We're Sorry

[Brian Prestwood]

Hey Kevin

I've been getting the "We're Sorry" message a lot lately too.

Mark

=====EDIT=====
The other posts with figures came up while I was roughing the numbers. The $500 a month is a proposed rate. They charge by the click through. They estimate you'll get around 50K click throughs per month. Of course, you always have the option of taking your banner out of the rotation when you reach $300 worth of click throughs. The smaller vendors do that.
=============

Keeping a site with the volume RC has up isn't trivial. By my best guess they have about $250K/year in revenue from sponsors and membership dues and about $50K/year in direct expenses.

That's based on...

75 sponsors paying an average of $250/month for sponsorship ($225K/yr) and 1.5K (1%) of the 150K registered users paying dues ($38K/yr).

This isn't my area of expertise but I'd guess that the direct equipment operating expenses are around $50K/yr. That's $200K unaccounted for. It doesn't go the the moderator staff. If my information is correct, they are all volunteers. If so, they probably don't get much of a say in how the money is spent.

I don't know who controls the funds at RC but I'd guess they're doing all right on this particular business. Getting the moderators to volunteer thousands of hours a year was genius. You can't blame a person for making a living.

I never know how the RC staff will react to posts like this. In the off chance I get banned for posting a guess its been nice chatting with you guys. I've been spending too much time here lately anyway.

 

[audio101]

I prefer the nano reef board, plus they actually allow you to use the search function...

 

[kdblove_99]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12186738#post12186738 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by audio101
I prefer the nano reef board, plus they actually allow you to use the search function...

What a Concept huh? I really like RC, But this is the only fish board i have EVER used that charges to use a search function.

Talk about using Bandwidth. Do you know how many redundant threads there are because people cant use the search function so they just start another thread. I have seen thousands!!!

 

[MandM]

There is a forum for feedback that has threads on this topic. When they start getting rude with clueless comments about what the problem is and how to solve it with a minor tweak it gets tiresome for the technical staff who actually have the facts.

Speculating about how much is made in ads or how RC should be spending its money often results in less users to strain the database.

Enjoy the site? Use it and be civil. If not, go troll another BB.

 

[kdblove_99]

Well when a sponsor tells me what he pays each month in Sponsor fees i consider that less than speculation

 

[kdblove_99]

edit!

 

[robertloop]

I have a little background in database. Here's a quick broad brush stroke to what I've seen happen. If you search a LARGE database with a topic or word that hits thousands upon thousands of threads, the sever then has to parse the "hits" and line them up in order, then produce the report to your computer. (Thousands of times per second..long story short) This takes an enormous ammout of processor power/computer time to perform such functions. Especially on a vast database.

HOWEVER...... I'm not making excuses for the I.T./programming staff at R/C.

As stated in above posts, these obstacles are surmountable. .........database optimization, programming, hardware config.. ect. The task of research and engineering to accomlish a solution to the "I'm Sorry" message takes alot of time, professionals, and money. ALOT of money. It is possible they need a smarter search engine and likely also need hardware config re-engineering. The business decision that RC is prolly having meetings about already is..... "How bad do we let it get before making the big changes."

For me... It happens sporatically. More and more lately. Immediately a thought of some guy performing a lame search, that is nowhere near specific enough, and trashing many of our normal usage clicks here on RC.

 

[robertloop]

One last thing........ The I.T staff and database guys at RC are not idiots. They maintain a fantastic web site and have likely informed the superiors of this problem LONG ago in growth projections. Long before this ever happend. I know that's what I do... Then we all stand around and wait for the upper management to heed our warnings before its too late. In all my experience folks, management waits to the last minute. When things are going terribly wrong.... THEN they act. Trust me. Cyrus (geek) in programming department snorted about this in a meeting many moons ago.

 

[bored4long]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12186826#post12186826 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MandM
There is a forum for feedback that has threads on this topic. When they start getting rude with clueless comments about what the problem is and how to solve it with a minor tweak it gets tiresome for the technical staff who actually have the facts.

Speculating about how much is made in ads or how RC should be spending its money often results in less users to strain the database.

Enjoy the site? Use it and be civil. If not, go troll another BB.

I'm pretty sure we are all being civil. I apologize if my comments have upset you, M&M, or anyone else. I actually looked for a feedback forum before I made my first post to ask there, but couldn't find it. I just found it (I was looking at the bottom of the page).

Davey, you make an excellent point about useless bandwidth consumed by duplicate threads because users can't search for answers. It would be very interesting to guesstimate what percentage of threads would be reduced if search worked for all.

 

[kevin95695]

So many things I want to say, but my crack dealer would cut me off.

*My* customers have too many easy alternatives. I MUST keep them happy. Downside of a free market I guess.

 

[P.Kelly]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12187326#post12187326 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by kevin95695
Downside of a free market I guess.

More like a banana republic

 

[2a373]

I've been bonked a few times too but something else I've been getting recently is mysql error messages. As a security "geek" I get uncomfortable when I get granular sql code in an error message. That just presents an attack vector for a black hat.
If I get anymore I'll remember to read them for content. Could be a a recent configuration issue(?) since it seems new.

 

[KMP]

:wave:

 

[plankton]

Depends on the time of day as well. I noticed I get bumped more often towards late hours PACIFIC time (like right now at 11:01PM PT). I hope it is because folks are running archives, etc and not a bunch of central or east coast folks burning the midnight oil!

Are RC support staff paid positions? If not, then we really need to cut them some slack. My $0.02.

Scott

 

[kdblove_99]

From what i have heard on several occasions the Mods dont get paid anything. Nor should they.

Admin i'm sure do but i havn't a clue

 

[BlueCorn]

bored4long - my issue with your comments is this:

This site costs you nothing. Your comments on this thread are very much like you stopping by my house, letting yourself in, eating all of my food and then complaining about the price of my carpet.

I don't know how much money that RC makes but I certainly hope that it's substantial. If it's not, John is an idiot for sticky it out this long. We he took over RC, I know for a fact that it was loosing money every month and he kept it afloat out of his pocket.

All of that time, just like now, it was free. It's free to use just like these club forums that we host at no cost.

Your "sponsor calculations" are way off base. You're operating under the assumption that everyone pays the same. Arrangements are negotiated on a per sponsor basis. Price that they pay range from in-kind trades to $$$. It all depends on what kind of traffic they are guaranteed.

Every time someone decides how much money "RC is raking in and screwing it's users out of" they always stop short of figuring costs. How much of your monthly salary is left after you pay your bills? In addition to 5 dedicated machines, network load balancing, power, cooling and maintenance we have a dedicated 16m link to the backbone. Try calling your local hosting company and requesting on of those. If they even offer that service the price will surprise you.

Ever read ReefKeeping Magazine? Thousands of folks do. It's free as well. Did you think that those articles were just downloaded from the Internet? The authors that provide that exclusive content are paid. It's still free.

Part of the performance problems that we're currently experiencing are due to the amount of work that's being done, in the background, on changes that will dramatically improve our capacity. You have no idea how many hours of work go into this place. When the work is done it'll still be free and you'll still be complaining.

If you're offended by the tone of this, or my previous response to your comments, I make no apology. Considering the circumstances my tone was far more tolerant than yours.

Good day.

 

[kevin95695]

I hear ya. Thanks for the insight Doug. Don't get me wrong, I love having RC. But as much as I love it, that makes it even more frustrating to want to get on only to get bonked over and over, especially since I pay for it.

 

[maxdout]

wow, is all i can say. i used to work at a data center and yes i can attest to what beerguy is saying. It costs bucks to get your stuff hosted on thier servers or hosting your stuff on your own server. Not alone a 16M connection is going to cost you bucks per month. I know at my last job we were paying 6k/month for a 5mb up and down link to the net and i was surpirised it cost that much since our customers were complaining and we were looking at going to 10mbs and price was 10k/month discounted since we been with them for so long. shoot that is 120k year alone on bandwichess while at home i get 10mb for 29$/month what a steal! all in all my post really isn't about complaining since i use this site for any reference and help i can get and all for FREE so i can't complain when it works or doesn't work. Take it for what it is: information that we all can use and share to other pple who love thier tanks, reefs, fish, etc etc etc. thanks RC!, paying members and non paying members for contributing to the endless amount of info and love for thehobby

 

[P.Kelly]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12188487#post12188487 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by beerguy
This site costs you nothing. Your comments on this thread are very much like you stopping by my house, letting yourself in, eating all of my food and then complaining about the price of my carpet.

beerguy - I think you may forget what makes RC a place where sponsors want to spend money (profit motive or not)...


oh yeah, it's all those pesky free users


Your analogy would have been better like this:

It's like stopping by beerguy's studio, where you have an open invite to let yourself in, because you are a contributing artist, you take some food out of the fridge, but you leave a 6 pack of beer for the next guy, then you head out to the showroom where you spend hours contributing to a collaborative painting that is going to be donated to the city. Yeah, the studio doesn't make any money on that painting, but the foot traffic during the open house generates a fair amount of revenue selling other things. While you're there, you complain to the studio management that the place is drafty and cold and if they were to fix those issues the artists and patrons would enjoy it more, spend more time there and spend more money.


Bottom line for me, is that I appreciate what you guys do. I don't know or care if you do it for free, for the power, the goodwill or for payment. It doesn't really matter (I volunteer my time to other causes and don't expect people to care), but it is nice when people say thank you.

"thank you" - from me to you. I know it can be a thankless job!

Take the comment for what it was, constructive criticism. It's good to hear. Its a reality check.

If you hadn't come across as rude in your first post back you wouldn't have invited all the follow-on comments. You knew you were going to get it, which is why the disclaimer...

 

[WarrenG]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12186873#post12186873 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by kdblove_99
Well when a sponsor tells me what he pays each month in Sponsor fees i consider that less than speculation

Thank you for your insight.

The only rudeness I saw here was from the moderator. I guess inadequate server performance is a touchy issue. And the excuses about operating costs (that don't seem to be anywhere near any reasonable estimate of the income stream) seem like a weak dodge.