Who created the org!

[Swoosh So]

Probably a silly question but who created the org, i know alot of people contributed to it but who's baby is it?

[Gregoshi]

Early History

[Swoosh So]

So who is this dan? does he post in the forums? or would i have known him in my shogun days?

[Mithrandir]

Dan is a legendary person...

[Shahed]

Is this leading to anything Swoosh or are you just inquisitive like me.

[Catiline]

I have a hazy memory of someone who might have been Dan once...

[Swoosh So]

Sinan im just inquisitve , but i dont like riddles

[Alrowan]

Dan... well the mists of time reveal nothing too me, i guess i was a babe in arms at the time

on another note, perhaps monsta can help.. he is a wolf of wisdom.. being thier shaman and all

[solypsist]

Dan no longer has anything to do with the website. Ownership has been transferred to the Org Admins and staff, who keep things running (and keep those banner ads going to pay for stuff)

[Swoosh So]

thanks

[Monsta]

How about profit?

what is it per hit on the site or lump sum?

was the site bought off Dan?

If it does make profit who gets the cash?

As a FAN on the FAN site it would be interesting to know these matters...if indeed somebody is making money...then the people who make mods etc should they get a slise of the cake?

Is the money from the ads being put to good use?

Could the growth of interest in MTW and the growth or visits to the Org have anything to do with certain changes in attitude from the staff?

Will this be answered?

Think Tera once said to Monsta that the Org got about 1500 hits a day.

[Catiline]

THe profits are huge. Once a year we blow them in Vegas on Whores and coke.

[CBR]

FFS I knew it I want to be a moderator too

CBR

[Rob The Bastard]

Ok... when does this big bash come around???

No whores for me thanks... my wife is a sensitive soul who would rip my ****s off, coke sounds nice

[Catiline]

Given you dress in hte Selma frock I thought she already had...

[Kraellin]

dan was the originator of the .org. he had whatever arrangement he had with telefrag, or whatever their company is called. telefrag runs the server. we run the .org. it's the same arrangement as many of you have running clan sites. telefrag owns the banners and popups and are the only ones making a nickel off the site, as far as i know. no moderator or admin makes anything from it. in fact, some are even paying money out to keep it going. in fact, shld you happen to wish to make a donation, i'm sure that could be arranged.

all of the staff are volunteers, taken from the public ranks.

the domain name was owned by dan, but that has changed hands now and dan is completely out of it.

since it would be pretty much a copyright violation to make money off mods without CA's or Activision's permission (or both, perhaps), and since no one on the .org is making any money off it, this is not a consideration. and in the past, magazines that have wanted to post screenshots or maps have come to us first for permission, this upholds this idea even further. frankly, i'd love to see contributors rewarded for things like mods and maps and logfile readers and so on, but we'd have to have something to reward them with first, and we'd also have to have permission from CA/Activision. recent rulings in the u.s. courts have pretty much put a damper on selling mods and unofficial third party expansion packs without those permissions.

and if anyone feels they wish to go to telefrag and drive a wedge between us and them as part of the current witchhunt, insanities around here lately...lol; good luck and may your ban be long. not that anyone would attempt this, of course. besides, server hosts often could just care less and turn pretty much a blind eye to these things. besides which, it would cause the .org to be down for about 5 minutes and we'd simply move the site to one of several alternatives. telefrag loses however many thousand potential customers there are here at the .org now, and in the future, and that's just not likely to happen because of somewhat disgruntled fans on a fan site. now, i'm also just way off base here even hinting that some of our cherubic patrons would ever even think of such a thing, right? so just mark it up to me being paranoid or something for even remotely suggesting that we have any patrons that would ever even think of such a thing.

K.

[Monsta]

That explained alot thanx, although your final rant lost Monsta a little..anyway.

So all the money from the adds go to TeleFraggle - Wargamers (whatever they are called) to host this site.

Who pays for the forum.or is that all part of the deal?

The domain name was owned by Dan but is now owed by Tosa?

So the only element of value is the name TotalWar Org..outside of what the server and the hosts get..ph yeah and the forum people?

So you have no idea how much it cost to have this host? or how much is made by the ads? Is there no agreement of type/size ads they put on etc?

So the host could be making a mint but you (you as in the powers that be) are happy because you have a solid base?

These questions have nothing to do with the current ill feeling (and that is nothing to do with Monsta anyway)...it is just a matter of interest.

Monsta keeps thinking ...'reliable host...but do they get more money than others could offer'?

also if the 'powers that be' have little or no financial iterest why so often the 'heavy handed' treatment of certain unwelcome elements (of course we dont want racist etc)

[LadyAnn]

OK, Annie jumps into the frey... :mad:

[EDIT: Annie edits out most of what she want to say, except it is a pain to see old friends, yes, most of the people implied in current "storm" were old friends back to STW days, bickering and kick up dirts. I guess one need to ask oneselves "is there still decency?"]

Annie

[Magyar Khan]

it isnt hard to choose between decency and the truth

[Monsta]

Monsta will repeat-

This is not part of the NC issue nor is it part of the Tgate issue.

Just questions of interest.

Can somebody answer the above?

Will somebody answer the above?

And if not why not?

"Blimey..talk about walking on egg shells"

[Monsta]

Number of pageviews in the month of June 2000: 136,216.

just got that from Dans little write up..that number must be at leasr 3 time that amount now?

Plus peaking during Tgate/Release of MTW?

Does this explain why certain issues were not allowed to be seen?

Or why Monsta's request for a forum warning about having different passwords was not allowed (before the sh*t hit the fan so to speak?)

Are the ads not paid for per hit..lets say $(euros?)50 per 1000 hits?

Even $10 per 1000 would mean (based on a 300.000 hit a month) £3k from ads?

(damn my maths...&#33

$10 for 10k hits?...£300 per month?

or is it lump sum?....£100 per ad?

Ad on every page...plus a pop up...seemed to arrive around the warm up for MTW...and so did the attitude change here (or was it just me?...do you remember the DD vs Mizu....when we all(the non junkies) stuck up for the now Admin family)

Maybe if this site was independant of wargamer (whatever its called) and the other hosts...it would profit?

Money set aside for such things as real life meetings..prizes for best MODS or tourney winners?

Somebody must know the money side in all this...?

[Kraellin]

monsta,

i really dont have the details you're asking for. it was my understanding, in the past anyways, that the site was free to the .org because of the ads. so the exchange was we got a free host, they made some money off it. what it is now i dont really know. as for hits and how much is made, you'd have to ask one of the admins or the guys at telefrag.

and i dont think any of this stuff is any big secret or anything. it was common knowledge for a long time.

as for the costs to run this place, i'm not sure either. domain registration was one but not sure of any others or what they might be...maybe the board itself? dunno.

as for actually making money, that might be possible if we went to a pay host and then solicted ads of our own, without the host demanding theirs. that is one possibility. it's been talked about from time to time.

as for attitude changes, we've seen a few top dogs over the years, dan, anssi, kuma, tera, tosa. did kurando have top dog for a while? i forget. and we've certainly had a varying patronage as well. remember when we got invaded by the .com'ers when their site was hacked and the changes that occurred around then? the 'personality' of the .org i suppose is something of a composite of those that run it and those that frequent it, so it's always gonna change.

getting this new board changed things too. it allowed for extra features that prolly affected some things and some attitudes as well, if in only a slight way.

we've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly on here. i look forward to when it comes out of its current ugly phase. i currently feel like i'm sitting on the dmz with the opposition set up a few hundred yards across no-man's land, and every once in a while a shot is fired.

still, it's nothing compared to what it used to be with all the flame wars and so forth. and that's why the current policies exist. i specifically remember the devs being pretty much run out of town a couple times by all the noise makers and threats of boycotts and other idiot demands. the idea behind the .org policies has always been one of create a safe space for discourse and exhange. it might be true that there can be only one, but this is holy ground. no fighting on holy ground. and since the weapons we primarily employ here are words, that means all the little sarcasms, snipes, innuendos, pot-shots, flames and so on, are not ok. in the foyer, hey, let it rip if you want. on the battlefield, go for it, rip some hearts out, but here...leave the guns at the door.

now, each new top dog that comes in has his/her own ideas on how to enforce or even interpret that ideal. i'd say that accounts for as much of the attitude change as anything. and since we've had a few over the years, yeah, things may 'feel' different from time to time.

as for what 'issues were not allowed to be seen', you'd have to give me a specific reference. i do know that we currently try to keep all this 'garbage' type stuff off the public plate as much as possible. it just doesnt belong in the main forums. you card someone, they gripe about it in public and that just adds more fuel to the flame and flames. you see what i mean here? airing your 'garbage' in public just adds more garbage and the garbage tends to grow. we're not trying to be secretive in the sense that we're all covertly running around carding people and banning folks on the sly. it just doesnt belong in the forums. it's a fan site. it's a game. we're not here to execute anyone; we're not going to hold public trials and create a whole new game of hanging each other in effigy. we'd much rather be playing the game or doing something constructive than policing rants and raves and snide remarks and accusations of 'wrong-doing'.

we know the guys who fan the flames. we've prolly actually allowed them a bit too much leeway and they therefore feel a bit emboldened by this. prolly a mistake. someone comes into the apothecary asking for a bit of help. we help and one of his mates comes in and takes a little snipe at something. just doesnt belong there. totally inappropriate and by itself, no big deal. i let it slide. the original person got his help. but all these little snipes add up over time and suddenly the guy finds himself carded or banned and cries foul over yet another little snipe. to others it looks ridiculous that the guy was carded or banned, but they havent seen the hundred other little snipes the guy made, because we dont particularly hang a lot of heads on a pike every time we warn someone or every time someone takes a shot here and there...but we do mostly note it.

ok, i'll get off the soapbox on that one for now. just mark all that up to your question about changes in attitude.

Quote[/b] ]Or why Monsta's request for a forum warning about having different passwords was not allowed

i dont know anything about this one, monsta. explain.

Quote[/b] ]Money set aside for such things as real life meetings..prizes for best MODS or tourney winners?

personally, i'd love to see this done. CA has donated a few games in the past, but we have no treasury or pool of money to do this with. it's been discussed but i couldnt really tell you where it sits at the moment. i will say this, though, adding money into the mix tends to lead to harder feelings and sometimes even more accusations and suspicions, so i dunno. i'd say for the moment, let's iron out some of the other 'bugs' before throwing this one into the pot. still, the idea has a lot of merit.

i earned my shukan title. that was awarded to me. my original icon was also awarded to me and my hof awards were also earned. this is about the only way we have currently of awarding folks, other than member promotions. and didnt someone earn a real sword, given by CA or EA for one of the tourneys? frankly, i prize my awards more than i would a cash prize. it's all just an ego thing perhaps, but it's nonetheless true. still, it would be nice to award someone a castle or jewel encrusted saber or something and i certainly wouldnt turn it down ;)

K.

[tootee]

House cleaning. Thread seems more appropriate for WatchTower.. so there it goes...