Dear Ganiman, Gahoo, Mierin, and Wikia

[Sho]

All you Carbuncle bitches get outta mah threadz. OUT.

I see you read the fine print. <3 Ya'll rly.

Bullshit you do.

Serious business, etc. \:D/

[S N K]

Seriously I swear Kaslo was going from being somewhat entertaining to just literally going off with ramptant fronting because he can't admit that people actually do have a point.

This thread went from entertaining to just retardedness after reading Kaslo's posts.

/facepalm

[Taj]

@3 pages until 80.

Carry on. :-"

[Charitwo]

40*

EDIT: oh, page 38

[Taj]

Ganiman+Ganiman II = 80

[Toxictaru]

I think the one thing that is either constantly ignored or constantly forgotten is this: YES, Ganiman did indeed setup and create the FFXIclopedia. He used that fun MediaWiki software, which means, YES it is a Wiki.

The typical defense for gani is that it was his site, and he could do with it what he pleased. Bullshit. Thousands of people contributed to the wiki, and I'm sure a lot of people here had an edit or two, and a lot with even more. Ganiman facilitated, EVERYONE ELSE did the work. Stop trying to fucking defend him by saying it was his site and he could do with it what he pleased... that site belonged to fucking everyone, and he sold it to make money for himself.

Imagine if they didn't sell to Wikia, and went solely on donation money. Expenses outweighed donations. What happens when there is no more donation money left? No more wiki.

I don't remember asking for t-shirts and mousepads... I donated money for the purpose of helping to pay for more servers. Not for them to spend (or claim to spend anyway) over half of that on ganimans model printed on a t-shirt. Simple fact is, if the shirts and pads weren't there for people to receive, there would NEVER have been a problem with expenses.

Of course, I strongly doubt SE would have let a site that was officially supported by them to simply die. Someone would have stepped in if gani had legitimately run out of money.

[S N K]

Ganiman+Ganiman II = 80

So, did Gil contact you about anything or did he just register to scare you?

[Taj]

Is everyone missing the part where their contract with Square-Enix pays $500/month, which is the exact amount the servers cost? lol

Ganiman+Ganiman II = 80

So, did Gil contact you about anything or did he just register to scare you?

No comment from him, idk my bff rose?

[Toxictaru]

I think the one thing that is either constantly ignored or constantly forgotten is this: YES, Ganiman did indeed setup and create the FFXIclopedia. He used that fun MediaWiki software, which means, YES it is a Wiki.

The typical defense for gani is that it was his site, and he could do with it what he pleased. Bullshit. Thousands of people contributed to the wiki, and I'm sure a lot of people here had an edit or two, and a lot with even more. Ganiman facilitated, EVERYONE ELSE did the work. Stop trying to fucking defend him by saying it was his site and he could do with it what he pleased... that site belonged to fucking everyone, and he sold it to make money for himself.

Imagine if they didn't sell to Wikia, and went solely on donation money. Expenses outweighed donations. What happens when there is no more donation money left? No more wiki.

That is understood. One of the key things I don't understand is that they knew this in advance. They knew that they did not raise enough money through donations to meet even their goal for this year. Once the fundraiser ended, they were approached very shortly after with an offer by wikia. Now, regardless of how much they were being paid by wikia, they had to know that their only options were going to come down to selling out or closing down. Why not simply sell the wiki as soon as an offer becomes available instead of squandering the donation money on renting servers when your only intention is to hold out until the asking price goes up? If it was really for the "good of the community," then a deal would have been reached as soon as possible to keep the wiki up and functioning. It was a tactic they used to hold out for more money from the wikia people. Just call it what it is and stop insulting us with this "for the good of the community" bullshit.

On top of that, the money that was donated was mismanaged. It was put into Ganiman's personal funds, which he subsequently spent on God knows what. If it wasn't, and there is no deficit, then why is there an exchange between Gani and Gil in which Ganiman admits that he has no idea how much money should be left over from the fundraiser and Gil offers to cover any missing portions of the money? Imagine if wikia had not stepped in. How would you feel if the wiki had closed down several months earlier than anticipated on the already short budget due to poor managing of money?

The wiki needed some things, but it was surviving fine on its own. Typically the reason they were experiencing massive slowdowns before the server move was a software issue... thats from ganiman himself... it was apparently a MySQL problem that he was unable to fix.

If the wiki had shut down due to mismanagement of money, we'd still be having the same discussion we are now: where did our money go, and why was it covered up?

Ganiman worked out the price for various things server related (3 servers, setup, support, maintenance for a year, plus a little overhead for "shit happens") to be about $12,000 dollars. Lets divide that up for fun, each server running was supposed to run about $4,000 dollars a piece, for 12 months. Two servers, with setup/support/etc/"shit happens" should have been about $8,000 dollars, right? So the fundraiser nailed about $9,300, which, following his math through to conclusion, should have been more than enough to run for 12 months, for 2 servers. Ultimately, he DID get 2 servers... and within 4 months, he was broke (or so he claimed, what with the missing $2,300). So essentially, what is being suggested is that he just plain fails at math, and that we should just let it slide.

Ahem, no. The simple fact of the matter is, he said it was going to be a set amount for 12 months, and got slightly less than he wanted, overall, but still managed to run dry within 4 months instead. Why? No one has been able to answer this.

Instead, we have random figures for how much fucking mousepads and tshirts were to cost, which was absolutely insane. If those were supposed to be important, then they needed to have been an out-of-pocket expense, NOT part of the fucking fundraiser itself. I dunno about you, but that guy who donated $10 was probably not donating it so I could get a t-shirt.... And, if he was broke, why is there a $2,300 discrepancy somewhere along the lines? The money was stolen for something NOT related to the wiki, and THAT is why the funds dried up... It was mismanagement of OUR donations... and in an "oh fuck" situation, where he no longer had a job to pick up some of the slack himself, he sold his ass out. I think a lot of our money went to footing his groceries, bills and rent.

Would the wiki have shut down? I dunno, maybe for a short time. There are clearly people out there who are willing to donate to the cause, as is evidenced by the fact that the bandwidth and server space for the BG wiki was offered for free. I am fairly sure that SOMEONE of the hundreds of thousands of users who used the FFXIclopedia daily would have been generous enough to donate some real actual money or time. Imagine if the fundraiser was not for new servers, but simply to keep the wiki alive... the end-result would have been incredibly different.

[evilbau]

I think Taj should work for the FBI when he's out of school

edit: also the load balancing server is probably beefier than the others which is why 2 servers is not 2/3 the price of 3. Not defending their crazy accounting but its a likely explanation. Their stated costs are still disconnected from reality haha

[Toxictaru]

I think Taj should work for the FBI when he's out of school

edit: also the load balancing server is probably beefier than the others which is why 2 servers is not 2/3 the price of 3. Not defending their crazy accounting but its a likely explanation. Their stated costs are still disconnected from reality haha

Meh, the idea as it was told to me was a webserver, a db server, and, if memory serves, a backup db server.

[cdgreg]

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/Main_Page is down. Me wonders if anyone from these 40 pages has anything to do with it

[klvino]

Is everyone missing the part where their contract with Square-Enix pays $500/month, which is the exact amount the servers cost? lol

Which would've solved the need for any further fund raising or selling to Wikia, but as shown in the emails it was never about supporting the wiki, it was about getting the most gil out of Gil.

[evilbau]

I think Taj should work for the FBI when he's out of school

edit: also the load balancing server is probably beefier than the others which is why 2 servers is not 2/3 the price of 3. Not defending their crazy accounting but its a likely explanation. Their stated costs are still disconnected from reality haha

Meh, the idea as it was told to me was a webserver, a db server, and, if memory serves, a backup db server.

yeah obviously i don't know the details of what the servers were meant for, someone mentioned that there was a load balancing aspect, and if you have different servers serving different roles, naturally they will have different specs (i.e. DB server will have more ram, etc.)

I just wanted to say the bit about Taj joining the FBI because he seems good at and has a desire to investigate. The server stuff was just because your post was above mine

[cdgreg]

it was never about supporting the wiki, it was about getting the most gil out of Gil.

Very clever, I like what you did there.

[Charitwo]

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/Main_Page is down. Me wonders if anyone from these 40 pages has anything to do with it

You are one of the people that need to read EVERYTHING. You do realize Wikia is moving stuff to their side now don't you? Which is why the ffxiclopedia side is touchy, hell yesterday Wikia fucked up the DNS and that's why the root kept auto-refreshing itself. But no, it has nothing to do with this thread, the move is in motion.

[Antonidas]

Or Taj could be one of those people a company hires to test their security. You get to hack all day and get paid well.

Didn't Microsoft have some sort of cash prize for anyone who could break into XP years ago? How'd that turn out

[Lordender]

someone should find out where ganiman lives and if anyone lives close to him go get a bag of shit, light it on fire and kick his door ftw.

[Liquidedust]

Or Taj could be one of those people a company hires to test their security. You get to hack all day and get paid well.

Didn't Microsoft have some sort of cash prize for anyone who could break into XP years ago? How'd that turn out

There's usually an annual "break an OS" contest that is held with cash prizes, the name escapes me at this moment however. (though Windows is usually the laughing stock of that event since it usually revolves around how fast not if you can break the M$ OS for those that are part of it).

[Sasarai]

Is everyone missing the part where their contract with Square-Enix pays $500/month, which is the exact amount the servers cost? lol

The importance of this needs to be highlighted, especially as it debunks pretty much the entire ZAM thread.