Important: forums closing down.

[Martz]

Due to changes in life, mainly moving house, I unfortunately have to stop hosting the forums.

We have only just got settled with the gameservers.nl hosting company, we have an excellent server, with lots of bandwidth, space and all that crap. At £45 quid a month it is a lot better than the £70+ quid a month I have was used to paying - however since moving into my new house the forums are the second largest single outgoing from my income - after my rent! I've got plenty of other things to be spending money on these days - so it's for this simple reason, that I am moving on.

The forums will not die or be closed completely, they will be dramatically scaled down over the next few days - or weeks - depending on how long it takes gameservers.nl too pull the plug and disconnect it from the 'net.

The following cutbacks will be made

• Community Hosted Forums will be closed down. Sorry guys, these forums represent a majority of the content on the forums. I will have a copy of the database which I might be able to export your threads and posts from to any other forums you may move too after this.
• General forums trimmed a bit, some forums merged/consolidated
• Chit-chat forum will become 100% spam free. This means LOL thread too, and all the other threads which are not about a particular topic.
• Forums moved over to the www.utassault.net web server - which is a lot slower, however with the cutbacks above the forum community should be able to survive to talk about UT:AS related topics.
• Possibly more - as soon as a proper migration plan is in place we'll update you.

I'm sure Phear, CS and the other admins can consider any offer from any other individual who wants to take on hosting the forums. Obviously this will be at our/their discretion, so that not just anyone who can afford to pay ~200 euros a quarter for hosting of the forums can buy it out and then destroy it. I'd rather see things scaled down and the community survive, rather than the forums and the database being sold to a marketing company so we all get mail-spammed to death. It's not going to happen.

I've sat back from time and grinned at how well this community has done, and how well utassault.net has progressed over the past 3 years(ish) that I have been around it. I've laughed my fucking ass off at times, at threads on the forums, conversations on IRC, banter and moves in games, LAN parties and pissups, good friends and top internet scum enemies. It's been an experience, and I personally feel that I have been able to enjoy this community a great deal - and for that I gotta thank you all. It's the people that make it, not the rules/regulations or whos a mod. I feel content with the way things have ended up - if I could, I'd keep on going. But now is probably the right time to do it.

Sorry to anyone who I have let down by doing this - hopefully you'll understand, if not now then 1 day.

I'll post more updates when I have them.

 

[free^]

arf

 

[ViPah]

 

[Peebe]

good job with the forums - i had fun abusing my secret admin rights

AoR


ALTHOUGH THIS NOW MEANS I WILL HAVE TO SPEND MORE TIME WORKING AND BUYING STUFF ON EBAY

 

[-Starlight-]

i werent gona post again on here.. cos iv moved on now lol. anyways..iv posted to say these forums were gr8, and its a shame 2 see em go now, but i did think this was gona happen sooner or later...thanks for your help with the community martz .. ive found my new home.. (www.corsasport.co.uk) lol.. anyways GL every1 in RL cos i wont b flying round all the seperate clan forums on different servers with diff accounts !...Thanks for the great forums martz


Thanks Again! :cool:

 

[Fin]

sad

thx for the great work and effort you, and everybody else, put into it

 

[Phear]

The forums won't be going, worst case they will just be scaled down to a just few forums and on topic, no spam discussions only

That said in <1 year it will all be gone as my RAQ server lease expires on 05/03/2004, and its unlikely I'll renew it.

 

[Spirit]

Firstly, I wanna thank Martz for everything he has done for the community over the past few years - it certainly wouldn't of built up into what it is today if it wasn't for his support for the league and time and money put into the forums.

I also want to ask this - Martz is it purely the cost of the forums that is the problem, or the time running them as well? Either way, with the size of the community I'm sure we could find solutions to any problems before killing it off completely. The changes you suggest will pretty much mean the death of UTAS because without the forums I dont think the community will survive, and I'm sure there would be enough people out there willing to contribute on a quarterly basis to keep them alive. How about small charges for the community hosting? If time is the problem, there are enough admins out there to keep the forums running smoothly and once again Im sure if more were needed there would be willing members of the community...

Before you do anything drastic like start deleting threads I think we should maybe have an open chat in mirc or something, in which volunteers can come forward to help out, ideas can be put forward etc... If that is done at least the community is getting a chance to keep things going

 

[Spirit]

Oh hmm then in respect of Phears post the death of UTAS is certainly iminent.

It's a big shame it will come down to lack of hardware / funding as opposed to lack of willing participants....

 

[Phear]

Well thats not to say a new home for the league couldn't be found before then, but as it stands thats the date it will all close down on.

With regards to the forums, 1 possible way around would be to setup an ezboard forum for Chit Chat spammage that links to from the main forums (so say when you click on "Chit Chat") you get taken to an ezboard forum. Just an idea

 

[Spirit]

Well for a start charging £5 a quarter (which is virtually nothing…) for each clan's hosted forum which raise nearly all the cash you need… I don't think there are many clans that would begrudge paying that for their private forums. That along with quarterly contributions from anyone who is willing should be enough to keep the forums going and have some left over... There is definately solutions to keep the whole thing alive

 

[Ezby]

I've been privaliged to have met so many amazing ppl and secured some precious rl friendship thru this community, and its true what they say.. you dont know what you've got until its gone.. and nothing lasts forever...

Big thx to Martz and everyone else for the fun we've all had over the past few years...



Ez xx

PS: altho my piggy bank's empty now, he'll be a bit fuller when i leave uni, so I would'nt have a problem paying for my spamming privalige!

 

[Phear]

tbh the problem with the RAQ isn't bandwidth its server powah. Moving the forums over there would basically introduce an automated anti spam system, since if the forums were too heavily used, response times will quickly go through the roof. I don't know that we will need to lose Chit Chat completely, but only time will tell. General Chit Chat threads may be do-able, its mindless spam that won't be.

The hosted forums will certainly have to go tho. I doubt there would be many people prepared to pay for the priviledge of a clan forum.

 

[Spirit]

I think money could be raised pretty easily to keep things operating just as it is… There are many generous people in the community whom I sure would be happy to make a small contribution on a quarterly basis (myself included) and I can't see people would be to concerned if they had to pay £5 a quarter for their clan forums, thats £1.67 a month between 8-12 people... I know AUT would be happy to do that, especially if it means the difference between the death of the forums or not!

Even if some of the current clans that have forums don’t want to pay, there are many other clans in the league who havent been able to get hosted due to bandwidth, and would be happy to take over someone elses space for £5 a month

 

[Ezby]

but AUT is just 1 clan out of many.... it'd have to be a significant proportion of clans to be worth doing...

argh

 

[Phear]

£5 per quarter it would need 27 clans, there are only 20 active clan forums that I count atm (and some of those I aint sure are active clans). £5 per month would need 9, but I think you'd still be pushed to find that tbh.

 

[Spirit]

You would be pushed to get it purely from the forums yeah, but if 15 clans paid £5 that would be £75 (although as I said, there would be other clans willing to take over the places of those not willing to contribute). With other donations from ppl like msyelf, of say £20 a quarter which I would be more than happy to pay, you only need another 3 ppl to contribute to make it run itself. I have no doubts what so ever that would happen.

Here's a proposal - you guys keep running the forums etc as they are, and I'll look after the financial side of things I'll collect cash from the relevant ppl and make sure there is enough to pay for the forums to stay here on a quarterly basis - I'm that confident I get get £135 together each quarter that I'll even pay for it up front myself

 

[Hugh(_I_)Jarse]

First I'd like to say thanks to Martz for all he has done on the forums, not just the expense but the many l8 nights keeping it going.

The forums do tie the community together and I find it hard to see things continuing without them. A cut down forums would be ok, but it would be a shame to lose the clan forums. I'd be willing to pay for both clans I'm in, but I don't think it's just a case of money. It needs someone with Martz's skills and time to give.
It's a big job to take on when you know there's not really a very long life left...

 

[Lupus]

Much respect to Marz for everything that he has done for us.

I doubt most of the league players even know how much time and money Martin has put in the forums that we all use.

I agree with Dave that we have to try to keep the forums alive, cause they are very important for the UTAS community. It would indeed be a shame that UTAS would die cause of hardware/money issues instead of lack of interest in the game.

I am willing to pay a certain amount of money every quarter to keep the forums as they are and I am sure that most of the other ((si><th)) members are willing to do this too.

Good luck with your new house Martin and Jo!

 

[Spirit]

Unfortunately I do not have enough time to put in myself to do what Martz does, so that is an issue that will still need looking at. I did notice however that he specifically said it was the financial side of things that was the problem, and not the time. I would be interested to know if you would be willing to carry on administrating the forums of the costs are fully covered by the community Martz?

I am happy to administrate the financial side of things, ensure clan forums are paid for, collect money etc, which will be a reasonably large part of the job. If Martz is willing to continue putting the time in then we are pretty much sort already, otherwise we will need to find someone / people that are willing to cover Martz's work that he puts in. I guess the first step in doing so is to find out exactly what jobs / task need doing and how much time they take up

Martz?!