads on every square inch of relistate on the site
annoying users and taxing them by forcing them to see the ads
its still a tax because they have to see the ads weather the click on them or not

rather the dealing with it by charity of the forum members witch has worked just fine since assymblergames has been around

another thing you also make me sick when you care more about how valuable a beta will be rather then the intellectual gain reaped from the beta by dumping it

its still valuable but only a nice collectors piece and thats the way it should be

freedoms not socialist bullshit because i shouldn't have to block ads here
if your so concerned that assembler if about to collapse then take that 500
you were going to pay for giest and donate it to assymblergames

ass you yourself said better to donate it to a good cause then buying yourself something nice

 

@angelwolf71885

a) I already mentioned it, Socialism should not be up for discussion here, use the unmoderated thread if it bothers you that much.

b) A dictatorship can be a good thing if the dictator is genuinely uncorruptable and has the best interest of people at heart, which thus far has not been the case. It is not a bad system there are only bad examples.

c) You can be a socialist without central control. What sort of narrow minded and biased education did you have? Oh wait.. probably American =/ (no offence to my American brothers from other mothers - I know you're not ALL bad)

d) The users of ASSEMblergames need to pay for the service in which ever way is best for preserving our freedom to spread information, but the bulk of the users are not lifting a finger. Will you donate $10 knowing 1000 people won't even donate $1? Go on, you know you want to. It is a fair system, right? WRONG! If we did it the capitalist way none of the visitors or 0 posters would be able to see anything, yet stalkers are the largest demographic here.

e) Ads will not tax the users in any way whatsoever. It is misguided to think such thoughts. The users pay no money to view the advert. The advertiser pays for the advert to be viewed. Seriously I don't see how you fail to understand this?

f) I no longer care as much about the value of my betas as I once did. I had to get permanent brain damage to think this way. Does this say something? I think it does - it says I had to become retarded to think dumping ROMs at my expense would be a good idea =/ I worked my ass off at minimum wage to afford to buy my betas so naturally I'd be concerned about depreciation. FYI when I dumped Deuce it cost me $200. I asked for half in donations ($100) and the other half ($100) came at my expense. Given the large number of people who voted to dump it completely at my expense I almost didn't bother and it is the reason my other unreleased games remained undumped. I guess you haven't checked the downloads section recently either?

g) Don't block or view or even have adverts then but when the donations dry up, fall short or ASSEMbler thinks fuck it he has had enough don't complain to me when the site inevitably dies and your community has vanished. There won't be an Ultra64 or similar donation every year to meet the quota.

h) We're in it together. Socialism isn't about me paying up $500 so you can view the site so it is not going to happen. (BTW my Geist offer was $301... WTF @ $500?) It is about sharing the burden, which when most of the people freeload yet don't take up the slack is rather unfair. I would donate $301 for mandatory adverts for ALL users though. This is how firmly I believe this needs to be done. Also note I'm not an advertiser nor am I knowlingly affiliated with one. I'll also happily subscribe at an annual rate equal to the cost of the site divided by number of members. Will you?

i) Good causes and charity can be the same or similar thing to socialism. Donating to keep the forum up could also be considered a socialist act. I don't see how you can be anti-socialist but pro-donator. Possibly because you may not intend to donate and want others to pay for you?

j) I actually offered to donate my Amiga CD32 Engineering Sample/prototype modem for the site archive. Getting an address to ship it out to ASSEMbler is incredibly tricky though as his replies are often vague or cryptic so I have no shipping address as of yet. Those who speak to him directly may know what I mean.

k) Don't talk to me about intelligent discussion when most people do not understand the meaning or the measure of intelligence. I doubt you understand it too, but if you care to englighten me with your pearls of wisdom, please take them to private message so that I may educate you as to why you will be wrong

l) The old RoarVGM site with ezboard forums were ad supported but they still rocked so...


I've given up caring.

If you want to let ASSEMbler keep taking the hits from unpredicted costs without doing something simple such as looking at a fucking picture which you will probably ignore then I can't see what you are still doing here.

At the minute the way the site operates is unbalanced. 99% of donations from 1% of users will only perpetuate this injustice. Adverts are a means to address such imbalance as at the minute there is no other viable option for proportional representation.

 

You think $2,200 is a small amount to run a website for a year?!

Actually, that's JUST the cost of running the server. There's also the cost of the license for the forum software. Were any commercial plugins implemented or designers hired, that cost should be factored, too. And we don't take into consideration Kev's time spent maintaining the site. Time is money, yet he gives up time that he could be using to do something that earns him money to administer the site. For free.

How much is the average user going to donate? $5? $10? $20? I would say that's probably a reasonable amount to expect someone to donate - between $5 - $20. At $5, we'd need 440 members to donate. At $20, we'd need 110 members to donate. If we're looking for, say, 100-400 users to donate, that's still a lot of people.

As for the comments on having ads forced on you, that's bullshit. You would more than likely be given the opportunity to pay to have those ads disappear. I would call that a donation that gives you something back, wouldn't you? Besides, how many of the following do you use?

Windows Live Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger
Facebook
Myspace
eBay
YouTube
Amazon
IMDb
GameSniped
IGN
GamesRadar
GameSpot
Gizmodo
Reuters

ALL of the above use advertising and/or sponsorship on their sites and services. You probably don't even notice on some of them.

My advice to those whinging about the possibility of ads on the site (and moreso the possibility of them ONLY being for those who don't give a small donation)? Grow the fuck up and stop complaining.

 

retro, if you are going to quote me, please do it fully and properly.

I never said that I think $2,200 is a small amount to run a website for a year, and I never said anything about having ads forced on you.

All I said was that is how much Kevin said we needed for this year. He said "For this year I can either switch us over to ads, or try to raise the $2200 we need for the forum for the year.

The ads would be game related, probably store or game ads.

What are your thoughts?"

Nothing more.

My thoughts would be to have a fundraiser again, but based only on what Kevin has told us.

 

He has told us more than that though. Read between the lines The very fact we are even having this discussion for what is probably the first time I can recall in my 8 years here speaks to the gravity of the situation. (bear in mind my memory is shit these days!)

The situation here is similar to a rectal itch - you can either deal with it right away and have little to no issue or keep chafing it until it is a painful ungodly mess. A switch now would help minimise or delay any disaster later.

As I have stated time and time again though. Even if we can keep making the donation quota, is it fair 1% of donators pay for 99% of the users? No.

This thread should be about more than what is practical or possible but what is right

 

Ah damnit, my quote failed again!

Sorry that it cut the quote in half, but I don't need to quote your ENTIRE post as I was only referring to that part, Juste.

Please get your facts straight. I said "as for the comments on having ads forced...". I did not say as for YOUR comments, Juste. I don't have to dedicate my ENTIRE post just to you. Sorry, but there are others on here with an opinion, and I started a new paragraph to refer to them.

Yes, Kev said he can TRY to raise the amount needed through donations. You should be reading that as he has doubts as to whether he will succeed. I'm not going to go into private conversations between Kev and I in public, but let's just say I know he has concerns about the fundraiser this year. FACT.

I want to make another point, but for your benefit, I'll wait and start a new reply. Don't want you getting confused ;-)

 

There is no point to reply properly.

Being confused isn't so bad. ^_^

 

True... I'm often living in a state of confusion ;-)

Ah, nice to see those American bullshit capitalist propaganda newsreels of the 50s sank in, there!

Actually, socialism is acting FOR the people. Yes, the taxes may be a bit higher, but it goes back to the people. For example, the NHS. As I just said, Americans put out this bullshit propaganda in the 50s that "a social health care system is what happens in communist countries - and you don't want to be a communist, do you?" What a load of utter crap! Incidentally, it was Nixon who put out those newsreels! Nixon was AGAINST social health care... so how the hell is he a socialist?!

In socialism, people pay taxes so that EVERYONE has access to a service - the NHS, libraries (bit controversial at the moment) etc. In a capitalist country *cough USA*, you fend for yourself health-wise and are screwed if you can't. Those who pay get the service. Those who don't, don't.

So, you're saying we should ONLY get funds through donation? So some users choose to donate, others choose not to, but everyone benefits from it? Surely THAT is socialism?!

By the way, commas are a great thing. I think you'll find that our Queen is NOT Hitler ;-) You'll also find, if you research your facts properly, that the royal family haven't taken taxes in many years. That's the job of the government. In fact, The Queen now pays taxes herself - voluntarily.

 

EDITED*

Posted in error

 

No, I would call it extortion

Seriously though, I'm fighting this because there are only two sites left that I view which don't have ads: this one and the Microsoft development site for XNA games (but I'm definitely paying for that one in many ways).

 

Anglewolf, keep political talk in the unmoderated thread please. We are adults here.

I still vote for ads. A lot of you guys say you never click them, which is fine, becasue you still get paid per page impression. Not as much as a click generates, but it's still $$$. With the amount of traffic Assemblergames.com gets you'd be able to rais $2200 no problem.

P.S. - Hitler was not a socialist, and neither is Obama. Learn the difference please.

 

250 posts and not one of them has been worth reading.

All of this is a storm in a teacup imo. The fundraiser has worked fine in the past and it hasn't even started this year. I don't know where all this doom and gloom is coming from, there aren't really any lines to read between - Kevin asked whether we wanted ads or a fundraiser, and most people seem to have posted in favour of the latter. Why are we still having this discussion?

 

WRONG! The fundraiser has been a failure in the past. The reason we're still having this discussion is because of this ignorant attitude that people generally have that the fundraiser has always covered costs. Also, on the general belief that costs = server cost alone. Also wrong!

 

The fundraiser has been fine for the last few years and that's all that matters. What happened in 2005 is irrelevant to the current situation, that's six years ago ffs. And anyway, if the fundraiser's failure is a foregone conclusion, why even bother asking which we prefer?

I'm going to bow out of this debate until Assembler actually comments on what he's going to do. $2200 seems like an achievable goal for a fundraiser to me, and there's no harm in trying anyway. The rest of this discussion is a lot of hot air.

 

I think we can only raise what Kevin sets though, and if we reach that then it has not failed.

 

Smaller banner ad on the top of page or the side and a fundraiser. $2200 seems high for forum hosting though. Have you shopped around lately?

I like the idea of paying to go ad-less. An annual donation = no ads when logged in.

 

It's not high. To get this many hits, you need a dedicated server, not shitty shared hosting. Plus, if any companies serve a DMCA takedown, standard web hosts will simply pull the plug.

Precisely! Paying to remove ads is just like donating. Only the fee would likely be smaller than some people would donate - so it's win for them. I don't see why anyone would complain at that - unless they didn't plan to donate.

 

I think that as has been said before, non registered users should endure a couple of ads here and there, and for the rest of us, no ads and a fundraser should be implemented.

Regarding the badge... well. Being a Nintendo fan, I would love to have another Nintendo related badge, but I can tolerate a little sonic for a while

 

So far this year with my pathetic piece of shit site I've earned $400, without any additional work on my side. I haven't even updated it in more than a year. This site gets like 5000 times the traffic that I do. I really think you people should consider the potential.

Wasn't the plan to bring back the Assembler museum and put ads on that, and keep the forum ad-free? That would probably bring in more than enough.