Originally Posted by
Gahoo
As many are probably aware by now, the wiki and forums were hacked on Sunday, September 16, by someone trying to discredit FFXIclopedia and the administrators here. We have been working hard over the past few days to finalize the transfer of the site to wikia and to ensure that our personal information is protected from further abuse.
That process is now largely complete. The wiki is fully functional and our forums are (obviously) back up and will be moved in the next week or two. If there are any issues people are having with the new site, please let us know so that we can look into it.
The allegations levied against the administrators here are of course unfounded and completely false. We would like to express our sincere appreciation to the vast majority of our community who has expressed, both publically and privately, their own outrage at these allegations. The support we have gotten has been a big help to us in dealing with all of these accusations. To those who have levied these allegations against us, we only ask that you consider the full facts - much of which was posted above on Friday - but has been mostly ignored.
There are a few pieces of misinformation out there due to the hacked emails and lack of contxt. There are three issues related to the fundraiser which have been identified: (i) the merchandise itself being part of the fundraiser funds; (ii) a differing price point on the merchandise; and (iii) the source of the funds for the giveaway. We'll try again to clear this up.
1. The merchandise was always a part of the fundraiser and is no different than any other fundraiser that has gifts for donations of certain dollar amounts. If anyone wanted to forego their gifts they could have easily done so - and indeed - some did. Most were excited to receive these limited availability items and donated precisely for that reason. We had 110 people donate $50+ in order to qualify for the t-shirt. Assuming they each donated only $50 (which we know they didn't), that accounts for more than half of the total donations. There is no way to determine whether more or less money would have been raised without the gifts, but it seems likely that the gifts helped rather than hurt.
2. In December 2006, five to six months before we had the total volume, design, quality, etc. for the t-shirt and mouse pads, we had a different wholesale price quote. The prices ended up changing. We got better quality items and ordered less than we originally had hoped. The quality was important to us, and we have not heard any complaints from those that have actually donated and received the items themselves.
3. The accounting above is accurate with two exceptions. 1. The servers were actually $609/month (two Intel Xeon 3060 Dual Core Conroe Processor servers with 4096 MB RAM, a 2 Server Cross Connect and DiskSync 20 GB). 2. We spent $250 to acquire the ffxiclopedia.com domain.
As for the remaining funds to be used for the WotG giveaway, they will be that amount leftover from the fundraiser, not from Wikia. The discussion over these use of these funds started in late August shortly after the announcement. Wikia was generous and offered to pay for some or all of the the giveaway if we desired. We originally accepted because, well, why not. It was not because there was no money, because any money was missing, or any other fanciful idea. While certain individuals insist on trying to make nothing into something, we are not trying to hide anything. Remembner, for years the administrators maintained the site with zero, or more accurately, negative, compensation. Nevertheless, we are willing to use the remaining funds to cover the costs of the giveaway.
If people have questions, post them here and we will do our best to answer them. Please understand, for legal reasons we cannot and will not discuss the terms of the transaction with Wikia or the actions being taken against those that have invaded our privacy. We take not only our user's privacy seriously, but our own as well.
This brings us to our last point. More than anything, this reaffirms the need to have everyone protect their passwords and confidential information. This week the administrators and junior administrators have had their financial accounts, email accounts and ffxiclopedia accounts hacked. Use strong passwords everywhere, change them frequently, and don't use the same one everywhere.