NationStates Jolt Archive

Aye, that we should, though if we're going to ask them, we should try to put together at least a rough draft of a proposal, rather than just suggest the basic idea, as otherwise we look, as you stated, whiny.

He is right. I keep seeing everyone complain, so if we are so dissatisfied with Jolt, let us come up with a reasonable proposal to present to the Mods, Admins and Max.

I suggest that if we do want to buy our own servers, we need to first start by collecting money for it. Im not sure how much it would cost, but we need to see if NS forumites will actually donate the money to such a thing.

Please list and discuss your proposals here :)

Obviously, the most important issue are the new servers themselves. We need, first and foremost, stability with the servers, followed by space and then bandwidth. We must also consider the location of the servers in the real world, as well as what company to purchase them from and how to maintain them. The issue that might be the hardest to determine is the server location, as most of us are distributed rather unevenly across the world and we'd need for at least several to be in one place so as to maintain the servers and whatnot.

Secondly, we must consider the costs of mainting these servers, the cost of bandwidth, and the time it would take to move all of the forum over to the new servers. Unless we want to enrage hundreds of RPers, we will need to copy every single thread currently on the servers, perhaps with a cut-off date of, say, two years or so, so we don't copy too much unnecessary waste and still preserve much of the forum.

no one has any comments?

Obviously, the most important issue are the new servers themselves. We need, first and foremost, stability with the servers, followed by space and then bandwidth. We must also consider the location of the servers in the real world, as well as what company to purchase them from and how to maintain them. The issue that might be the hardest to determine is the server location, as most of us are distributed rather unevenly across the world and we'd need for at least several to be in one place so as to maintain the servers and whatnot.

Secondly, we must consider the costs of mainting these servers, the cost of bandwidth, and the time it would take to move all of the forum over to the new servers. Unless we want to enrage hundreds of RPers, we will need to copy every single thread currently on the servers, perhaps with a cut-off date of, say, two years or so, so we don't copy too much unnecessary waste and still preserve much of the forum.

1) It'd make sense to move the servers to a place like America, UK, or Australia. Thats where MOST of the players and mods come from.

2) The costs would be something to consider. You don't think max would use his lovely fortune to cover those, do you? :p Actually, I wouldn't expect that, as he has to feed his family and all. However, I think maybe the new server could have some ads or something, not necessarily popups, because those are annoying as hell, but ads at the top and bottm and whatever. Maybe seek to get funding from the gov't or scholarly/political associations, as what we do here is discuss politics, and share freely ideas with each other. Surely someone would be kind enough to donate.

I'll agree to the general location suggestions there, Geppeto. I personally would lean more towards the U.K. than anywhere else, if only due to the greater concentration of NSers in a single area.

As for the costs...I don't know how likely it is we'd get a donation from a government, nor would I care to see what happens if they tried to regulate/control us thanks to that donation. Consider the amount of non political discussion that occurs on this website, or the RPing, or any of the other stuff that no government would be interested in funding. It'd limit us immensly if we tried to go for that.

Probably not. If Jolt can't handle it, a few people donating money for some very basic servers won't be able to either.

Plus, I don't have any means to donate anyway.

Probably not. If Jolt can't handle it, a few people donating money for some very basic servers won't be able to either.

Plus, I don't have any means to donate anyway.

Exactly. You get what you pay for; and considering I don't pay for anything and the biggest problem is a dodgy flux capacitor, I'm not complaining.

*makes obligatory remark about the old boards*

I'll agree to the general location suggestions there, Geppeto. I personally would lean more towards the U.K. than anywhere else, if only due to the greater concentration of NSers in a single area.

As for the costs...I don't know how likely it is we'd get a donation from a government, nor would I care to see what happens if they tried to regulate/control us thanks to that donation. Consider the amount of non political discussion that occurs on this website, or the RPing, or any of the other stuff that no government would be interested in funding. It'd limit us immensly if we tried to go for that.

Yeah, I was trying to go the approach of how Public Broadcasting does it. Use tax money to promote free thought! But I do see the problem with the control and limiting the RPers and all that...

I think right now if we wanted that, it'd take donations from us to get it started, and Ads to keep it going. Maybe donators could recieve special benefits. Like...if you donate $10 you can have an avatar or something like that, so that way you get people wanting to donate.

Probably not. If Jolt can't handle it, a few people donating money for some very basic servers won't be able to either.

Plus, I don't have any means to donate anyway.

Well, the idea I had was of purchasing servers equivalent to or superior to Jolt's servers. Without having to deal with all of the extra stuff Jolt has on it, it'd be a snap to keep NationStates stable, assuming we had decent peeps on that.

Isn't this idea invalidated by the fact that we could just donate to jolt?


And the servers here aren't that bad.........

Isn't this idea invalidated by the fact that we could just donate to jolt?


And the servers here aren't that bad.........

Ahh, good point. We could donate to Jolt, BUT, when Jolt fudges up , we still won't be able to do anything about it ourselves. I think NS needs that capability. The servers aren't that bad for free, yes, but it gets tiring of having to read the threads in odd manners trying to make sense of arguments, or its worse when Jolt is down all day, and someone like me with no life, has nothing else to do!

Jolt is better than the previous host. The timewarping is a pain in the arse though.

Thats the problem with clustering. Synchronisation.

Anyway...I suspect that the total cost of hosting NS ... from servers to networking to support is more than just a couple of grand.

Have you tried to talking to the site admins?

You need to ask some fundamental questions...here are a few....

How much data

What platform

Storage

Backups

Application requirements

Bandwidth usage

Vendor Support agreements

Who would man our own servers, and maintain them if they go wrong?

Who would man our own servers, and maintain them if they go wrong?

Depends on the co-lo....

Ahh, good point. We could donate to Jolt, BUT, when Jolt fudges up , we still won't be able to do anything about it ourselves. I think NS needs that capability. The servers aren't that bad for free, yes, but it gets tiring of having to read the threads in odd manners trying to make sense of arguments, or its worse when Jolt is down all day, and someone like me with no life, has nothing else to do!

Say NS does buy it's own server and gets someone to keep the rats from eating it. How is that any different from Jolt doing it? If whoever is looking after our servers we wouldn't be able to do anything about it either.

And the times when Jolt is down all day.....well some of us could make a forum on Invisionfree or proboards for the times when jolt is being really shit. Just as somewhere to post till jolt comes back to life. I made one on invisionfree for my region and we've had no problems. Though, there are less than 10 of us registered.