Brandon@Forged

I would buy some stuff with my350z.com all over it. I have learned more from this site than any other.

WayneTN

Victor,

The Z is my first real sports car.

You are part of what the Z is all about.

___spirited

___enthusiastic

___sharp

___respectful

___classy

I never knew you were only 16. Are you sure you're not really an an executive at the Nissan Corporate Headquarters computer center?

It was an awesome ride while you were here. I hope you come back, even if it's just as a regular poster. You can even take the glow off of my name and use it yourself if you come back.

We all wish you well......wherever your choices take you.

Sincerely,
Wayne

Jill

Thank you guys for all of your kind words to Victor and the rest of the mods. And what all of you said is right - Victor was a huge asset to the my350z.com team, he did an awesome job, and took a LOT of crap from some people. It's a shame that some people can never be happy and will complain til the day they die, but that's how life works. Believe me, all of the moderators get frustrated when we hear people complaining and we're unable to do anything. When we have missing administration and need something to be done - we all get frustrated and feel like quitting at times. All of us are AWARE that there is poor management in situations like these, and we've all taken the initiative at one point or another to try to change that. Some things are just out of our control. We can't even get a HOLD of Tako let alone get things like mugs, t-shirts, stickers to create revenue for the site. When Victor was gauging interest for the my350z.com window stickies, Tako's "manager" came onto the site and stated that we have to have clearance through Tako to use the my350z.com name. So the moderators are sort of stuck in a bad position.

And I'm going to stick up for the moderators once again...We have a great bunch of people helping to moderate the site. Yes, there are some that are "absent" and some that don't really do much, but I'm not in a position to get rid of them and replace them with others. So for now, we're stuck with the ones that have to roam the whole site in search for trouble makers and trolls. We don't try to single out a person by what car they drive, but with the recent influx of certain individuals, we're inclined to watch them more carefully. Also, yea, some of us get offended when people start complaining about the mods because we're doing this to HELP the site, we're not doing it because we LOVE it, we enjoy it yes, but when people start getting on our back about it is when we get our guards up. It's like if you walk into a volunteer shelter, trying to do some good for the neighborhood, and you have people yelling at you telling you to do your "job" as a volunteer, better. It's very discouraging. And this is what happened to Victor. He got discouraged, got fed up, and decided to leave.

There are a few people that seem to have personal problems with a couple of the moderators even though they don't know us. I'm not really sure WHY when 99% of the people think we're doing our jobs, this 1% decides that we're "taking advantage" of our positions as moderators. Regardless, not everyone is going to agree with what we say and that's okay.

I guess the point of the post is that I understand exactly what Victor went through, all of us have gone through it before, but not to the extent that Victor has. Thank you Victor for all the time you've put into the site, and look how many people truly DO appreciate what you've done.

Danimsta

iTrader: (3)

good points jill

but u seemed to have forgotten to add in "and danimsta should be our new moderator!"

i totally understand u just forgot to put that in, i forgive you

350zSpeedRacer

Very well said, Jill. I couldn't agree more with you.

Brandon@Forged

Haha, she also forgot my name too, man that's weird...

ares

iTrader: (2)

about 4 hours before the site came back I went around just to see what this sort of site would cost, maybe I would just make another one untill this was fixed and just mirror it basicly.

hahahahahahahaha. yeah that was a good one.

for the price of this site each month, you could drive 6-10 350Zs. Im not even kidding... any ideas I could come up with to make this site make money, they all just become a waste of time when I consider how much it costs.


I want to thank takao. Like it or not, it is his signiture that keeps this site up every month. he may not always be around, but he also lets us have pretty free reign on his forum. those "ads" above are for his own products and shop. he does not have any direct income from this forum that I know of. other than vender fees.

35ounces

iTrader: (5)

How do you figure that ?
The forum software is cheap. Hosting isn't that expensive (and if you already have a T1 and server its real cheap) so where does this great expense come in ?

iris

CRAZY!!!!!!!!!! ditto on the thanks! computer-illiterate me never knew how much it took to keep a site running!

35ounces

iTrader: (5)

BTW, I did not intend to diminish in any way anything that anyone does or has done on this site.

ares

iTrader: (2)

I dont think he has his own server, he probably should, itd be cheaper, but he uses a hosting service, or so I was told. the bandwidth for this site is huge. 300users online at any given time, all downloading data over an over.

35ounces

iTrader: (5)

Yes I understand. There are bandwidth concerns.
Realistically its not that expensive. I think you over estimated!

slay2k

I don't mean to sound rude, but this is simply not true by any means.

I've started (and sold) a site called WarcraftReplays.com, which is vBulletin (forum) based just like this site, and to this day has between 170 and 300 users on at any given time, which is about the same as this board.

I've personally hosted it with Rackshack.net, on a P4 2.0 GHZ HP server, with 1gb of ram, 80gb disk space, and 400gb of bandwidth transfer per month.

All that cost me about $150/month, and the day I've sold the site I've had a staff of about 20-30 volunteers working for me. Now, it's given that I did the Linux sysadmin work myself, but to hire someone to do that would be another $99/mo.

So now tell me, how does $150-$250/mo equate to 6-10 Z's ? You should do more research next time :]

-slay

justwant1

Flame me, do what ever you want, but let's face it folks, this site has gone to **** ever since Jay sold it to Tako. The mods can do as much as they can, but with out backing from Tako, they can't do much. As for VQ, he will be missed by some and not by others. I think he did a pretty stupid thing by deleting all his post, hurst no one but the users on this site. If you look around, most of the old members from back at the beginning of this site take less and less interest in the site. It's too bad, it was a great site. There used to be no less than 50 to 100 people viewing this site at any given time with many many more at peak times. As I type this there might be as many as 17 - 20 people viewing the site. This number is way down from the past, and I mean way down.

Slay2k is right, this site can't be costing that much to run and host, may 150 is a bit on the low side, but it isn't 1000's that's for sure. If it is Tako is getting taken to the cleaners.

Just my .02

mycatspot

Am I the only one here that thinks VQ quiting like that and deleting all his posts was really immature? I understand moderators get a lot of crap from the forum members but throwing a temper tantrum and running out of the room is not a very dignified way to handle most situations.

Part of being a moderator, or any job for that matter, is being able to work with other people and handle the occassional btichfest. If it got too much for him he could have taken a break from the forum without deleting everything.

Anyway, this is a great website and I and I'm sure almost all members here greatly appreciate the my350z moderators and their hard work.

Boomer

We really don't have a clear reason from VQ why he left the site. You have to remember he is 17 and he has another life outside this forum and its more important than being the Administrator of this site. He doesn't need all the crap he must have been taking, both by post and/or pms.

He is also beginning to prepare for his College Entrance Exams, so he can get scholarships' etc. And he wants to get the highest possible scores, not only to please his parents, but to please himself. When you begin to consider that, his departure is not too surprising, who needs to get the **** as a volunteer? Also, the worst kind of jobs tend to be those with enormous responsibilities and no control, I've been there and it can be pure hell. I just hope he can return to post here or other Z sites.

ares

iTrader: (2)

right now as I type there are 167 currently active users.

I looked at hosting services and saw the 150$ prices, thought that was enough.

but it wasnt me that came up with 3-5k a month, it was VQ... thats what he told me. when he told me that, I figured I must have grossely underestimated the amount of server space this would take, and the amount amount of bandwidth used.

I then talked to a admin at another forum, possibly the most active forum short of offtopic.net. it is run off of his system at his house. 2.2gbps worth of bandwith for that site, and he needs to move it to another location for 5gbps. Im not a techie by any means but I believe that is 2.2 gigabytes/sec. seeing how most of those 150$ servers were offering 50gb or even 500gb a month.... owell, I donno.

I still thank takao for funding this site as he has. VQ is not gone people, he is on this site, he has not gone anywhere. I dont want people thinking the world has ended. he is a registered user and poster of this forum. he requests that no one know his new handle at this time.

he still runs the gallery, and now I am sharing the duty with him, access to the gallery is in no way related to being a moderator. he is not a moderator at this time, his choice, he wanted a vacation, very understandable, he will be back, but being a moderator was not even half of what he did. his contributions were through his posts and his service to the gallery and whatnot. so all he has lost is he cant sticky posts(we can do it for him tho), he cant move, ban, warn, delete things. whoopdee doo, this was not really what VQ did anyway, I think he did maybe 20 things of this nature each month, he was much much more than a moderator, he didnt so much waste his time with the little maintnence crap, there are atleast 5 of us other guys that can do all that, what he did was far more valuable, and he has not stopped doing it.

Brandon@Forged

Your going to pay for that, i'm sure the pm's are already rolling in, "what's his handle?", "come on, you can tell me"...

Boomer

I'm glad to hear he is still with us, maybe with his time, he can comment more on the site issues.

flynnibus

You can be sure he was talking per month. Only way to get that kind of bandwidth is via dense wave division (read.. you are a telco) or gigabit fiber in a Metro Network.. and the costs for that would be obsurd.

For instance.. a 45mbit link is in the tens of thousands a month.. he ain't doing gigabit/sec

though.. 2gig/month is pretty low actually. A decent homepage can hit gig transfer limits quite easily if graphics are involved.

The biggest cost factor for a place like this is knowing how much bandwidth it really needs and uses.