Dear Ganiman, (op updated)

[Ryko]

I would absolutely love to know what that seven thousand dollars you raised for new servers is doing right about now.

People commiting fraud for 7K? That makes about as much sense as breaking into a bank and stealing a stapler.

However, I wouldn't consider anything they did as fraud even if their servers were free. You obviously don't understand the value of time. 7K over 5 months is less than minumum wage. If they claimed the entire amount went to admin. fees, I wouldn't hold that against them.

8.75/hr (assuming 40 hours a week for 4 weeks) is less than minimum wage where? Or I should ask in how many states.

[Croaker]

I would absolutely love to know what that seven thousand dollars you raised for new servers is doing right about now.

People commiting fraud for 7K? That makes about as much sense as breaking into a bank and stealing a stapler.

However, I wouldn't consider anything they did as fraud even if their servers were free. You obviously don't understand the value of time. 7K over 5 months is less than minumum wage. If they claimed the entire amount went to admin. fees, I wouldn't hold that against them.

8.75/hr (assuming 40 hours a week for 4 weeks) is less than minimum wage where? Or I should ask in how many states.

Ohhh! You got me on that one Mr. Calculator.

Ok, barely over minimum wage. Not exactly what I would consider the crime of the century and still much less that they could make at a decent job instead of dinking around with a their wiki.

[Weeks]

Hypothetically, just how much money does a group have to lose to a fraud before it's okay for them to get upset?

[Luto]

I would absolutely love to know what that seven thousand dollars you raised for new servers is doing right about now.

People commiting fraud for 7K? That makes about as much sense as breaking into a bank and stealing a stapler.

However, I wouldn't consider anything they did as fraud even if their servers were free. You obviously don't understand the value of time. 7K over 5 months is less than minumum wage. If they claimed the entire amount went to admin. fees, I wouldn't hold that against them.

8.75/hr (assuming 40 hours a week for 4 weeks) is less than minimum wage where? Or I should ask in how many states.

Ohhh! You got me on that one Mr. Calculator.

Ok, barely over minimum wage. Not exactly what I would consider the crime of the century and still much less that they could make at a decent job instead of dinking around with a their wiki.

What state do you live in where 8.75 is minimum wage >_>? NH was like 5.50/hr when I moved. Mass was like $6.00/hr iirc. I don't even know what Arkansas' is but since it's a poor ass state I'm assuming something low.

[Vail]

http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm

5.15 is the lowest in a few states, not counting states that have no minimum wage laws

[Khamsin]

$7.93 in Washington. $7.93 for burger flippers and grocery checkers, $8.75 for server admins? Maybe, but that's not what they said the money was for. If they wanted to pay themselves with it, they'd have listed it with the other stuff they said the donations were funding.

It's not so much about what exactly they are doing with it, its more about the fact that they're doing something other than what they said they were going to do.

[rydiu]

I don't think it was really fraud...just some people who are really bad at business administration...They should cut their losses as short as they can and reimburse people who donated - minus whatever was lost - and send complimentary mouse pads to all who donated any amount and cancel the t-shirts. (Who's really going to wear a ffxiclopedia t-shirt anyways..lol)

1stpads.com has a great deal for fabric covered mouse pads. (the soft ones) You can get 500 for $1k or 750 for $1.35k. Or if even less people donated you can order 250 for $400 or so...

If you flame me, I will change my mind and think it was fraud.

Love,

Rydiu

[Sagacious Sundi]

you think that everybody who wants donations is a douchebag and there is no such thing as a good charity.

And here I thought you were a morally corrupt person. (Because you're a DRK.)

[Toxictaru]

-- Wall-o-text warning --

First, I'm sure some people will read what I have to say and think "meh, he doesn't have enough posts and is probably talking out of his ass" but rest assured that I am curious where my money has gone too.

This is going to sound like whiny drama, and probably is, to a point, but I'd like to throw it out here so that Mierin (because I know he reads BG daily, him and I used to talk about it all the time) can possibly address this.

FFXIclopedia, as some may know here, runs fairly popular forums. I was a former poster there (and decently well known around the place). Most people tended to agree that most of the stuff I posted was passionate, and occasionally, I broke in to arguments. I'd be reprimanded, but people like Ganiman would tell me in private that they wished they were still able to say some of the things that I wasn't afraid to say. Typically, no action was taken against me beyond some shit like "you should know better" because my wife was a well-respected editor and member of the forums. Nearly the entire population of the wiki knew her and respected her. Even the administration did. They promoted her to a higher position of power, and I was even a Jr. Admin on the french site.

On their forums, they had installed the ability to write blogs, which I took advantage of when I first started playing FFXI, and had a LOT of people who liked reading my stuff. Suddenly, some users on the forums decided to repeatedly attack myself and my wife, for absolutely NO reason. In May, my wife wrote a message to the administration (it was passed to Mierin and Ganiman, I read it myself) outlining 26 separate examples of the user violating forum rules and attacking people for no reason. No action was ever taken against the user.

In the meantime, myself and that user kept somewhat civil relations, going so far as to add comments that were always civil on each others blogs, about various things. Suddenly, for absolutely no reason, they left some incredibly harsh and very very personal attacks against us on their blog. Myself and many users of the wiki cried out about it, and asked that action be taken against them. Ganiman and I spoke in private for a while (on IRC), and he told me that he would remove their ability to maintain a blog for a while, and hopefully they'd get the message. When it was reinstated a week or two later, the personal attacks remained. I took offense to that, and decided to move my blog away. Instead of causing more problems, I decided that it'd be better if I just took the ability for them to attack me away. At no point in time was I ever overly critical about the wiki (short of complaining that they basically condoned the attacks made by not removing them). They kept saying that the comments wouldn't be removed because blogs were a personal place to write, but also arguing that they are public to all, which is why they were temp banned.

My wife and I were pushing hard to have some action taken against the user in question. He was well-known among the regular users as someone who was typically mean (and hell, by his own admission, he is a "jerkface"). My wife, who was in a position of power and was known as one of the largest contributors to the wiki, was ignored. This was mostly because the administration, while trusting her to work on the wiki, didn't particularly LIKE her.

During all of this, I noticed a couple of things. One, Ganiman was suddenly online on IRC from his home IP instead of his work IP, but when I asked if he was taking a vacation (It is the summer, after all), he simply replied "something like that". This was not long after the very hypercritical remarks Ganiman made about Wikia. We'd just finished the fundraiser (which my wife and I donated $50 each to), and we all figured we could, as a userbase, fund the wiki. Gani was clear enough saying that we were going to be fine without Wikia. Crisis averted, so we thought.

So in IRC, Gani was a little transparent, and Mierin had become invisible (both on the Wiki and the IRC channel). Suddenly Gani comes in and says he hoped everyone was ready, as he was getting ready to announce something major. By that time, I'd worked out that Gani was no longer working (and he admitted he'd been laid off), and that the announcement was PROBABLY him selling the Wiki. Him and I had spoken numerous times in private about potentially selling it, and I just KNEW it was coming eventually. I, like MANY others, wanted to know, immediately, what was going to happen to the money we'd just donated. We also wanted to know why the hell he'd suddenly change his mind and sell it to the very company he basically called evil. Gani also announced his wife was pregnant. Putting a few things together, it seemed an awful lot like the fact that he'd lost his job, his wife was pregnant, and Jimmy Wales was offering him money for a bunch of information that existed on a site he mostly facilitated (and let others do the work. Obviously that is how wikis work though).

I'd now moved away from the site, and was a little critical about how they were handling the situation. However, at the same time, the user(s) that caused me to move away from the site had found my new blog. They started representing themselves as being from the wiki, and were harassing me daily. I went to Ganiman and asked him to do something about it, but was basically told to stop being childish and they'd leave me alone. Basically, he had people coming from his site, representing themselves as coming from the site, and harassing me for no reason. I was being childish though. I was being told to keep my mouth shut from even saying simple things like what I did in-game that day. I wasn't pleased with the discussion, and I said as much on my blog. Suddenly, the stuff I say on my private blog was big bad and wrong. I wasn't allowed to be critical of the wiki, and because I made observations that many others had drawn as well, I was a horrible fucking person.

The next day, I was fully ousted on the IRC channel by people who were my friends immediately up until they'd read my criticisms and statements that said the wikis administration seemed to have sold out. Instead of talking to me, ganiman called me "a fucking loser" and that he "didn't care" about any of my concerns any more. Please remember that I was not the only one complaining about this one user. I have logs of all of this. I tried to ask him what was different about me complaining about the wikis administration and his own harsh slamming of Wikia, the very company he'd ultimately sold the wiki to. He never answered and I found myself banned from the IRC network. Oh well.

I wrote Jimmy Wales, explaining the situation and my concerns that a) Gani et. al. were not performing their duties very well (and that same night, a few people posted in a big thread saying that the administration was lacking as of late, and something needed to be done), and b) about how the donations were being handled (potential tax concerns, among others that have been mentioned in THIS thread). I also wrote a long email to the administration, explaining why I said what I said (because they were obviously uninterested in listening to me, so I forced an email on them instead). Neither Jimmy Wales nor Ganiman got back to me. However, over that weekend (this happened on a Wednesday/Thursday iirc), Ganiman sent me an email saying I should enter the Tabula Rasa contest on the forums. I took that to be some type of apology, and was just going to outright try to forget the whole situation. I moderated my blog, removing my comments I made, and hoped that the administration would cool down after a while. I sockpuppeted myself in their IRC channel on a client they couldn't ban without clearing out their whole network, and chatted for a while. Some elements were still against me (but they are very hot headed anyway), but there were some calmer people who were speaking to the administration on my behalf, outright saying they didn't want to lose either myself or my wife as editors who were considered important to the wiki as a whole. I also have logs of this too.

Sometime after the weekend, I received another email from Gani, and he suddenly was quite mean. He was apparently quite pissed off that I went to the Wikia administration about the problems myself and others were seeing in the wiki administration. His prime concern was that I was going to force Wikia to step in a take over the administration duties. I replied back saying that maybe that was what the Wiki needed, and that if there was dialog between Gani and Jimmy Wales, then my point was made. I wrote Jimmy Wales back, explaining that I really thought Gani was no longer in the best capacity to run the wiki. Gani wrote me back later in the evening telling me he didn't want to speak to me any more, and that he refused to be drawn in to my "downward spiral" (I have the emails about this as well). Apparently raising concerns about the competence of the administration is a prime indicator that I am spiraling out of control. I wrote back to Jimmy Wales, expressing extreme disappointment in the way it was handled... but an hour later I wrote an email I forwarded to both parties that I just didn't care any more... I'd move on and find somewhere else to make myself useful.

Within the next hour, I found myself banned from the wiki forums, and from the wiki proper. My wife, who was never actually involved in any of this, found herself banned from the forums as well, and not long after, banned from the wiki too. He banned two users who were trusted users and well-respected editors for, and I quote, "Intimidating/harassing behaviour" (sic). I was also contacted by Mierin who took offense to me questioning where he'd been for almost a month... because apparently I was supposed to know that he'd been laid off from his job as a lawyer. Yeah, thats right, both of the most visible administrators on the FFXIclopedia were both laid off within a month of each other.

The easiest way to sum it up is this: the administration picked a user who had made less than 50 edits to the wiki and about 1100 posts on the forums, most of which were one liners or flames/attacks, and had personally had more posts reported than the rest of the userbase combined, over a user who had approximately 4000 edits and 1400 forum posts that were all positive and was liked and well-respected in the community.

Of course, I know that Mierin and Ganiman will read this and probably tell a whole bunch of crap about how I'd taken part in my own share of flames on the forums, which I don't deny. But what they can't deny is that they banned two people for no reason other than someone spoke up and raised concerns about their abilities as administrators. Whats sad is that there are quite a few users around who seem to feel the same way, at least to a point.

What I'd like to see is Ganiman and/or Mierin post back here and not lie about why they banned me and my wife. I donated my time and my money to see that site thrive, and in the end, I was banned. The disgusting part is that since I've been banned from the IRC network, a few of their linkshell friends have been using my wife and my nickname on the IRC network to basically act like complete idiots, in an attempt to make us look like we're stupid and even worse people than they already say we are. Instead, the administration on the wiki just embark on constant powertrips, they promote their linkshell friends to positions of power simply because they're friends, instead of people who've worked to earn it, people who are liked and have spent countless hours working to make the wiki a better place. The payment was a banning to keep their fucking court jester happy. Since this has happened, I've been openly critical about it, and a lot of people have jumped on to our side, people who've witnessed what has happened, and don't understand what the hell is going on. The wiki thrives on being a community effort, and are supported by SE... what kind of a community is it when you ban some of your most prolific editors? The Wiki prided itself on not being alla, and not being run the same way alla was. Personally, Ganiman admitted to me that he wanted to promote the wiki after they sold out to O-Gaming... not because of the indirect affiliation with IGE, but because they sold out... how can he take himself seriously when he ultimately did the exact same thing?

If you made it through this wall-of-text, cool. I'm not asking for sympathy, I'm not asking for a decision reversal. I have no desire to work on a site where the administration treats users it doesn't particularly like (but trusts!) like utter shit. When Einherjar was first released, the wiki had probably the largest combined information base before anyone else... I was the one personally responsible for it. My wife wrote and maintained a featured article that many people consider among the best on the site, Auto-translator: In-Depth. She'll never work on it again. I know a few people who edited here and there who will never do it again because of the way they treated the situation.

All I want to know is how many more people will be treated like total shit because they asked questions about the wiki... especially when their own money is involved.

I'm rambling, so now I'll just shut up.

[Koga]

I'm not sure if this is still true (maint. and all) but Tzee Xicu the Manifest does pop, she's just invisible/untargetable. (She still walks around, does her thing, etc.)

...what the fuck do you mean invisible?

Does she pop up top where she normally does or is she pulling a Shikagami running around the zone section?

What Taj is saying is correct;
Not that I advocate tlhe use of 3rd PT Programs but if you were to force draw the monster at your exact location you would see it; The AI is loaded into the server but its just not set properly.
Think of it like this... It's spawned but it spawned at 0,0,0 and is stuck there and nobody can get to it and it can't aggro anything; so it's not liek Shikigami.

[fussel]

Fuzzy math seems to be the topic today anyway so np.

First, I like ffxiclopedia. Kudos to everyone who contributed.

Second, I didn't donate, so I lost nothing.

Third, I'd like to see some numbers like:

- Monthly traffic on ffxiclopedia
- CPU(s) and CPU Usage% on that site
- Average bandwith used
- storage space used

After all, this isn't the nineties. Nowadays, one can rent a dedicated server with a dual core intel cpu and 300 GB storage for about 60 Euros a month and an initial setup fee for about 100 Euros. That's for a 100 MBit connection reduced to 10 MBit after 1TB is reached. No volume limit.

So as long as there are no detailed server statistics (and there probably never will after the move to wikia), I'm with Taj's stance of doubt on this case.

[Zero Serenity]

Opening Statement: All your problems stem from me being banned by retardboy Ganiman.

Body:
It all began with a stone, or so the legend says. In ages past, I was on extremely good terms with Ganiman and the gang even before the Wiki got it's own domain and it was still a part of Ganiman's Linkshell on Pheonix, The Avengers. At the time, it was relitively unknown what the hell it was. I think I found the site by accident. Over time I read information, added notes, articles, created the first White Mage guide for the site. (Still there, I need to update it again) Basicly I've been watching the site grow from shall we call it an insignifigant dot on the map to one of, if not the, largest source of FFXI information on the planet.

But with growth came corruption. Ganiman started turning dark. But that's beside the point. Before the big fundraiser for servers, I had the brilliant idea that maybe I could donate servers and space for the group. See, I have access to funds (very high profile job, I have) and through that job I can purchase new computer parts on the cheap. So I built four 1Us with dual duo cores, 4GBs of RAM and a 500GBs 15000K RPM RAID 5 setup (for the non-savvy, this is pretty l33t at the time). I figured, these would be more than enough to run the site and using my company connection (I own said company) they would never need another upgrade.

Eventualy some controversy over weather or not I actualy killed Maat with my club or just ran out of time. If you want elaboration I can post it, but I'll summarize it. I said it's possible and I can do it. Everyone else on the FFXIclopedia save Bridgett and a few others were either nueteral about the subject or belived I did it. For some reason, Ganiman, never even doing the White Mage Maat fight just came in, said it was impossible, banned me by .htaccess, revoked my editing rights (which isn't legal by a long series of technicalites in the GPL) and made a big deal about it. Over what? A discrepancy in an article he didn't agree with? I don't know. He's a massive hypocrite taking a firm stance against RMT and 3rd party programs, yet openly supports the Windower, used a great deal of redirecting through the POL website to kick up a hit counter, pretty much controls Limit Break Radio and how they endorse the site, trolls my own personal blog, and a long list of other atrocities that don't sit right with me. Power has corupted this boy.

Concluding Statement: Ganiman is an idiot, all problems stem from what he did to me, Me > You > Ganiman. kthnxbye.

-Zero

[Weeks]

Your WHM guide stunk.

[Zero Serenity]

Stunk? Check your computer, it might be burning off some thermal paste or something. But then again, I never said it was the best, it was just mine. That's all.

-Zero

[aurik]

I'm not sure if this is still true (maint. and all) but Tzee Xicu the Manifest does pop, she's just invisible/untargetable. (She still walks around, does her thing, etc.)

...what the fuck do you mean invisible?

Does she pop up top where she normally does or is she pulling a Shikagami running around the zone section?

What Taj is saying is correct;
Not that I advocate tlhe use of 3rd PT Programs but if you were to force draw the monster at your exact location you would see it; The AI is loaded into the server but its just not set properly.
Think of it like this... It's spawned but it spawned at 0,0,0 and is stuck there and nobody can get to it and it can't aggro anything; so it's not liek Shikigami.

So how does this explain the Avatar PH spawning after next JP midnight in a normal window?

[alphacat]

You are missing the most important part of that statement. (The "etc," was to imply that something was done with the money, I did not know what happened to the money, which is completely irrelevant to the discussion.)

The money is gone.

Deal.

Once you handed over the money to the Wiki people, it was no longer yours. They have no accountability to you, or anyone. They are not a charity. You gave money to a friend, they used it.

Wow, sounds like the most retarded statement in this thread. It's like saying there's nothing wrong if you find out that the Red Cross uses all its money on funding orgy for it's stockholders. No accountability just because the money is donated? Are you fucking stupid?

[Koga]

I'm not sure if this is still true (maint. and all) but Tzee Xicu the Manifest does pop, she's just invisible/untargetable. (She still walks around, does her thing, etc.)

...what the fuck do you mean invisible?

Does she pop up top where she normally does or is she pulling a Shikagami running around the zone section?

What Taj is saying is correct;
Not that I advocate tlhe use of 3rd PT Programs but if you were to force draw the monster at your exact location you would see it; The AI is loaded into the server but its just not set properly.
Think of it like this... It's spawned but it spawned at 0,0,0 and is stuck there and nobody can get to it and it can't aggro anything; so it's not liek Shikigami.

So how does this explain the Avatar PH spawning after next JP midnight in a normal window?

The server catches itself and tries to reset the data on the zone more than likely thus causing the JP Midnight to start a new cycle.

[Spider-Dan]

They should cut their losses as short as they can and reimburse people who donated - minus whatever was lost - and send complimentary mouse pads to all who donated any amount and cancel the t-shirts.

So once again, to count allegations of potential fraud, you're suggesting that they say, "hey, you know that free t-shirt we said we'd give you if you donated over $50? yeah, instead, you get the cock." Because that's somehow less fraudulent.

This is accountability?

[Toxictaru]

Power has corupted this boy.

Zero, you and I haven't always gotten along, although we did start out on good terms. Whatever happened happened. However, I truly do understand what happened to you, now. I quote only the truth.

I will point out that if you wish to contact Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, you can fairly easily. I found him easily through Wikia, and I can confirm that if you communicate with him about FFXIclopedia, he WILL address the problems. Even myself, an unknown in the grand scheme of things, caught the attention of him so much so that he went ahead and made contact with Ganiman about my concerns. Don't fool yourselves by thinking that Wikia doesn't care about their investment. We might or might not like the decision to sell the site, but the fact remains that Ganiman doesn't OWN FFXIclopedia anymore, he is just an administrator; Wikia owns it, and they will listen to complaints about it if they seem valid enough. If enough people have problems and SPEAK UP, Wikia will take action.

[alphacat]

Wait, so they get the money from the fundraiser AND they sold the site? This increasingly sounds like a very good business decision lol.

Anyone knows how much money they got for the site?