Elitism on SC?

[rez9000]

I'm sorry for posting this in Spurs Chat, but I think it deserves a wider audience than the Help and Suggestion section.

In all probability, every member has got the server busy notice at some point recently.

I tried to access the site a short time ago and saw a new server busy message. Upon reading it, I was horrified to see the paragraph marked in bold:

Sorry but we're currently extremely busy. If you're a member then please stop refreshing for a minute and then try again.

Unfortunately if you're not a member you'll continue to see this message so it might be best to wait until we're less busy and then sign up

If you are a member but haven't logged in then please login now.

Once the server is accessible again, priority for access will be given to members who've donated or helped on the site so if you are still having problems this may be why.

Thanks

Spurscommunity Staff

I've been a member of this site for about nearly 18 months and at no point have I considered trying to find another forum. That paragraph made me do just that.

I would ask the Administrators whether penalising those who haven't donated is justifiable. What of those who would like to donate, but cannot afford to, or have no way of doing so?

Also, how is 'help' defined? Surely the reason for SC's success is the fact that it is an environment that fosters real debate and discussion. How has that environment come about? It's not just down to the work that the Mods do. I believe that SC members have also helped in that regard. Doesn't improving the quality of the site qualify as 'help'? And if so, does that not mean that every single member has 'helped' SC?

And I'll say this also. Restricting access to those who haven't donated or 'helped' will actually make people more likely to press F5, which I can imagine will increase pressure on the server. They will do this as they will feel that the amount of access is limited and will be more desperate to jump in, and so will refresh more often in the hopes of getting on the site.

I am all in favour of trying to reduce pressure on the servers during Transfer Madness, but this smacks of elitism. How about we consider a real-life comparison? Let's consider... oh, I don't know... the Premier League, perhaps? How many of us bemoan the fact that the four biggest clubs exert the most influence on the League? Surely discriminating and differentiating SC members based on financial qualification isn't so different. Am I alone in seeing the parallels?

 

[DoublePivot]

To be fair rez, Rob lost revenue for hosting and had to ask us for support. And he waited until the middle of July before starting to give priority to donators. I think they tried very hard not to do so.

 

[Rob]

I'll reply to this in full when I get back later but stop worrying mate

 

[rez9000]

I understand that, DP, and I appreciate what Rob does. I really do. I hate to sound ungrateful, but either SC is free or it isn't. And what about those who have used the affiliates click-through?

If I had the money, I'd donate. But I don't have it at the moment. But I do my bit. I use the affiliates whenever I shop on Amazon. Doesn't that count? Anyway, this isn't about me. It's about judging some more 'worthy' of using the site than others. I just feel that there may be better ways of reducing pressure on the site while keeping things equable.

 

[rez9000]

I'll reply to this in full when I get back later but stop worrying mate

OK. :up:

 

[KentuckyYid]

What got me looking for a back-up forum was the constant busy messages. It got to the point that more often than not I couldn't get on the site.

I may be wrong but as I understand it there are too many non-contributary lurkers pressing F5 who are ruining it for the rest of us.

Perhaps its time to accept that maybe SC has outgrown its original principles and needs to move on ensuring its own future?


BTW there is another equally damaging elitism on this site which may or may not be intentional but does exist.

 

[Midostouch]

BTW there is another equally damaging elitism on this site which may or may not be intentional but does exist.

Which is what?

I am a supporter of the site but I get the same message as you Rez. I'm sure things will improve when the work has been done to the site. It is rightly a very popular site and I guess it's suffering as a result.

 

[eViL]

Yup there's times I can't get on and I donate every month.

But I donate to keep this site going.. not to get Priority access.

Maybe if more people donated a little each month, there wouldn't even be an issue..

 

[RussellYid]

I've looked for alternatives. Gone on other forums - the more 'famous' ones - and whilst they're all fine and very pleasant, they don't comare to Spurs Community.

Grass isn't always greener.

 

[Dougal]

If you have a better idea rez, I'm sure Rob is open to them :-(

 

[bomberH]

If I had the money, I'd donate. But I don't have it at the moment. But I do my bit. I use the affiliates whenever I shop on Amazon.

Whatever you purchased on Amazon, send it back and use the refund to donate to SC. Sorted :hump:

Rob, what would it take to keep the server going? Do you need thrice as much dosh or completely different software? I know nothing about this sort of thing but i assume it's about the money?

 

[Rob]

I'm sorry for posting this in Spurs Chat, but I think it deserves a wider audience than the Help and Suggestion section.

Yep, fair enough. We've had discussions about this before and it's been mentioned but maybe you missed it so it's fine to talk about it now and hopefully I can calm any worries.

In all probability, every member has got the server busy notice at some point recently.

They have

I would ask the Administrators whether penalising those who haven't donated is justifiable. What of those who would like to donate, but cannot afford to, or have no way of doing so?

It's not penalising though. I'll try to outline it without confusing everyone but please ask for anything you want clarified.

The basic situation is that when the server gets busy (the server load gets over 8) we need to give it a break before it completely runs away and crashes.

To give it a break we show people the server busy message.

Now, the server can easily cope with 300-400 people but when there's 500+ we struggle.

That means we have a choice here. We can show the server busy message to EVERYONE until the server load decreases. However it doesn't make sense to do this when really the server load would decrease just the same if we let a couple of hundred people stay on and not show them the message.

This way is actually better as rather than yo-yoing from everyone to no-one, we let the sever slowly recover whilst still letting a few hundred people on so that they don't all hammer it at the same time when the load suddenly drops below the limit. If we showed the server busy message to everyone, then it would take a lot longer for the server to recover and no one would be able to use the site.

This all means we basically need a way to differentiate a couple of hundred people to not show the busy message to so the load can recover slowly and to limit the amount of busy messages people see.

We thought about different ways; there's post count, activity, how long they've been a member. These all discriminate in some way against someone but that can't be helped as we need to somehow select a sub-set of our members.

We then thought about how generous people have been and how much they've donated and that without them the site wouldn't exist any more. People have talked about subscriptions and special VIP access etc but we really don't want to discriminate like that against people who can't afford to donate anything so instead of doing that we decided to let them get at least a small benefit from donating whilst at the same time solving the fact that we need some way to differentiate users to help the server recover as quickly as possible.

Also, how is 'help' defined? .... And if so, does that not mean that every single member has 'helped' SC?

Yes it does but as I explained above, we need a way to let the server recover slowly. If we let everyone on at the same time it would just yo-yo and crash again.

I'm fine with "help" being fairly broad. It's not really come up as an issue as the majority of people who spend a lot of time contributing have also helped by donating etc but I'm happy to accept that there are people who really contibute a lot like yourself who can't donate and we can switch people's status case by case if that's needed.

Restricting access to those who haven't donated or 'helped' will actually make people more likely to press F5, which I can imagine will increase pressure on the server. They will do this as they will feel that the amount of access is limited and will be more desperate to jump in, and so will refresh more often in the hopes of getting on the site.

They'll be refreshing but just getting the busy message which is far less intensive than if they were on the site refreshing a thread.

I am all in favour of trying to reduce pressure on the servers during Transfer Madness, but this smacks of elitism.

Sorry you feel like that but there's not really much we can do.

If you want to draw analogies think of it as a toll road. Everyone can sit in the traffic jam for 5 hours or those that afford it can take the toll road and get their quicker. Because those cars leave the traffic jam, there are less cars left in the traffic jam so rather than 5 hours it only lasts a couple of hours.

Actually as stupid analogies go, that's quite a good one and I probably could just delete the rest of this huge post and leave that last paragraph ;-)

I'll just finish this off by making sure it's clear. It's not a case of donate and you won't see the error message or have any server problems. It's a case of when we're busy and there are problems we need to slowly limit the number of people and then to slowly allow people back on. Those who've donated are just the first in the queue to get on when the server load comes down as we can slowly let a few hundred of them on and keep the load coming down enough to then let everyone else on.

I really hope that's explained it better for everyone and no one's left disillusioned about how much they're valued on here as it's really not about that at all.

 

[Rob]

Whatever you purchased on Amazon, send it back and use the refund to donate to SC. Sorted :hump:

Rob, what would it take to keep the server going? Do you need thrice as much dosh or completely different software? I know nothing about this sort of thing but i assume it's about the money?

Even a spanking new server would struggle under everyone trying to refresh at the same time. Think of it as squeezing something fat out of a small tube (I'm sure you'll have no problem doing that ;-p).

We're only affording the £200 a month at the minute from donations and we'll keep needing more donations just to keep it at the level it's at now. To really cope better I reckon we'd need two £300 a month servers so yeah, about triple what we get now. This basically would give us two fat holes to squeeze it out of rather than one small hole but even then we might struggle when a big load comes along.

*Thinks he brought it down to Bomber's level quite well. Goes for a shower*

 

[KentuckyYid]

Even a spanking new server would struggle under everyone trying to refresh at the same time. Think of it as squeezing something fat out of a small tube (I'm sure you'll have no problem doing that ;-p).

We're only affording the £200 a month at the minute from donations and we'll keep needing more donations just to keep it at the level it's at now. To really cope better I reckon we'd need two £300 a month servers so yeah, about triple what we get now. This basically would give us two fat holes to squeeze it out of rather than one small hole but even then we might struggle when a big load comes along.

*Thinks he brought it down to Bomber's level quite well. Goes for a shower*

:grin:

 

[bomberH]

Even a spanking new server would struggle under everyone trying to refresh at the same time. Think of it as squeezing something fat out of a small tube (I'm sure you'll have no problem doing that ;-p).

We're only affording the £200 a month at the minute from donations and we'll keep needing more donations just to keep it at the level it's at now. To really cope better I reckon we'd need two £300 a month servers so yeah, about triple what we get now. This basically would give us two fat holes to squeeze it out of rather than one small hole but even then we might struggle when a big load comes along.

*Thinks he brought it down to Bomber's level quite well. Goes for a shower*

You disgust me. There are kids on this site you know :snooty:

 

[tRiKS]

I donated £40... Rez can have 10 of that. give us both Platimum membership.. does this include whores? the brochure said whores.

 

[walworthyid]

Have the powers that be considered not allowing guests to access the site at all? I have been a member since 2004 and never considered another forum, but I just cannot get on to sc and I have tried other forums now, they are not as good, but at least I can get on.

There must be a solution,if it means a paid membership, then so be it. When I joined there were less than 3000 members, now we have many more, if we all HAD to pay a fiver or whatever, then it would guarentee a quality forum that we could all enjoy. I would be willing to pay that, more if it came to it.

Either way, I think that something drastic needs to be done or the site is going to go down the toilet as the more prolific members look for pastures new.

Also, Rob, I appreciate that some way needs to be found to give the server a rest, it does seem wrong that this is based on money.

 

[Flatters]

How can I donate then? I tried setting up PayPal ages ago, but failed. I wanted to donate from the start, and I'd happily donate as much as I can afford. I'd also obviously quite like some priority as I can barely get on at all during the day. Maybe I could just give some money to nicdic or something and he can then PayPal over however much I give him?

 

[VegasII]

Tonight was mental. I think a combination of Keane's transfer, rumours of new players coming in, more Berba speculation & a reasonably sized friendly with loads of goals created a meltdown.

 

[double0]

rez... i agree with your thread.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed with that statement in bold.