51 replies to this topic

[Cascade]

With respect to your last comment and yourself being as I see it the main co-ordinator of this forum, I would like to say that giving benefits to all who sign up for "Real Tasmania" probably needs to be looked at a little closer, especially if it is to continue by being funded from donations made by those now known as "Site Supporters".
Hopefully there will always be sufficient income for the site as I am fully aware of most of the ongoing costs for hosting etc, but I really think it depends on what you clasify as rewards and the manner in which you decide to implement or distribute them especially when public money from individuals, albeit by donation, is being used for the benefit as I see it, to anyone who signs up to join in.

I guess this pulls me off the nice guy pedestall.

[Mystic]

Good points Cascade. "Rewards" for all members is an intentionally ambiguous term and it mainly refers to extra features that could possibly be added later that would be accessible by all members. This may also refer to competitions and such that may have unrestricted access to all members. Site Supporters have paid for the recent upgrade, and this is one of those things that benefits all members.

I am also planning a few things that will only be available to Site Supporters.

Right now the focus is on getting the basic structure of the site up to where I would like to see it, before adding in extra enhancements. There is also another major version update coming very shortly, (which our current license will allow us access to for free), and I am waiting to see what changes this may bring that could effect other enhancements.

As you are probably aware we use and Invision Power Board to create this site, and there are many, many free enhancements and additional modifications available to add extra functionality. There are also numerous modifications and enhancements that are no free, but must be bought from the individual developers of the feature.

There are definitely plans to build features in that will benefit site supporters, and we will be discussing a few things with those elite members in the near future to see if they would be useful. On the other hand, we all, I think, are interested in developing the site so as to encourage greater participation from all who come here. Making sure we continually add new information about Tasmania and that current information is always up to date, means the site improves for everyone.

Recently we clocked over our 5,000th post and I would dearly love to see us double that by the end of the year. Considering it has taken a little over two years to get to where we are at, this will require a bit of encouragement. Creating a more encouraging environment through added enhancements will help to achieve this goal, we hope.

To put things into a bit of perspective, since this site was first started, Shane & I have invested well over $2,000 of our own funds. We have received around $500 in donations in that time, and earned about $250 through Google ads. As Shane does not really understand the nuances of php coding, it means that any problems and development and bug splatting, not to mention the frustration of repairing the site when it has been hacked, has always fallen back to me. That has involved an investment of many thousands of hours of my time alone. Monitoring the site, answering questions, getting rid of spammers, etc, has also required many thousands of hours of time from both Shane and I. Just between you and I, there have been a lot of times where I have thought, bugger it, and felt like deleting the site. Luckily, people such as yourself have usually managed to pop their heads up and restored my faith in the site.

It is indeed difficult to balance adding enhancements that only give benefit to those who financially support the site against all others, but ultimately the great beauty of this site, to me at least, is that we provide a free place where all who love our magnificent island can come and play, meet others, and share with each other. Have considered limiting the number of images that a non paying member could upload for example, but the downside of that is it would mean we probably would see a reduction in the number of photographs posted that we all enjoy looking at. I would personally like to see thousands of more images posted, and hundreds of extra people posting them. That would not happen if we suddenly restricted the capacity for people to freely share. As we grow, especially through the addition of images, this site expands and requires more and more disk space and bandwidth. Currently we are running at about 4Gb in size and around 3Gb per month in bandwidth used by traffic. As these figures grow, our hosting will need to be updated to accommodate that growth. I am fully aware that we will eventually reach a point where we will require a dedicated server. This will cost at least around $50 per month, and we need to start preparing for expenses such as that, or we start imposing heavy restrictions on the way we do things here, something I personally do not wish to do.

We do appreciate, very much indeed, the financial contributions made by members, we also appreciate the contributions members make to increase the site content, after all without that, there would be no point in having the site at all.

One of my personal pet peeves about numerous websites I have belonged to is that they only ever gave basic access to non paying members, claimed to be a "free" site, then ensured that if a member actually wanted to participate fully in the site, they had to pay a subscription fee. We have considered doing that here, and duly rejected the notion. That will not change in the foreseeable future, but there probably will be additions that will only be made to site supporters.

Out of curiosity, what kind of benefits or features would you like to see that would be exclusively available to site supporters, or are there any additions that you would like to see for these elite members?

[dave]

well folks please excuse my ignorance of such matters, I enjoy the site so I contribute, my choice completely, I do this for two reasons one it improves and upgrades the site, two it makes the site more "ad free", and just as a sideline I dont miss the few dollars I place in here,

I am not out to gain "privileges", I am well aware of the time, effort and finances donated by the administrators and can only applaud the intestinal fortitude it takes to continue in the face of constant adversity, very much akin to banging one's head against a wall sometimes I would think, something I would not or could not do,

if my donation rewards some of the hours and replaces a bit of the dough placed by the administrators then that is a good thing isn't it?, I made my thoughts clear when I congratulated Anna and Shane as well as the contributers to this site in a previous post and I will reiterate it again here, I think it's a great place to be with great folks, it can only get better with time and more input from members, finances and posts but that will come

I will chuck more pennies in at later dates simply because I want to, not because of the possibility of rewards or accolades but to improve the site, as I said before Anna and Shane should be able to have a beer on us as well as a well funded forum, it is after all for our benefit I see little benefit if Shane and Anna were the only participants, personally I dont care if my donation goes to the publican or to the site, makes me happy either way, do with it as you see fit, the site is great as it is and very well patrolled by very capable administrators this in itself should be rewarded

this is not an attack or a comment on anyone or anything, merely my thoughts! on this matter for what they are worth!

anyway just my two bobs worth, soapbox back to the corner and me back to my accounts!

[Mystic]

Thank you very much for your thoughts Dave. Cannot agree more with your perspective. Our local and very friendly publican would probably have to be rather disappointed if he relied on income from this site. it simply does not make a profit, but it never has been about profits anyway.

Just a little something extra on the line of thought being put forward by Cascade though, and something that Shane and I have just been discussing... I understand that you feel perhaps those who contribute financially should perhaps get a little extra, but consider the following...

Person A contributes $50 through a donation, person B contributes $20, and person C contributes $5. If we were to implement a system that rewards Site Supporters above other members, would you suggest that person A should receive greater benefits than person C ?

Without creating a subscription based scheme (very simple to do) we could not possibly differentiate between people based on the level of donation they contribute. Along the same lines, should a person making a financial contribution get better service than a person who contributes 200 informative posts and/or topics? Without the content creation, the money would not be required, so, perhaps the people who contribute through their time and effort should be rewarded as well.

As Dave said above:

Quote

I enjoy the site so I contribute, my choice completely, I do this for two reasons one it improves and upgrades the site, two it makes the site more "ad free", and just as a sideline I dont miss the few dollars I place in here,

If people cannot afford to contribute financially we are not going to turn them away. The site exists for everyone.

[Per Larsen]

Mystic, on 19 April 2010 - 01:27 PM, said:

If people cannot afford to contribute financially we are not going to turn them away. The site exists for everyone.

I applaud that principle. May I also congratulate the person who came up with the idea to change the Gallery from latest added images to random images.

[Mystic]

Per Larsen, on 19 April 2010 - 03:26 PM, said:

May I also congratulate the person who came up with the idea to change the Gallery from latest added images to random images.

we did something right Thank you Per

[Cascade]

Hmmm....

Stirred the pot a little there didn't I.

To some extent my actual thinking did not come through clearly in the comment I made and I don't intend to dig the hole any deeper.

It basically stemmed from my first impression of the forum after the donation request was added and having the "Donate to Real Tasmania" box in my face as one of the first things I see, having got used to seeing and enjoying the new "Recent Status Updates" conveniently without having to scroll.

So I have a question, and if not "do-able" then I have a request.

The Question: Could the "Donate to Real Tasmania" box be moved to below the "Recent Status Updates"' section?

The Request: Could the heading "Donate to Real Tasmanina" be changed to "Support Real Tasmania". I know they are just words, but...........

[dave]

as I stated I wasn't answering anyones post, merely making my observation, I dont even notice the "donate" box, the last forum site I came from had "pop up's" and "banner ad's" filling the screen all the time,



this forum, to me, is a breath of fresh air, instead of cringing every-time I log on I find it a pleasure to pause my invoices and just lose myself in the pages for a wee while, and after all thats what the experience is supposed to be isn't it, I return to my duties uplifted and not angry, far better state of affairs, I congratulate the administrators on a clean easy to navigate forum!

[Mystic]

Ah, don't you just love semantics?

Cascade, box now invisible to you, and to other Site Supporters, unless you are not logged in. Instead I will be making a post in the Supporters Bar for anyone who wishes to contribute further to the site through a donation.

Dave, thanks again. There are numerous things that I cannot stand about the structure of many websites, and you named a few of them right there. Discussions with others running similar sites to this suggest that pop ups and other annoying things will increase donation rates, if that means getting rid of them, but I simply refuse to do it.

Both Shane & I get a lot of pleasure out of this site, and often members will pass little secrets to us privately that lead us into new adventures within Tasmania. The site has to be as pleasant and welcoming as possible, otherwise we scare people away.

[Cascade]

I guess you can ignore my last message.

Excellent work Mystic, youv'e done extremely well and have made an old man happy.....

[bandi]

Hi guys,

Been a bit busy of late, but must say I'm LOVING the new site Fantastic stuff!!! Sounds like you've put in some serious effort to get things going... it's greatly appreciated!

[Mystic]

Thank you bandi, yep, a little work gone into the place, but it does seem to have paid off with people generally being happy with the result. Thanks go to you and all the others who supported us to cover the costs for this to be possible.