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Shortcomings of DC and How to Improve

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mouser:
You know it's interesting.. This is a very weird thing for me to write because most of the time I walk around feeling like.. God I just *dread* asking for money -- I dread working up the courage to do these fundraisers -- because in many ways it kind of feels humiliating to have to ask/beg for donations.  And I find my inner voices saying some of the things you are saying:  "how can we have a fundraiser -- we haven't done enough, we haven't done as much as we could have, etc."

But you know.. on the other hand i feel like wow.. we have been running this site in our spare time for 6 years now.. It's been two years since the last fundraiser and i still wake up every single day, 365 days a year, checking the forum email alerts, deleting 10-20 spammers a day, every day, making sure the site runs fine.. In the last month gothic and i have probably exchanged 100 emails about tweaking the server to make it run smoothly, posted 20 tickets to softlayer to get them to fix a slowdown on the server.. I get calls waking me up in the middle of the night if the server goes offline.  I spent a good part of this month writing new code to weed out and block and track down and eliminate spammers.  Last week i released a couple of updates to my larger apps the same way i do every month to make sure the users are supported. I just posted the list of updates for two of my programs above..

Frankly i work my ass off for the site and i love doing it  :Thmbsup:  Sometimes it's a daily grind of behind the scene work that no one notices, but someone has to do it.  Someone has to update the forum software when there are updates, someone has to do email support for when people have trouble signing up or using a program, etc.

And so many other people on the site have stepped up in the last years to make the site a wonderful place to hang out.. Skwire has been writing an insane amount of new coding snack utilities based on user requests.  Frankly I think the coding snacks section of the site has been one of the most amazing unexpected features of the site, and that wasn't even planned.

So i guess what i'm saying is.. Not only do I refuse to have DC feel timid and bad about having a fundraiser -- I feel proud of this site and the people on it.  And proud to be able to continue to ask directly and explicitly for the support of those who like the site and like what it has done and will do in the future.

And for those who are not satisfied or are unhappy -- please don't donate!! Take what we have to offer, and come back in a year or two and see if you've changed your mind.  If for some reason you donated in 2005 and feel we haven't lived up to your expectations -- email and ask me to refund your donation, i'm more than happy to send it.

This site exists because people have been willing to contribute financially to support it.  It's been an amazing experience to actually get that support -- and I think we are doing something interesting and unusual here, and have no intention of stopping or going away.  And i am not going to for a minute feel bad about asking people to support it if they like it, and proudly.

Not everyone is going to get everything they want from this site -- if you came for some of the apps you might be happy that they've gotten such regular updates and maintenance.  If you came for the coding snacks you might be ecstatic.  If you came for the long-reviews you might be dissapointed.  if you came just expected change for change's sake, you might be upset.  If you have some magical application you wish we read your mind and implemented by now, you might be unhappy.

But you better get used to feeling let down if you think we haven't done enough to justify a fundraiser in the last two years, because there's a good chance in this economy we'll be having one every year..

-mouser, proudly asking for volunteer donations from users since 2005 :)

lotusrootstarch:
There's no point convincing me to leave or shut up, that's not your objective! Let's face it, after almost 6 years of operation:



This is the vote of confidence.. or not?

mouser:
I honestly don't get it.. what about that chart are we supposed to feel unhappy about?

For what it's worth, when this site was started in 2005, if you had told me that in two years we would still be online i would not have believed you (and i have the 2005 chat logs to prove it); i never for a moment expected more than a handful of people to ever be on the forum -- and i expected the forum would serve only as a place to get official support for the applications i had written.  The forum activity has been a pure delight -- only thing to do there is try to get even more and more people to stop being so shy and join in on our fun.

lotusrootstarch:
I'm not accusing anyone not not working hard or any time... don't get me wrong on that.

There's something wrong about how this site operates!

wraith808:
There's no point convincing me to leave or shut up, that's not your objective! Let's face it, after almost 6 years of operation:
 (see attachment in previous post)
This is the vote of confidence.. or not?
-lotusrootstarch (February 27, 2011, 10:46 PM)
--- End quote ---

And those numbers are pretty good for a small site, especially one that is operated on no external exposure other than voluntary, and has no ads anywhere.  What do you expect?  And if that's not what's wanted, then why is it bad?

Why do you consider this a lack of confidence to have (by your numbers) 2683 new members in a month?  There are sites that would kill for that kind of penetration, but you consider it bad?  And the most online is the most online at any given time- not the total during the course of the day.  I just don't get where you're going with the numbers.

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