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Why is the site so broken these days?

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saint:
So yeah, things around the website here are suffering from neglect.

(TL;DR: saint rambles for a bit for no discernible reason then promises again that the server isn't going anywhere)

I've been running this site since late 1997 - going on 24 years now. (http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade_welcome2.html). It's been through more server moves than I can count, multiple components and complexity added such as the forum/chat/arcade/wiki all of which have broken at one time or another, and after the first many years of running it solo, benefited from the gracious assistance of numerous people who have given their energy and time to help run the place. Scott/PL1 is currently shouldering the lion's share of forum moderation and has been for a long time now, for which I am extremely grateful. (And to anyone who disagrees with a moderation call he's made, please remember he's trying to moderate this forum under the guidelines/rules I set in place, not his own, with very little communication/feedback from me so he has to try to read my mind, and if there's someone to ---smurfette--- at for a moderation call it's me you should direct that at, not him.)

But it's a lot of work. Updates, upgrades, things breaking inexplicably, and most time consuming and energy draining, moderating arguments between forum members.

By my count, the website and I personally have been threatened with close to 8 lawsuits from disgruntled forum members about something someone on the forum said or did, where I had to involve an attorney to help me. I have been threatened via email and have been sent certified mail. This is not an exaggeration. Never in my wildest dreams did I guess that wanting to geek out about arcade controls would lead to threats to my family's financial security. Seriously WTF. Fortunately these have all been resolved, but it's not any fun having someone threaten you like this and having it hang over your head until resolved.

It's soul-sucking and energy draining.

Add in real life - I have personal issues as I get older (no, I'm not telling you how old I am :p ) like everyone else does that demand my time, health issues (just had my 4th surgery to repair something martial arts inflicted, I now have an artificial shoulder I'm recovering from and my plan to become the $6,000,000 bionic man is well underway), work stress, blah blah everyone's got issues. I'm not looking for pity because overall I have it pretty good, but real life takes up pretty much 100% of my day.

I'm exhausted.

I've repeatedly made the promise that as long as there's interest in this site, measured by the fact that people are logging on and talking about arcade controls and the like, that I'd keep it online. It's my way of giving something back to the Internet for all the awesome stuff I get from the Internet.

But I'm exhausted. So this site mostly runs on auto-pilot these days, with the tireless moderation efforts of Scott and the occasional burst of activity from me when I've got some down time and can tackle whatever needs tackling. Like today.

And as of the last year, this site is in the red. Previously, book sales and Google ads paid the bills with a few extra bucks for my piggy-bank, but the book is dead, Google ad revenue is non-existent, and keeping this site going now is taking money out of my piggy-bank. BYOAC was never, ever, ever going to make me rich, that wasn't why I built it and run it, but it'd be nice if it could at least break even. So I'm going to be trying to figure that out while not bombarding people with a bunch of ads.

I've had at least 4 offers to buy the site, but have turned them down because they'd just attempt to turn the site into a cash-cow ad-serving mess, and the site means more to me than that.

So with real life issues, forum arguments, the soul-sucking downer of the lawsuit threats, and the fiscal situation, it's hard to find the time, energy, and mental-space to work on the site here. I'm going to keep the server running, that was never in question. I'm going to try to figure out how to fix the money-sink situation the site's become. I'll try to find the time to resolve the bits and pieces of the site that are broken or outdated. But all of that comes after real-life considerations, and that leaves very little time or energy for the rest.

And that's why the site's in the shape it's in right now.

Thanks for your understanding. :)

--- saint

Phreakwars:
I here ya on the lawsuits. It's one of the reason I handed my forum off to another, but then my site is quite a bit more rude and raunchy. I've even had people threaten to murder myself and my family because of something someone else said. And I'm like "WHAT THE ACTUAL F$%K"!! Hard to say what search issues are, might just need an SMF software update. Have never personally been a fan of SMF, myself personally, I'd just as soon take the SQL tables and convert them to PhPBB.

saint:
It was pretty boggling the first time.

Search is fixed :)

pbj:
Were any of the lawsuits successful?  Asking for a friend.

saint:
Only at raising my blood pressure.

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