Dear Ganiman, (op updated)

**rydiu** · 2007-09-11 13:01

Originally Posted by Spider-Dan

Originally Posted by rydiu

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?

They're already in breach of contract by going with wikia when they said they weren't going to....we all know that it doesn't cost 9k/year for 650GB of monthly bandwidth... even with 2 servers which should suffice, unless of course you've been talkin to some slick server salesmen...then your idea of "suffice" might be a little off.

So instead of only giving mousepads and t-shirts to a few people, give something to everyone (mousepad).

If you can argue that's fraud, but using the money for something other than servers when the difference between what was raised and what is needed is not fraud then my name is Bill Clinton. They fell short of the 12k mark by 1k but if they cancel out the 2k for mousepads they're only 1k off the 12k....Since obviously they didn't have any mousepads or t-shirts made when they crafted that offer, they can just say they fell short of the goal and won't be able to afford gifts - but cheers for the cause....if you're donating to a charity the cause is always more important than any gift. Just ask the IRS.

**VZX** · 2007-09-11 13:13

I don't understand why people complaining where the donation money went. After all, what they ask is donation, not a loan or something similar. If I donate and the recipient received it and be happy with it. Good.
That means my donation means helps them.

As a side note, I didn't donate. But even if I did, I won't say "Hey, it's the money I gave you. I need to know what did you do with it."

**Gere** · 2007-09-11 13:19

Originally Posted by VZX

I don't understand why people complaining where the donation money went. After all, what they ask is donation, not a loan or something similar. If I donate and the recipient received it and be happy with it. Good.
That means my donation means helps them.

As a side note, I didn't donate. But even if I did, I won't say "Hey, it's the money I gave you. I need to know what did you do with it."

To further support your point:

Please understand that no matter what amount you donate, every dollar will help to keep this site going and all donations will be used solely for the benefit of FFXIclopedia.

The bottom line is that they can use it for whatever they think will "benefit" the site (even though leasing servers was the main goal).

**Ryko** · 2007-09-11 13:23

Originally Posted by Gere

Originally Posted by VZX

I don't understand why people complaining where the donation money went. After all, what they ask is donation, not a loan or something similar. If I donate and the recipient received it and be happy with it. Good.
That means my donation means helps them.

As a side note, I didn't donate. But even if I did, I won't say "Hey, it's the money I gave you. I need to know what did you do with it."

To further support your point:

Please understand that no matter what amount you donate, every dollar will help to keep this site going and all donations will be used solely for the benefit of FFXIclopedia.

The bottom line is that they can use it for whatever they think will "benefit" the site (even though leasing servers was the main goal).

Mouse Pads, T-Shirts, and 2 thousand dollars unaccounted for. You completely ignored my post when I pointed out that with the 9k they could have easily leased the 3 necessary servers.

**Khalil** · 2007-09-11 13:38

Originally Posted by VZX

I don't understand why people complaining where the donation money went. After all, what they ask is donation, not a loan or something similar. If I donate and the recipient received it and be happy with it. Good.
That means my donation means helps them.

As a side note, I didn't donate. But even if I did, I won't say "Hey, it's the money I gave you. I need to know what did you do with it."

The only reason or the main reason, for some, why people donated is because they wished for FFXiwiki to have its own servers. If they kept the money, payed for 3 months then switched to Wikia, then the reason behind their donation hasn't followed through. People donate for a reason.

**Gere** · 2007-09-11 13:39

Originally Posted by Ryko

Originally Posted by Gere

Originally Posted by VZX

I don't understand why people complaining where the donation money went. After all, what they ask is donation, not a loan or something similar. If I donate and the recipient received it and be happy with it. Good.
That means my donation means helps them.

As a side note, I didn't donate. But even if I did, I won't say "Hey, it's the money I gave you. I need to know what did you do with it."

To further support your point:

Please understand that no matter what amount you donate, every dollar will help to keep this site going and all donations will be used solely for the benefit of FFXIclopedia.

The bottom line is that they can use it for whatever they think will "benefit" the site (even though leasing servers was the main goal).

Mouse Pads, T-Shirts, and 2 thousand dollars unaccounted for. You completely ignored my post when I pointed out that with the 9k they could have easily leased the 3 necessary servers.

2k is buffer for emergencies that they mentioned in their post. as for T-shirts/mouse pads, let's say each mouse pad was $10 and each T-shirt was $20(so a $15 profit on mouse pads and a $30 profit on shirts).

Let's say that entire 2k was spent on mouse pads (which are less profitable) giving them 200 mouse pads.
200 * 15 = $3000 the pads brought in.

Even if half of those people would have donated with no incentive, that's still 1.5k they would have missed out on by not giving out mousepads.

How many people do you think would give the Girl scouts money if they didn't get overpriced cookies in return?

Really the only thing really up for debate is whether or not they actually spent 5.5k on server fees (Taj seems to think this is unlikely so I'll stick with him since I don't know much about hosting fees and wiki requirements myself).

**divisortheory** · 2007-09-11 13:57

Originally Posted by Ryko

You completely ignored my post when I pointed out that with the 9k they could have easily leased the 3 necessary servers.

How much would you estimate it to cost?

http://kalia.ultimals.com/traffic.jpg

**Liselle** · 2007-09-11 14:14

What are you trying to imply by posting the wiki's Alexa ranking? Sites aren't even counted unless users have the Alexa spywa^W toolbar installed, which is just one of many reasons why the ranking probably doesn't mean what you think it does.

**divisortheory** · 2007-09-11 14:17

Originally Posted by Liselle

What are you trying to imply by posting the wiki's Alexa ranking? Sites aren't even counted unless users have the Alexa spywa^W toolbar installed, which is just one of many reasons why the ranking probably doesn't mean what you think it does.

It might not tell you the exact amount of bandwidth consumed each month by each website, but it still provides statistically relevant and accurate comparisons between domains.

**Tanag** · 2007-09-11 14:21

What does comparing those domains have to do with anything though?
BG is a simple forum used by a significantly less amount of people.
PlayOnline is rarely visited by the casual player unless an update is imminent.
The wiki has basically become the be all and end all for FFXI info. Of course it's visited more.

Comparing these proves nothing about the argument at hand, which has pretty much come down to server costs and whether the money was squandered/stolen. All you've done is proven lots of people go to the wiki. Which is incredibly obvious, that's why they needed donations.

**divisortheory** · 2007-09-11 14:25

Originally Posted by Tanag

What does comparing those domains have to do with anything though?
BG is a simple forum used by a significantly less amount of people.
PlayOnline is rarely visited by the casual player unless an update is imminent.
The wiki has basically become the be all and end all for FFXI info. Of course it's visited more.

Strange, because all along in this thread people have been saying things like "shouldn't it cost relatively the same to host the wiki as it does to host BG?" or "it should cost 250 / month / server to host the wiki because i'm a world renowned expert on web hosting costs and i know what i'm talking about lolol".

**Ryko** · 2007-09-11 14:27

Originally Posted by divisortheory

Originally Posted by Tanag

What does comparing those domains have to do with anything though?
BG is a simple forum used by a significantly less amount of people.
PlayOnline is rarely visited by the casual player unless an update is imminent.
The wiki has basically become the be all and end all for FFXI info. Of course it's visited more.

Strange, because all along in this thread people have been saying things like "shouldn't it cost relatively the same to host the wiki as it does to host BG?" or "it should cost 250 / month / server to host the wiki because i'm a world renowned expert on web hosting costs and i know what i'm talking about lolol".

Quote them and post them, because the only mentions I saw of relative cost were Taj's post and mine saying that if they rented 2 for 5 they should have been able to rent 3 with 9. I know, crazy concept.

Like I said: "Nuh uh!", you need a new catch phrase.

**Tanag** · 2007-09-11 14:31

2 or 3 people mentioning it should cost the same as BG hardly counts as the entire 9 page thread. But I agree, those people are idiots.
Additionally, people have posted links to sites showing how much it costs based on assumed numbers. I don't really see a better way to get info then checking sites that actually sell this stuff, but feel free to prove me wrong if you know of one.

Until Ganiman posts we won't know anything. We don't know exactly what the server specs were or how much they cost, and we don't know exactly where the money went.

**rydiu** · 2007-09-11 14:34

Originally Posted by Liselle

What are you trying to imply by posting the wiki's Alexa ranking? Sites aren't even counted unless users have the Alexa spywa^W toolbar installed,

Really? LOL

**Mierin** · 2007-09-11 14:53

Hmmm ...

Well, I'm sorry you don't believe our costs statement, but they are what they are. The hosting fees costs run for 8 months: February through September, and were over twice Taj's estimates. There were also set up fees for each server. Included in those merchandise costs were shipping fees, including overseas shipping to Europe and elsewhere. I took those numbers directly from the report we handed over to Wikia. So if you're implying that we lied directly to Wikia on our cost structure, then I'm highly insulted and will not deign to respond to you further.

As for Zero. That is a sad tale. Although I personally found Zero an idiot, he never did anything offensive or wrong to warrant banning. It was a personal and heated fight he had with Ganiman that resulted in his banning. However, I do not know if he realizes it, but eventually, Ganiman undid the banning of his whole subnet. Last I checked, he had access to the wiki, he just could not log in under his account. (I fixed that as well today.)

As for Toxictaru. The only reason he was not banned six months ago was because Ganiman would not allow any of the other admins or moderators to do it. Everything divisortheory said about him is 100% correct. Toxic believes he is holier than thou and never wrong, that he is always the victim. He was repeatedly warned for his offensive and vulgar language on the forums. I actually found some of his language to be downright shocking. Words cannot express just how offended I was at some of his language. The sad thing was that his contributions to the wiki were minimal. It was his wife that made the major contributions, and if it had not been for her, he would have been banned sooner. Finally, after repeated warnings, he could not be tolerated further, and his wife was not enough to save him. Everything that the supposed aggressor ever did to poor, little Toxic was a direct result if his vulgar tantrums on the forums. The final straw was his letter directly to Jimmy Wales, who, ironically, has very little to do with the FFXIclopedia acquisition, other than a name drop. Wikia approved of our move to remove Toxic from FFXIclopedia access. I do not know why Ganiman elected to ban his wife as well. I can only presume it was for the same reason that Toxic was banned from the wiki in addition to the forums: for fear of possible retaliatory vandalism. I do not miss Toxic, and if I had my druthers, he would have been banned long ago.

As for promoting our friends, we promote those we can trust with the power. Ironically, we wanted to promote Toxic's wife, but we could not trust Toxic, so she was never promoted higher. As this whole site knows, we specifically demoted one admin because we realized she could no longer be trusted with the power to be an admin. We promoted divisortheory on the recommendation of this site in her stead. Another BG regular, Charitwo has also be given some powers as our trust in him grows.

As for comments regarding Ganiman or the other admins doing very little work, you are whole heartedly mistaken. What you forget is that this wiki is almost three years old. It was founded in November of 2004. It really got jump-started in March of 2005. The people that really got it going in the first place were Ganiman, Gahoo and myself. We put the most effort into it at the beginning. It would never be the self-running machine it is today without the initial work we all put into it to get it off the ground. The amount of time and effort the three of us put in at the beginning is astounding. Even up to the beginning of this year, Ganiman was putting in tremendous amounts of time maintaining the site and keeping it going from both hardware and software veiwpoints. He and Gahoo are always looking into new add-ons to make the wiki smoother. Just a few examples include alternate language wikis, various wiki mods, forums upgrades, server maintenance, and so on. Although Gani's edits may be minimal at this point, his initial contributions in edits, and his constant work on the hardware and software are enormous.

Finally, comments regarding Ganiman and my lack of visibility of late are the most insulting part of Toxic's insinuations. The reasons for our lay-offs are none of your business. For you to make light of my misery and imply that this sale was solely due to my or Gani's plight is downright insulting. It just adds to the justification for your banning from the wiki.

So take your pleas of victimization back to your blog and stop trying to spread discord here. Your plight is your of your own doing.

And finally ...

For those of you concerned about the 2k, as I stated, we have nothing certain about what we plan to do with it. If you have any suggestions, I'm open to them. Right now, the best idea is the sort of WotG expansion raffle.

- Mierin

**Liselle** · 2007-09-11 15:14

Originally Posted by divisortheory

It might not tell you the exact amount of bandwidth consumed each month by each website, but it still provides statistically relevant and accurate comparisons between domains.

Accurate? I don't think that word means what you think it does. Alexa is based on things like unique vistors and pageviews from people who use their dumb software, which says little to nothing about bandwidth. Think about what you're comparing here, essentially a forum to a wiki. Not only do they have different bandwidth needs per user, but the pageviews aren't even going to be the same. Show me where Alexa tracks the size of pages or the complexity of the back-end processing or anything but pageviews and eyeballs and maybe that chart will mean somethin'.

**Shuemue** · 2007-09-11 15:52

So how much did the wiki sell for?

**Rocl** · 2007-09-11 15:56

Originally Posted by Shuemue

So how much did the wiki sell for?

OVER NINE THOUSAND

**Taj** · 2007-09-11 16:00