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Re: Caltrops Marshall Plan by Senor Barborito 04/04/2003, 11:41pm PST
moremedsplz wrote:

Ugh. Um, you just implied that the only way cock rocket could prove her premise was to grant you permission to check the IP logs. Now I'm sure this seems perfectly reasonable to you (and perhaps rather clever) and that's OK because you are crazy. This strikes me however, as the first step down a slippery slope.


I agree. I question my own judgement here in putting Zseni in that situation. The only thing that's on the other hand, is that ES and I have always tried to be very available to do little things like this for everyone when possible. That feels fairly empty, though.

Now for the part where I say something that could be interpreted as constructive:
As player/coach SB has been placed in a somewhat untenable position. It is not fair to expect anyone to abide by self imposed rules of conduct while at the same time donating money and effort to provide a platform from which they are repeatedly criticized by others.


I disagree slightly about what ought to be expected, but I'll get to that in a moment.

While I'm hesitant to speak for ES, this whole phenomenon of admins-players being stuck between a rock and a very hard place has been irritating both admins as well as the person paying the bandwidth costs (V) GREATLY as of late. It leads to you slowly learning to hate the site you work on, which is not a good thing. You start to sympathize with Chet just a little and, well . . . that's a very bad road (the Barborito mantra of administration, btw, is: "I will not be Chet. I will not be Chet. Paranoia = security = happiness.").

The only reason business with Chet worked as long as it did was because he wasn't involved in the forums - frankly I think I'm more stable, in general, than he is. I may get ranty but I don't ever ban people or delete posts just because I'm pissed off. I yell more often, but it's all harmless fluff that never condenses into real authoritarian crap.

That said, I should be held to standards of conduct as far as my administrative duties are concerned, because if I can't adhere to them there's huge problems. However - I KNOW that quite a few people involved in caltrops.com as more than forumites have sipped a nip of the special sauce here and there. That's to be expected in any system where not everybody has power - which is sort of a requirement for security. When it graduates to mainlining, there's a problem.

However, ES and I are 400lb men covered with steak sauce sitting in the middle of a pit filled with rabid starving wolves, functionally. You guys are all a corrupt politician's worst fucking nightmare. You're even a 99.9% honest politician's nightmare.

Before this site was even up there was talk of setting up donations to pay for overhead costs. I think now would be a good time to re-examine that idea -- at least to pay for bandwidth. While Chet's actions on OMM were certainly childish, I don't think anyone can fault his reasoning in pulling the plug on OMM given his perception of the situation. Now I am not calling anyone Chet here (this time), but how hard is it to imagine a similar scenario occurring here?


I wouldn't do it because I'm fucking determined as SHIT to prove all the Chet-shouters wrong. I mean, if I do it, or ES does it, or V did it - all of a sudden everything they said IS true. By keeping those words false they continue to look like the screechy idiots they are. Also, I haven't been angry enough to do anything drastic since . . . . well, a long damned time ago. Certainly well before Caltrops started. You don't invest this much energy into something only to put a bullet in its head when the going gets rough.

However - I can't download large files anymore because of the server. DirectX 9 SDK or PlatformSDK? HAHAHA waiting until 3AM and then praying to god my ISP doesn't just disconnect the account because the server saw a gig of traffic today already. Sometimes websurfing and gaming are worse than a noisy 14.4 line.

It would be nice if the bandwidth were half payed for and V and I were just helping pay for it and got ourselves a cable modem for our own private use - the line can certainly handle more site traffic without it becoming an issue (unless slashdot links us in which case I'm just pulling the plug for day).

Money involvement does mean that I work for you all in a sense - and that means a) a lot more time spent on the server and b) stricter adherence to ethics as admin. I'm certainly willing to do that.

In my opinion, the group effort approach/philosophy has provided surprisingly good results to this point. Contrary to this, SB's and V's generosity notwithstanding, the donation of bandwidth and hardware are being provided by only one faction and I think this can only be a bad thing in the long run.


Agreed.

Here then is my Marshall plan presented only in an effort to prompt further conversation:
1) Bandwidth should be paid for or at least subsidized by donations.
2) The server should be moved off site to an ISP.
3) Umm, there should be a third component
4) I'll fork over $50


I numbered them for you.

1) My vote is 'yes, please.' We'll have to work out the details in the near future if we do.
2) This is a complicated issue due to use of Postgres, etc. That said, I know of a couple good hosting companies with security procedures that make me look like the amateur I am. (The Barborito Server/Rat Farm still kicks the shit out of a lot of webhosts out there, though). What the details in terms of postgres, prices, processes, traffic, etc. are would have to be looked at.
3) If we don't move off-Farm, in the immediate future UPS for the server is our biggest priority, followed by RAM. A spare HD for backup would be nice.
4) Whoa. Thanks. Hell $10 is a lot. We'll have to discuss this whole business a lot more.

--SB
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Caltrops Marshall Plan by SB reposting moremedzplz 04/04/2003, 11:22pm PST NEW
    Re: Caltrops Marshall Plan by Senor Barborito 04/04/2003, 11:41pm PST NEW
    Responding to Mao by Entropy Stew 04/05/2003, 12:04am PST NEW
        Re: Responding to Mao by Chairman Mao 04/05/2003, 12:19am PST NEW
            Gotcha and Thanks NT by Entropy Stew 04/05/2003, 12:22am PST NEW
 
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