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Seriously you guys, seriously.


Cerina
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We're out of money. So could everybody please make a small donation? I think it cost $40 a month to run this place. So just a handful of people really need to contribute about $20 each and we should be set. So please please please please please give us money!

 

Donations can be sent via PayPal to JA@nightly.net

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm just going to say what a lot of people are probably thinking, it might be time for Nightly to sunset.

If the place is going to be as inactive as it is for the majority of the site, there's not really a lot of practical sense in anyone paying $40 a month for it. We can make a Facebook group or sub on Reddit for free. And both of those places have far more activity.

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Well, so far the thing that seems to be swaying it is the community lack of response.

 

I'll be honest, I don't have the spare funds to donate at this time. I've been off work for 6 weeks and I've got a family, so we're barely above water right now. That should change, but it'd still be a lot to say that Nightly can be a priority for me right now.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I don't know ANYTHING about running a message board, but $40/month seems pretty high. What about streamlining nightly, and opting out of some rarely used features, maybe closing rarely posted forums (I mean no one posts in the DIY forum, for example) etc? Maybe fees can be lowered that way?

 

Also, doing a quick google search and assuming you want an alternative to facebook or reddit, I found these pages that say they offer a free message board:

 

 

https://www.proboards.com/

 

http://boardhost.com/

 

http://www.runboard.com/

 

Here's another helpful site, that lists a few others...

 

http://www.quertime.com/article/15-best-online-forum-platforms-software-free-and-paid/

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I donated a sizeable chunk last year-- one of the reasons we operate the way we do is because we carry a lot of archives and history. We could use a cheaper system for sure, but we'd lose our history as it doesn't transfer over.

 

That said, we may be paying for a level of bandwidth we no longer need.

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We could save a lot by moving to a cheaper server, but we wouldn't work on one without likely jettisoning our old stuff. That's my understanding at least.

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I forgot about this. I've never sent money via Paypal that wasn't through a storefront setup (like we have for supporters). I imagine it's easy to do, though. I can chip in some funds soon (assuming it is easy to do) to help keep Nightly afloat or a bit.

 

...

 

But only if you ban Jacob.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I donated a sizeable chunk last year-- one of the reasons we operate the way we do is because we carry a lot of archives and history. We could use a cheaper system for sure, but we'd lose our history as it doesn't transfer over.

 

That said, we may be paying for a level of bandwidth we no longer need.

 

Maybe soneone(s) can save all the archives and history and **** onto a hard drive so it still exists, just not available online?

Well, this place existed long before I came here, so I'd like to ask a question: out of all the original posters from when nightly first started (since 1999?), how many or are active or at least still in contact with those still posting? There are over 2 million posts, and almost 10,000 accounts.

 

Maybe there is a way to keep only old posts of active posters or posts that are must haves, and delete accounts that haven't been used in over say 5 years, especially ones that are known spam accounts, or people who have been banned? And it is worth asking if data can be moved off the server. I imagine it CAN be done technologically, it just depends if the company will do it.

 

I know there is a lot of nostalgia involved and I am not trying to be insensitive to that, but there has to be a way to trim some fat. Look at it this way... you can either drop some old, inactive accounts and old posts no one ever reads to help make it affordable, or close the site altogether, and lose it all, anyway. Or just opt for a free version, and not have to worry about costs again.

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What would be the size of the backup of all of the past stuff? Couldn't it just be loaded into some free or cheap cloud service?

Also, I'm going to work a little this week on creating us a Reddit Sub with nice graphics and such that match our theme and history. Maybe the specific software won't exist, but no reason the community can't continue to.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/

 

Amazon Glacier is a secure, durable, and extremely low-cost cloud storage service for data archiving and long-term backup. Customers can reliably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.007 per gigabyte per month, a significant savings compared to on-premises solutions. To keep costs low, Amazon Glacier is optimized for infrequently accessed data where a retrieval time of several hours is suitable

 

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It's not just storing or history, it's being able to read it. One of the reasons we use this software is because it reads our archives from older systems. The backed up data would be fine, but you couldn't just open it up and read it.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I hear you Driver. I'm just throwing out ideas brainstorming-style.

 

But, speaking as an ex-mod of the now-defunct sci-fi forum (one of many to be sure, but I was the last to mod), what is the point of hanging on to all the old posts, if a lot of the people who made them aren't around anymore, anyway? Before it was closed altogether due to lack of interest, I had my pee pee slapped for deleting some of those old threads in the sci fi forum, most dating back to when it was the Star Trek forum. When I received feedback to stop deleting old posts, I stopped. I felt bad, and felt like I did something wrong for a while. But you know, it closed not long after, anyway, and as a whole, it wasn't even archived. I think some posts were rolled into the Movies and TV forum, but no one discusses shows like Star Trek, Stargate, BSG, Babylon 5, etc, at nightly, anymore.

 

Now, who really misses the sci fi forum? Who even remembers it? Who even cares? I can't remember anyone referencing, let alone quoting anything from any posts from that old sci fi forum, in any still-existing forums. I personally don't look at threads any older than a few months, unless there is a specific reason or a specific topic. But then again, I wasn't here in the very beginning, so I don't have the same emotional attachment as some who have been here since 1999.

 

I am not trying to influence anyone's decision, and whatever is decided, I will support it. I am just pointing out that maybe a lot of what is being saved is being saved for no practical reason. Maybe the answer is to leave nightly as it is if enough funding is raised, or maybe it's time to do some spring cleaning to save some bandwidth and money, and if there are threads someone made and want to save, they need to be responsible for saving it themselves, somehow? Maybe some old posts can be converted a low res forum to save money, or converted to txt or PDF documents, and archived on google docs or something (the problem being, who wants to go through 2 million posts and do that?). Or maybe go with a less expensive or free forum option?

 

That said, I have to agree with Krawlie on reddit. That site is so hard to follow. Every time I look up something that links to reddit, it hurts my eyes just trying to read it.

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I think my first choice would be to see about jettisoning the archives and trying to move to a cheaper server. Short of that, jettisoning the entire IPB software and starting over with a free software. We may be able to convert some of our stuff to a free software, but I'd have to look into whether or not it is practical. Even with that, we'd need to probably at least weed the archives pretty heavily.

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As a 99'er I get it. There is a lot of great material in there and a lot of good memories... that said, I rarely go digging into it for any reason. There's a couple people, like Carrie/Amidala/LetsGo that like to dig out things they said years age and requote themselves-- but there aren't a lot of them.

 

There's been a couple times I've gone digging to re-read something cause I recalled it to be a fun conversation... but I don't know if re-reading it is really any more useful than just recalling it fondly.

 

Most people just fear change. I recall the scifi forum fine-- and I also remember the Indy forum, the Matrix forum, etc. And if there's one thing I know, it's that people wig out whenever you shutter a forum.

 

but the truth is, there's only a handful of us here and I think the past is a lot of baggage. I'm sure a lot of the archived stuff was saved at the request of people who don't even post here anymore.

 

I personally love the blackout boards, no over-organization, just convos. I'd love it if we were something small like that.

 

So even as a veteran, I am fine with cutting away the past. I think if the data could be stored, just so sensitive types know it is saved somewhere, that would be fine.

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I'm with Driver. We have the memories, do we really need to be able to re-read them word-for-word?

 

I'd like a big open forum for discussion. And maybe a "private" forum that you need to be a member to see, but isn't available to casual browsers.

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Is there no (relatively) straightforward way of converting the files in the archives to something that can be more cheaply stored and read?

 

Also, joking about banning Jacob aside, is it easy to transfer money to the account via PayPal? I really would gladly chip in to help.

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Sending money through Paypal is super easy. You pretty much just go there, click on send money, put in ja@nightly.net and mark it as a gift and send it

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